Nib of the Week

Nib #121 The “One Sentence” Trick

Fri, 01 May 2026 10:04:42 GMT

Good writing is downstream from clear thinking. The vast majority of times writers get stuck mid-composition, tugging at their hair and chewing pencils wondering what to write next, the real problem is they’re not sure what they think .

The fix here is not grammatical or stylistic, but logical. The next time you find yourself in this situation, try the One Sentence Trick.

Very quickly, summarize your whole argument in a single sentence. Then summarize each component part — each angle, each bit of evidence, each rebuttal of the other side, and then your conclusion. Essentially, you’re reverse engineering your outline here. If any of these summary sentences proves hard to write, you’ve found your problem.

Chances are you’ve thought and/or written yourself into a corner. In such cases, the best way out is not through, but back. Return to the outline, to the previous sentence, or the previous paragraph and start reading. Somewhere along the way, you just took a wrong turn.

Find the wrong turn, and you’ll quickly get back on track. The key is cultivating the discipline and humility not to push on to try and “get there from here.” You’ll waste words and time. Back up, find the hitch in your logic, and you’ll be back in the flow in no time.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #120 Say Something a Little Bit Different

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 10:55:48 GMT

Congressional leaders tend to think of big policy debates as binary affairs — support Bill X or oppose Bill X. If they had their way, every elected official, pundit, or spokesman on their side would repeat the exact same two-sentence talking point. They call this “message discipline.”

Except that’s not what message discipline is. Message discipline is when each spokesman sticks to his or her best message over the course of a debate. It does not mean that 300 different spokesman all parrot the same message.

If Ted Cruz and Susan Collins — or for that matter, Elizabeth Warren — both support something, you don’t want them making the same case for it. You want them making distinct cases tailored to the audiences they can best reach.

Young congressional communicators: don’t work forward from the messaging of the speaker or the committee chairman or that one pundit you like. The people who you’re trying to reach may not trust those guys! Instead, work backwards from your boss’s audience and make the case that will appeal to them .

When it comes to strategic communications, intentionally saying something a little bit different is a lot more effective.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #119 Whom, Whomever, Whomsoever

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 11:27:56 GMT

If you look up the words whom , whomever , and whomsoever in the dictionary, you’ll find them. It’s probably best to leave them there.

Don’t get the Nib wrong. Relative pronouns are great. Direct objects, too. And in isolation, whomsoever is a peach of a word. But in most real-world writing, sentences requiring whom — and especially whomever and whomsoever — tend to be wordy, fussy, and distractingly pedantic.

The Nib endorses William Safire’s old rule of thumb: “If whom is correct, recast the sentence.”

Until next week... keep writing!

Nib #118 Persuasive Generosity

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:12:03 GMT

In a public debate, whether in person or in writing, remember: your strategic audience isn’t your opponent. It’s the undecided, persuadable people witnessing your back and forth.

This is why it’s so valuable to be generous and charitable in your tone and arguments. No, a softer touch isn’t likely to move hardened, convicted advocates on the other side. But it absolutely might help reach undecided readers and listeners.

Trial lawyers don’t try to convince opposing counsel. They’re focused on the judge or the jury. In the same way, conservatives and liberals on the Senate floor aren’t debating for each other’s votes, but for the support of undecideds watching at home.

In your writing, then, don’t be afraid to tailor your arguments, acknowledge the other side’s best ideas, concede unessential points, or refrain from taking tempting pot shots. Especially if your opponents are strident and censorious, a charitable tone can go a lot further than answering in kind. Respect and generosity in persuasive writing isn’t weak, it’s persuasive — which, remember, is the whole point.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #117 "Good Friday” by Christina Rossetti

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 10:51:49 GMT

Easter, the most beautiful thing, has understandably inspired some of the world’s most beautiful writing, including this:

"Good Friday”

by Christina Rossetti

Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter, weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon –
I, only I.

Yet give not o’er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.

Happy Easter!

And until next week… keep writing!

Nib #116 The One Word Writers Should Never Use

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 10:00:34 GMT

There are lots of words young writers should generally avoid. But there may only be one word that young writers should always avoid: impactful .

The problem with impactful is not that the word has no meaning, but that it doesn’t mean enough . Writers always have better options.

For starters, there are more precise adjectives that really mean what impactful only hints at, like compelling , arresting , or efficacious . But even those are only minor upgrades.

Better still, writers and editors should take the very presence of impactful as a signal that the whole sentence needs reworking. Rather than telling your readers something is impactful , show your readers the impact it makes.

Don’t say, “The firefighter’s decision to search the attic was impactful.” Say, “The firefighter’s decision to search the attic saved the lives of two young children.”

Don’t say, “The president hopes this will be an impactful speech.” Say, “The president hopes today’s speech convinces Congress to support his budget proposal.”

If you want your writing to have an impact, try not to write the word impactful again.

Until next week… keep writing.

Nib #115 Writerly Time Management

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 09:50:29 GMT

“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.” - Blaise Pascal

Young writers should take Pascal’s literary koan to heart. Composing first drafts may be the most daunting part of the writing process. But it’s also the least intellectually taxing. The draining, time consuming part of writing — the part that actually makes writing good — is the editing and revision.

This is why writers’ procrastination is so pernicious. Good writing takes time — specifically, time after the first draft is already written. One of the simplest ways to level-up your work is build lots of back-end editing time into your schedule.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #114 Fatty Phrases

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 10:52:04 GMT

One of the quickest and easiest ways to improve your writing is to cut the fat off of loose, wordy phrases. Here are four common examples:

in order to

for the purposes of

due to the fact that

at this point in time

Young writers often think these phrases make their writing worldly and authoritative. They don’t. Authoritative writing is precise and concise. As you edit your drafts, be on the lookout for elongated phrases whose meaning can be conveyed in a single word.

Instead of “in order to” just say “to.”

Instead of “for the purposes of” just say “to.”

Instead of “due to the fact that” just say “because.”

Instead of “at this point in time” just say “now.”

Trim that fat. Weed that garden. Eliminate unnecessary words.

Until next week… writing!

Nib #113 Avoid Posturing Preambles

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 10:34:32 GMT

Young professionals sometimes mistake persuasiveness with authority. You see it in name-dropping, resume padding, and overuse of jargon. In writing, this self-inflating tone is often expressed in posturing preambles.

If you’ve ever read a letter or oped or speech that prefaces points with commentary about the status of the author, you know the vibe:

“I stand before you…”

“Let me be clear…”

“I will not apologize for…”

“I do not say this lightly…”

Phrases like this are meant to subtly assert authority. To the audience, they usually signal insecurity. It wastes words, breaks the flow, confuses the issue, and annoys the audience.

The way to impress people with your skills as a writer is to persuade them on the subject you’re writing about. The best way to do that is to remove your self from the equation. Focus on the audience and the issue. Don’t set up your points with these “Look at me!” introductions. Just make your case.

If you sell your ideas well, the audience will buy you too. If you try to sell yourself, they’ll usually buy neither.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #112 Three Tips for Pronoun Clarity

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 10:59:34 GMT

Pronouns are always for the audience. Strategically swapping them in for nouns makes your writing more reader-friendly. Unless it’s not clear what noun you’re swapping out. Good writers always make sure their pronouns’ antecedents are obvious.

Here are three common mistakes writers make with pronouns, and how to fix them.

1. Multiple Possible Antecedents

Consider the sentence:

“Senator Jones met with Governor Smith after he was elected.”

Who does “he” refer to here - Jones or Smith? It could be read either way. So the writer will want to rework the sentence to clarify:

“After Senator Jones was elected, he met with Governor Smith.”

2. Distant Antecedent

Sometimes a pronoun’s antecedent is syntactically clear, but too far away for the reader to remember:

“The appropriations package, negotiated over several weeks and amended repeatedly amidst backroom horse trading, passed just before midnight after leadership intervened. It alienated coalition members.”

Readers could easily think “it” refers to the package, the amendments, the horse trading, or leadership’s intervention. Better to be clear, even if it requires more words:

“The appropriations package, negotiated over several weeks and amended repeatedly amidst backroom horse trading, passed just before midnight after leadership intervened. The final text of the bill alienated coalition members.”

3. Beginning Sentences with Pronouns

The most common location of unclear pronouns is at the start of sentences. Any time you open a sentence with a this or a that or a those , make sure the antecedent is obvious; otherwise, a single word can gum up multiple sentences.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #111 Just Say ‘Said’

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 10:22:05 GMT

A quick Nib from the great Elmore Leonard:

“Never use a verb other than ‘said’ to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in.”

Leonard’s advice is for fiction writers. But the broader principle applies to all writing. When simple words do the job, use them. It builds up trust with your readers — trust you might need later on, when you have no choice but to use unfamiliar, technical terms.

So in your writing, don’t blithely let people state, assert, aver, express, or declare what’s on their mind. Just have them say it.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #110 Don’t Say Firstly

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 11:27:04 GMT

When you want to enumerate the items in a list, don’t start with firstly .

There’s nothing wrong with the word itself. The problem with firstly will crop up a few sentences later, when consistency compels you to follow it up with the incrementally less elegant secondly and thirdly .

Before you know it, you’ll be writing fourthly and fifthly , which are ridiculous. And a writer in your position can't afford to be made to look ridiculous.

So, by all means number the items in your lists when it helps. Just drop the -ly . Make the first thing first , the second thing second , the third thing third , and so on.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #109 How to Know When to Change a Sentence

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 04:31:31 GMT

You know those 50/50 edits? Where the sentence — or word or section — works , but you’t not sure if it sings ? When you’re torn about whether to change it or not?

Maybe it’s a 30-word sentence that holds together… but feels like it might be too long. Maybe it’s a phrase that conveys your thought… but feels a little awkward or casual or jargony. Maybe it’s a sentence that sounds great on the page… but feels like it might nonetheless be extraneous or tangential.

Faced with these 50/50 edits, how do you know when to bite the bullet and make the change? It’s easy: every time .

If you — the author, inclined to see the best in everything you write — thinks a sentence might be too long, a word might be inapt, or a paragraph might be unnecessary, then it probably is.

Sometimes on further consideration, you’ll want to change it back. Give yourself that flexibility. But as a rule, if you’re ever not sure if you should change something… you should change it.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #108 — Skim-Proof Your Writing

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 10:38:26 GMT

Most people don’t read with deep concentration and attention, at least not at first. They skim. Young writers should anticipate this and tailor their writing for busy, distracted, half-interested audiences.

The best formats to skim-Proof are non-urgent things we read quickly and silently, like:

Work emails
Memos
Office reports
Announcements & invitations

To Skim-Proof your writing, try these four strategies:

Front-load important information, ideally in your first sentence.
Use bold letters and ALL CAPS to highlight key details.
Indent numbered and bulleted lists to make long sentences and paragraphs easier to read.
Edit out extraneous words and sentences.

Don’t think of Skim Proofing as surrendering to our attention-deficit culture. Think of it as a literary deep core exercise. Because front-loading content, streamlining text, and breaking up long paragraphs will strengthen all your writing — even longer, closely read forms — over time.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #107 What to Read to Improve Your Writing

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 09:01:34 GMT

When young writers ask, ”What should I read to improve my writing?” they usually mean, “Who?” And of course, there are plenty of great literary stylists young writers can learn and steal from.

But for young writers in 2026 — betrayed by our thumbless education system and beset by screen distractions — the Who doesn’t matter as much as the When . If you really want to improve your writing, adhere to a simple rule:

The majority of what you read every day should be more than 24 hours old.

This is not to say good writers only read 19th century English novels or Homeric epics. There is plenty of great writing being produced right now. But it's not on Twitter. Don’t surrender your reading habits to an algorithm, especially an algorithm designed to make you awful.

Read books. Read essays. Read poems. Read movie reviews. Yes, the quality of what you read matters. But what matters more is that you choose what you read and not the other way around.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #106 What’s Wrong with the Passive Voice

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 11:25:24 GMT

Everyone knows the active voice is usually preferable to the passive voice. But most young writers are never taught why. Here are the two main reasons:

1. The passive voice is meandering. It tends to make sentences longer and harder to follow.

Passive: The Constitution is something that should be followed by Congress.

Active: Congress should follow the Constitution.

These two sentences convey the same thought. But see how the first one is cumbersome, and almost condescending in its tone? Readers hate that.

2. The passive voice is slippery.

Passive: That should not have happened.

Active: I should not have done that.

See how the second sentence there feels sincere and accountable while the first feels like a non-apology? That’s the passive voice at work. By deprioritizing — or outright eliminating — the subject of a sentence’s verb, it obscures responsibility for the sentence’s action.

The passive voice isn’t evil. It just tends to make your sentences harder to read and you harder to trust.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #105 The Magic Trick for Speechwriters

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 11:53:31 GMT

We already covered the Magic Trick ( Nib #100 ), reading your work out loud. And its clarity corollary ( Nib #101 ), reading your work out loud as the audience . This last application of the Magic Trick is for anyone who writes for someone else: read your work out loud as your principal .

It’s not necessary that every sentence perfectly mirror your boss’s patois. What’s necessary is that the writing not sound like someone else. (Especially you !) Don’t make references or use words or tell jokes or stories that your principal wouldn’t.

The third time you read your the work out loud, imitate the person actually speaking or signing the text. When you trip over a phrase — however perfect it sounded in your head — or when a word choice snags like a fingernail on a blanket, change it.

That’s how you put the ghost in ghostwriting.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #104 Top 3 New Year’s Resolutions for Young Writers

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 12:13:51 GMT

Happy New Year!

To kick off Year Three of the Nib, here are three can’t-miss New Year’s resolutions to improve your writing in 2026.

1. Memorize one poem per month. Poetry is literary protein — writing at its most nutritive and muscle-building. To truly benefit from a poem, you have to know it by heart. If you’re not sure where to start, you can’t go wrong with the King James Version of Psalm 23.

2. Read a Jane Austen novel. It doesn’t matter which, but Pride and Prejudice is Pride and Prejudice for a reason.

3. Delete one shiftless, no-account word or phrase from your writing. Good options include vague intensifiers like very or significant, robot verbs like affect or engage , and clunky stutter-steps like the fact that or in terms of . Really want to make the world a better place in 2026? See if you can go the whole year without writing the word impactful .

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #103 The Hidden Lessons of Thank You Notes

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 12:27:08 GMT

Merry Christmas, and — now — Happy Thank You Note Season!

Thank You Notes might seem like a perfunctory, mechanical writing format. But they are as powerful a training ground as any prose project young writers can tackle.

Think about it. The four qualities of a good Thank You Note are cornerstones of all good writing:

Concision : Thank You cards’ small sizes preclude rambling. They force writers to get to the point and stay on it.

Specificity : Thank You notes demand concrete details. You don’t thank someone for “that thing you got me” or “that kind gesture.” No, you specify what you’re thankful for, exactly how and when you’re using it, and the particular good it has done.

Authenticity : Expressing gratitude may be the most human thing human beings can do. Thank You notes by necessity draw out our truest voices. They sound like us — or rather, like the best version of ourselves.

Generosity: Thank You notes have no purpose other than to graciously serve their audience. Writing them exercises virtues that can strengthen all our writing, whatever the format, going forward.

The lessons of Thank You Note writing may be hidden, but they’re true and good. They’ll make you a better writer — in more ways than one.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #102 Top 7 Gift Ideas for Young Writers

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 13:31:08 GMT

Just in time for the big day, here are the Nib’s Top 10 Christmas Gift Ideas for the young writer in your life:

1. Good Books about writing

For everyone: The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White

For serious writers who have already read Strunk & White: Style by F.L. Lucas

For more casual readers and writers: On Writing by Stephen King

2. Good Writing tools

Pens: Every writer has a favorite, but when in doubt, go with the Pilot G-2. (Bonus: writers always appreciate red pens for editing.)

Typing stands & clipboards: Out of fashion, but indispensable in the editing process.

Notebooks: This is the can’t-miss option. Writers love notebooks, of every shape and size. It can be a marble stitch job from Staples or a leather-bound moleskine — your writer will feel understood.

3. Masters of Style

Anything by:

Tom Wolfe, especially the early stuff.

W.C. Heinz, sports columnist and author of The Professional .

Elmore Leonard, a master genre fiction writer.

Patrick O’Brien, author of the Aubrey-Maturin novels.

4. The All Timers

Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Homer. No writer will regret gifts with their names on the spine.

5. Reference Books

Every writer can use a good dictionary, thesaurus, rhyming dictionary, a book of famous speeches, or a big book of quotations. One out-of-left-field recommendation every word lover will treasure: The Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten.

6. Great Conservative Writers

For the young conservative writer trying to learn how to martial the English language for his cause, a few role models to learn from:

Antonin Scalia

Yuval Levin

Patrick Buchanan, especially Right From the Beginning

Ross Douthat

Clarence Thomas, especially My Grandfather’s Son

6. Accoutrements

Writers like to cultivate the spaces where they write. They put comforting, inspiring, happy things on the walls and shelves that surround their desks. Thoughtful gift-givers can add to that ambiance with books, obviously, but also framed photographs or maps or art prints or quotes from a favorite writer. Maybe a pencil holder that fits your writer’s aesthetic, or faux-bronze bust of Shakespeare or a vintage typewriter from eBay.

Writers love that stuff. And more than that, they love feeling loved for loving that stuff.

Happy Christmas to you and yours, and until next week… keep writing!

Nib #101 Read It Out Loud As the Audience

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 10:34:41 GMT

The corollary to last week’s Nib — Nib #100 The Magic Trick — is that in addition to reading their work out loud, writers should also read it as other people.

First and foremost, they should read it aloud as their audience. Remember, everything you write is written for someone else. To write compellingly or persuasively, you have to zero in on the people you’re writing for . How old are they? How educated? Where are they from? What are their politics, religious views, or interests?

When you read your work out loud, put yourself in their shoes. What do you hear? Is your word choice appropriate? Is your sentence structure clear? Will they get your references and jokes? Will they share your priors or bristle at them? Will they connect the dots you want them to, or find your logic discordant?

To write effectively, you have to tailor your writing to your intended audience — whoever it is. So when you edit your work, don’t just read it out loud as yourself, valuable as that practice is. Also read it out loud as the audience — they’re the ones who really matter, after all.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #100 The Magic Trick

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 13:45:34 GMT

Ok, here it is — for Nib #100 — the single best writing tip anyone can ever give you. If you want to improve a piece of writing — a whole draft, a paragraph, or even just a sentence — read it out loud.

Human beings are hard wired for talking and listening, not writing and reading. So when you edit and revise your work, read it out loud. Your ears will hear what your eyes won’t see.

You’ll hear mistakes that you’d otherwise miss. More than that, you’ll hear things that aren’t necessarily wrong, but could be better. Overlong sentences, imperfect word choices, and extraneous phrases that may look fine will — when read aloud — clang in your ears like false notes.

It’s like a magic trick. Even if you’re not sure why something needs to be changed, you’ll it sounds wrong and change it. No matter how good or bad your writing is, reading it loud will help you make it better: guaranteed, and right away.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #99 Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Humblebrag

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 13:56:42 GMT

If you’ve ever wondered when it might be advantageous to write in the passive voice, check out President Abraham Lincoln’s first Thanksgiving Day proclamation from 1863.

It’s all about the blessings that Americans — despite the horrors of the Civil War — still have to be grateful for. But notice how passively Lincoln catalogs them:

“peace has been preserved with all nations”
“order has been maintained”
“the laws have been respected and obeyed”
“harmony has prevailed”
“population has steadily increased”
“mines… have yielded even more abundantly”

Notice what’s missing in all these passive phrases and intransitive verbs? Why, the chief executive whose deft leadership delivered this bounty to the American people!

Passive writing distances actors from their actions. It helps scoundrels avoid culpability, as in, “Mistakes were made.”

And it helps clever leaders insinuate their own merits without directly trumpeting them, as in, “Thank heavens our nation has been so uncommonly prosperous, respected, and happy during my presidency.”

That is what the passive voice can be good for: blame avoidance and humblebragging.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #98 The Best Movie (Scene) About Writing

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 12:29:30 GMT

There are no great films about writing.

It’s understandable. Writing isn’t very cinematic. So movies “about writing” tend to glaze the grind in sentimentality (like Finding Forester ) or hide it in weirdness (like Adaptation ).

But we don’t actually need a great movie about writing. Because there is one great movie scene that covers the subject.

A few minutes into A River Runs Through It , we get a 90-second vignette of future author Norman Maclean learning how to write under his minister father’s tutelage. It’s the best:

Any writer will tell you: it’s all there. No glamour. No fun. No soaring music. No superhero stakes. Just a few frustrated sighs. The scratch of a pencil. The torture of the redlining. The agonizing justice of “Half as long.” The elation of finally being done.

And — best of all — the “Good, now throw it away.” Waste not another thought on the last thing you wrote. Move on to the next thing. Grind even harder, write even clearer and tighter next time.

The rest of A River Runs Through It is great, too — the movie and the book that little boy eventually wrote. Both are well worth young writers’ time this Thanksgiving break!

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #97 How Gen Z Writers Can Get Their Revenge

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 13:41:06 GMT

When it comes to reading and writing, the kids aren’t alright.

According to a viral essay last spring, “The Average College Student Is Illiterate." And it’s not just anecdata. A 2024 study found a majority of English majors could not understand the first seven paragraphs of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House . A record low 35 percent of last year’s high school seniors (today’s college freshmen) read at grade proficiency. On the other hand, U.S. students’ writing has gotten so bad the government stopped testing it.

The almost unthinkable truth is that most of Gen Z is functionally illiterate.

There’s a lot to say about all this. But the first thing is: it’s not their fault. It’s ours. It’s adults’ responsibility to teach children how to read and write. For a long time now, society has shirked that responsibility. We’re the ones who gave kids phones, tolerated their overuse, and let schools get away with not teaching them.

Gen Z didn’t fail. We failed them.

But the Nib always looks for the sunny side of the data. And in this case, it’s right there for any student or young professional to see. Here are two, potentially career-making facts hidden in the dysfunction:

1. In a low-literacy labor market, people who can read and write will possess a rare and lucrative skill.

2. Just a little bit of practice — as little as 30 minutes of thoughtful reading and writing a day — can turn any Zoomer into a comparative Homer among his peers.

There is still plenty of time for students and young professionals to turn their generational betrayal into an opportunity. The handful of Zoomers who don’t need ChatGPT to write for them are going to own the future.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #96 Young Hemingway’s Style Guide

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 11:59:08 GMT

One of the challenges young writers today face when trying to improve their craft is they don’t know quite what to aim for. They may know good writing when they read it. But schools nowadays rarely teach students what makes a piece of writing good. So most young writers are left to figure it out on their own.

But they don’t have to!

About a century ago, the Kansas City Star newspaper tried to solve this problem by laying out 110 rules to guide its reporters’ writing. One of those reporters was young Ernest Hemingway, who ever after credited his spare, clean style with his old boss’s rules.

“Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative.”

What’s not to love?!

If you’ve ever just wanted all the rules of good writing on one sheet of paper you can pin up on a bulletin board above your desk, here you go :

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #95 When to Take it to Eleven

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 11:09:03 GMT

Senate Republican Leader John Thune gave the most memorable speech of his long congressional career this week when he blew up at Democrats over the ongoing government shutdown:

“SNAP recipients shouldn’t go without food. People should be getting paid in this country. And we’ve tried to do that 13 times! You voted no 13 times! This isn’t a political game. These are real people’s lives that we’re talking about. And you all just figured out, 29 days in, that oh, there might be some consequences?”

It was the first time most Americans have ever heard Thune raise his voice. Indeed, it’s the first time the Nib can remember the famously unflappable Thune so nearly flapped!

Young speechwriters, take note: the reason Thune’s anger resonated here is that he so rarely expresses it. He usually avoids the cheap hysterics and hyperbole that poison our public discourse and desensitize Americans to real outrages.

Anger is a legitimate weapon in every writer’s arsenal. But it dulls with overuse. People whose main rhetorical tactic is histrionic fury may get their share of clicks in the short term. But over time, they persuade no one.

Red meat only works when it’s part of a balanced rhetorical diet. Writers should use anger intentionally, strategically, and sparingly. Like the time mild-mannered New York Times columnist Ross Douthat went after Planned Parenthood’s supposed “pro-life” bona fides or Michael Kelly’s medieval takedown of Bill Clinton after his Monica Lewinsky speech.

Those classic pieces, like Thune’s speech Wednesday, worked because their authors’ reputations for reasonableness lent their outrage credibility. Per Morton Blackwell’s classic rule of political advocacy, they only got mad on purpose.

Young writers who want their own barbs stick one day should take a similar approach. Master the art of winsome, generous democratic persuasion — so that when you need to take it to eleven some day, it will help and not hurt your cause.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #94 How to Know When You're Done

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 10:57:16 GMT

Okay, you’ve targeted your audience, mapped out an outline, vomited up a terrible first draft, and now you’ve edited and revised it once. Now what?

The first answer is, “Edit and revise it again, at least once more.” (Writers should not voluntarily hand in anything rougher than a third draft — see Nib #86 .)

On the other hand hand, you can’t rewrite forever. At some point, writing projects have to be put to bed. So the question remains: in the absence of a pressing deadline, how can writers know when they reach that point?

How do you know you’re done done? The best answer is, when you feel yourself nitpicking .

The first round of edits is for out-and-out mistakes. The second is for big refinements — breaking up long sentences, streamlining repetitive points, deleting digressions. After draft three, your edits will get more granular: eliminating unnecessary words, condensing overlong clauses and phrases, correcting personal tics, and tightening up word choices.

Somewhere after draft four, your edits will become less obvious and less clarifying. Some of them will help with flow or tone. You may even stumble onto a gem of a new thought. But at a certain point, the changes will start to feel almost arbitrary — whether to put a subordinate clause before or after the independent clause, whether to turn a certain comma into an em dash, whether to change a “President Trump” into “Trump” or “the Administration.”

When changes to the text stop clarifying its meaning, you’re no longer editing. You’re nitpicking. And when you feel yourself nitpicking, it’s time to stop. It may come on your fifth draft. It may come on your 20th. It’s not about the number. It’s about the feel. It’s about the moment when you’re reading your work and you can’t really tell the difference between this draft and the last one — when tweaks start to feel like they are coming from you rather than from the text itself.

When you can’t tell if your changes are making the writing better or worse: that’s when you know you’re done.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #93 “Show Don’t Tell” for Persuasive Writing

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 11:01:23 GMT

“Show, don’t tell” may be the #1 piece advice in creative writing. It urges authors and poets and even journalists to put their readers in a scene, in a moment, in an image, rather than simply describing it.

It’s good advice — and just as applicable to persuasive writing. Consider the following telling sentences, of the sort written every day in Washington op-eds, speeches, constituent letters, etc.

Immigration is a crucial issue to America.

These budget cuts will hurt the most vulnerable.

The economy needs pro-growth tax cuts.

The problem with these telling sentences is that they assert conclusions instead of presenting evidence. They raise questions rather than answer them. Why is immigration crucial? How will the budget cuts hurt people? What will pro-growth policies do for the economy?

If we rework those sentences to focus on evidence instead of unearned conclusions, they become more interesting, vivid, and persuasive:

Joe Biden’s open borders policy reduced blue collar wages by 4%, added $61 billion to the budget deficit, and enabled drug cartels to smuggle enough fentanyl into the country to kill every American citizen.

Under these budget cuts, a single Ohio mom with three kids would lose her health insurance, child care, and her second job.

If we lower income and capital gains tax rates today, Colorado alone will see 3,200 new business startups and 20,000 new jobs in the next 12 months.

Persuasion is not about telling people how they should think about an issue. It’s about showing them the issue — the problems, proposals, and tradeoffs — in such a way that they reach the conclusion you want them to reach.

Whatever your evidence — statistics, stories, analogies, images — don’t describe them. Don’t explain how people should feel about the evidence. Instead, present the evidence, as clearly and concretely as possible. Do that, and the persuasion will take care of itself.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #92 “As You May Know…”

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 10:48:06 GMT

This week, a little trick for all the speechwriters out there working with dense, wonky policy minutiae (and bosses who love it).

Turning complex ideas and obscure data into compelling stories and arguments is very often what speechwriting is . That’s why even the most abstruse technocratic debates, when introduced to a general audience, can quickly devolve into blistering morality plays.

Sometimes, though, certain details are too essential to an argument to be dumbed down or moralized. They must be presented in all their dry, impenetrable specificity. The problem here is not just that obscure facts can be boring, but that using them risks alienating one’s audience — making the speaker seem pretentious, talking down to the less informed.

One way speechwriters skin this cat is with the phrase, “As you know…”, like this:

“As you may know, violent crime in the county fell by 22 percent over the last six months.”

Or:

“As many of you know firsthand, Ireland is America’s top pharmaceuticals trading partner.”

Prefacing information that the audience probably doesn’t know with the suggestion that they might can soften its reception. It invites the audience into the argument, making inclusive points that might otherwise be alienating.

Ronald Reagan used it:

"And as you may know, I approved raising the ceiling so they can buy an additional 10 million metric tons in the next year.”

So did John F. Kennedy :

"As you may know, there is currently a dispute over whether the Administration should spend the additional defense funds voted by the last Congress.”

And Franklin Roosevelt :

“[A]s you know, we have put 300,000 young men into practical and useful work in our forests and to prevent flood and soil erosion.”

Of course, “As you know” does not give a speechwriter license to lard up rhetoric with unnecessary wonkery. It’s just a little sugar you can sprinkle on necessary details every once in a while to help them go down easier.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #91 Jargon isn’t the Problem

Fri, 03 Oct 2025 11:32:59 GMT

Jargon gets a bad wrap.

To listen to most writing advice these days, you’d think that specialized, technical language is inherently wrong and should never be used.

But that’s silly. Jargon helps people communicate — that’s why we create it. Every group with specialized knowledge has its own vocabulary: chemists, stock brokers, Dungeons and Dragons nerds, sports gamblers, etc.

Used properly, jargon saves time, money, and lives. Think of doctors in an emergency room — “Give one of epi I-V push, stat!” — or soldiers on a battlefield — “Contact front, request immediate suppression, danger close!”

The only admonition against jargon is that it oughtn’t be used to communicate with people who don’t understand it. It comes across as cliquish and snotty, like you’re lording your in-group membership over uninitiated outsiders. Misusing jargon in this way is an especially toxic problem in Washington because unlike in other industries, here the insiders work for the outsiders. The solution is for D.C. people to always remember to write like it.

It’s perfectly fine for emails between congressional staffers to be full of Hill jargon because it saves time and energy. A congresswoman’s speech to a local Chamber of Commerce should probably avoid Hill jargon, but could employ some business jargon — “ROI,” “pass-throughs," “depreciation.” A Senator’s opening remarks at a town hall meeting, on the other hand, should probably drop jargon altogether.

Just focus on communicating clearly with each particular audience you're writing to, and the jargon will take care of itself.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #90 The Best Thing Stephen King Ever Wrote

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 10:21:47 GMT

In honor of Stephen King’s 78th birthday Sunday, this week’s Nib offers a partial — but unequivocal! — recommendation from among King’s 50+ best-sellers.

It’s the middle section of his 2000 memoir, On Writing — the section also called “On Writing.” It’s about 90 pages of excellent advice to improve one’s writing.

Much of it mirrors Strunk & White — as most good writing advice tends to do. The difference is the generosity with which King explains the rules and principles he writes by. What The Elements of Style might cover in a sentence or two, King guides readers through for a paragraph or even a page, with examples, alternatives, and the cheerful enthusiasm of the natural teacher. “On Writing” takes up everything from dialogue attribution (no adverbs!) to distraction elimination to literary devices to editing.

Whatever you think of King’s fiction — or, these days, his politics — his writing about writing is worth every writer’s time.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #89 Beat the Other Side’s Best Arguments

Fri, 19 Sep 2025 10:43:28 GMT

Contrary to what you see on social media, there are good reasons to disagree with you.

People of goodwill can be liberal or conservative, religious or not, or believe LeBron James and not Michael Jordan is the GOAT. We all know this. So we should write like it.

The temptation to attribute other points of view either to evil or stupidity comes not from conviction or knowledge, but from Pride. Pride with a capital P — the bad one. The fact that this temptation defines much of our public discourse today does not normalize or absolve it — as events of the last week cast in sharp relief.

And so, God-fearing, patriotic young conservative writers have a special duty to rise above this temptation. Half the country is left-of-center, after all. Assuming that half is either evil or stupid is un-Christian and unpatriotic in the extreme.

It’s also unpersuasive. You can’t win people over by calling the other side names. (When was the last time Keith Olbermann persuaded anyone of anything?)

It doesn’t matter if your writing can’t persuade hardened ideologues on the other side. What matters is whether it persuades non-ideologues who read or hear it.

Charlie Kirk understood this. His target audience wasn’t the leftist cranks who berated him at his open mic events. It was the politically unaffiliated kids in the crowd who he knew might be hearing serious, thoughtful conservative arguments for the first time. They were the people he won over — thanks in part to the respect he gave to the people he couldn’t win over.

Unlike too many activists today, Kirk didn’t troll or “own” the left to get high-fives from allies already on his team. He didn’t straw-man opponents’ weakest points for cheap laughs. He graciously grappled and tried to beat the other side’s best arguments.

As a means of resolving political differences, Kirk’s model — humble, generous, charitable persuasion — is very hard. But it’s worth it, especially for conservatives. We know the alternatives are so much worse.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #88 Read Strunk & White

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 09:28:14 GMT

Read The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White.

That’s it. That’s basically the whole Nib.

Notice we say read Strunk & White. You need not read it more than once, or keep a dog-eared copy on your desk, or esteem it above all other writing books. It’s a little text book, not the Bible.

But the fact is, Strunk & White’s 100 pages of clear, concise prose contain more practical writing instruction than most young professionals today received in 17 years of formal education. The Elements of Style may not be the best writing book ever written. But it is easily the most accessible (it can be read in a single sitting) and the most gallant.

This is the true spirit of the laws Professor Strunk laid down for students taking his English 8 course at Cornell University a century ago. The book’s rules are merely tools that enable writers to take care of their readers.

“Always their motivation is fellow feeling,” journalist Andrew Ferguson — one of the best writers you’ll ever read — wrote in a 2009 appreciation, "‘Elements’ at 50". As Ferguson writes, the book’s commitment to clarity and correctness:

“isn’t ‘bossiness.’ It’s not even grammar, really: It’s etiquette, and etiquette, properly understood, is a branch of morality.”

That’s the best way to understand and read The Elements of Style. It’s a good book, in every sense of the word, and can make all young writers better.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #87 Hemingway’s Best Writing Tip

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 00:54:42 GMT

For many writers, the hardest and most time-consuming sentence to write every day is the first one. Where do I begin? and Where do I go from here? are so open-ended they can paralyze writers before they even start typing.

This is why outlines are so helpful even for shorter compositions. They keep writers on track, point-by-point and paragraph-by-paragraph. For longer projects that can’t be written in a single sitting, try this tip from Ernest Hemingway:

“The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck.”

Papa had novels in mind, but his advice is just as valuable to writers of longer speeches, essays, and non-fiction books. It’s natural to try to close one’s writing day by finishing a section, a chapter, or an important paragraph. But if doing so leaves you unsure where to start tomorrow, you might be better off leaving today’s work not quite finished.

Hemingway’s trick sets writers up to jump back into their work as soon as they sit back down. It may seem counterintuitive to deliberately end a writing session on an incomplete thought. But if completing that thought gives you instant, daily access to momentum, it will end up saving you much more time and frustration in the long run.

So, if you want to write like Hemingway, it turns out you don’t have to do it standing up, naked, surrounded by six-toed cats. Just step away from the keyboard every day knowing what you’re going to write next.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #86 Never Share Your First Drafts

Fri, 29 Aug 2025 12:05:52 GMT

If you want to cultivate a reputation as a good writer, never show anyone else your first drafts.

Most inexperienced writers — whether students or young professionals — don’t appreciate just how bad first drafts are (See Nib #8: First (Worst) Drafts ). Not their first drafts; all first drafts.

Rough drafts always teem with innocent but embarrassing mistakes like misused words and tense disagreements. Even worse, they are full of bad writing — overlong sentences, purple flourishes, awkward phrases, and confusing transitions. No matter how smart or talented you are, if you hand someone a first draft of something you write, they are going to think you’re illiterate.

Don’t even share first drafts to solicit feedback on them. A typical first draft is so bad that only the writer himself can improve it — because no one else can even discern the text’s intended meaning.

Ideally, you should not share — let alone submit — anything rougher than a third draft. The first edit should clear your draft of mistakes. The second should smooth out the clunkiest bits. Third drafts will still need polishing, but they should at least be coherent. (For frame of reference, you are reading the seventh draft of this Nib.)

Of course, keeping your first draft to yourself will not magically make your writing better. But it will protect your reputation from the harshest judgments. And, in a world where your peers do share their rough cuts, it will make you look like Jane Austen by comparison.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #85 Read Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language”

Fri, 22 Aug 2025 12:11:14 GMT

This week marked 80 years since the publication of George Orwell’s Animal Farm . The Nib hopes the anniversary spurs new interest in the novel — and its author.

Everyone knows Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four , and should. But young writers, in particular, should also make a point to read Orwell’s third most famous work — his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language.”

The essay is one part warning about politicians and pundits’ corruption of political rhetoric, and one part plea to writers of good will to resist the trend. To Orwell, writing with clarity, concision, originality, and most of all care is a writer’s civic and patriotic duty.

In a democracy, Orwell argues, political advocacy should be put to the sovereign people as clearly and plainly as possible. Advocates should use language to cut through the fog of elitist and partisan obfuscation, not to hide in it.

The essay’s six rules of writing are chestnuts for a reason:

Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

But young writers really should read the whole thing; it’s one banger after another:

“In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing.”

“The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’.”

“Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style.”

“The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism.”

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.”

“What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about.”

Read “Politics and the English Language” this weekend. In just fifteen minutes, it will make you a better writer and maybe a better citizen, too.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #84 Be Kind. Use the Oxford comma.

Fri, 15 Aug 2025 13:19:49 GMT

The “controversy” about the Oxford (or “serial”) comma is the dumbest in all of grammar nerddom.

Of course writers composing “a series of three or more terms,” should “use a comma after each term except the last” ( Stunk & White ).

Not because of some fussy old rule, but because it clarifies a sentence’s meaning to the reader!

“I was in a carpool with Bob, a butler and a hitman.”

does not mean the same thing as

“I was in a carpool with Bob, a butler, and a hitman.”

If you mean the second, you need the comma. Period. (Heh.)

There are lots of other fun examples. There’s the one about panda bears (“eats, shoots, and leaves”). And the one about Martha Stewart (“I love cooking my family and my pets”).

Ultimately, the case for the Oxford comma is no different than the case for capitalization or indenting paragraphs. They help readers understand what writers are trying to say.

Never forget the hard truth behind all writing tips: reading is hard.

And so, as Strunk & White put it: “the reader [is] in serious trouble most of the time, floundering in a swamp, and … it [is] the duty of anyone attempting to write in English to drain this swamp quickly and get the reader up on dry ground.”

The Oxford comma is not rigid. It’s not retrograde. It’s considerate, it’s kind, and it’s one of the things that separates us from the animals. Use it.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #83 Write with Purpose

Fri, 08 Aug 2025 12:05:28 GMT

Never write just to write.

Every composition should have a purpose. And writers should have that purpose clear in their heads before they start writing, when they are writing, and while they revise and edit their writing.

This goes for every kind of writing — and every kind of purpose.

If, for instance, you’re asked to write a fundraising appeal, your goal is to raise money. It’s not to edify or entertain or impress — except insofar as those things open your audience’s wallets.

If you’re writing to persuade, then persuade. If to entertain, then entertain. If to inform or inspire, then inform or inspire.

Don’t have any other agenda. If you’re writing for someone else — a boss or client or organization — don’t smuggle in your two cents. Don’t try to put your spin on someone else’s pitch. Know your audience, know your purpose, and serve both.

Even if you’re writing a story or poem you’ll never publish, focus on rendering characters, plots, or images as perfectly as you can. Even if you’re journaling for no reason other than to develop your skills, that’s a purpose too.

In writing, as in life, begin and persevere with the end in mind. Focus and discipline don’t stifle self-expression; they sharpen it.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #82 Speechwriting Workshop: J.D. Vance in Munich, Part IV

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 11:48:17 GMT

In the first three parts of his February speech to the Munich Security Conference, Vice President J.D. Vance asserted his thesis ( Nib #76 ), told his origin story ( Nib #77 ), and laid out the stakes of European elites’ increasing discomfort with democratic values ( Nib #79 ).

Traditional rhetorical structure says Part IV is where advocates — like Vance — should turn from windup to pitch, from framing their argument to filling in the frame. As soon as Vance finishes with broad speculations about Europe’s future, he should focus in on one issue or policy. Does he?

“And of all the pressing challenges that the nations represented here face, I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration.”

Right on schedule, the speech’s next ten paragraphs are about Europe’s migration crisis:

“Today almost one-in-five people living in this country [Germany] moved here from abroad…

“The number of immigrants who entered the EU from non-EU countries doubled between 2021 and 2022 alone. And, of course, it’s gotten much worse since…

“It’s the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent…

“No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants.”

See how this structure strengthens Vance’s argument. An immigration restrictionist arguing for immigration restrictions is hardly headline news. But by framing the issue as a proxy for European governments’ anti-democratic elitism, Vance puts a much sharper edge on an otherwise unexceptional message.

This way, Vance’s speech is not about the controversial political issue of immigration. Rather, it uses immigration to illustrate his broader case for democratic populism. Vance’s frame enables him to criticize European elites not for disagreeing with him and President Trump — a weak position — but for subverting their own constituents’ sovereignty — a much stronger position.

This makes Vance’s attack more sophisticated, effective, and pointed — while also more polite and palatable to his European audience. That’s the power of traditional rhetorical structure.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #81 Why Young Intellectuals Can't Write

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 10:25:21 GMT

Oftentimes, what makes young writers’ writing so bad is that they themselves are so smart.

Intellectuals tend to see — or think they see — connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena. The smarter someone is, the more likely they are to have a theory about how, say, third-wave feminism or the War on Terror contributed to the popularity of superhero movies in the 21st century. (And much more likely to have to tell you about it!)

When issues like foreign aid, inflation, student loans, and climate change are all closely connected in one’s head, it’s harder to write clearly and concisely about any of them.

This is not to say such connections don’t exist. Business regulations, for instance, change the labor market, which in turn influences marriage rates, which in time will goose or depress demand for amusement parks. Identifying these relationships is useful work.

On the other hand, you can’t explain galaxy-brain esoterica in a 200-word constituent letter about a border wall! Persuasion requires clarity, and clarity requires focus.

So what are smart, young politicos to do? Embrace the short-form writing young staffers tend to be assigned — constituent correspondence, one-minute speeches, newsletter items, and blog posts. Not as stepping stones, but as important projects in their own right.

Tight word counts don’t stifle a writer’s creativity; they exercise it. The smarter a young staffer is, the more he should challenge himself to simplify his writing.

Whether you’re writing a tweet or a book, the only way to persuade your audience is one issue at a time.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #80 Jimmy Carter’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Speech

Fri, 18 Jul 2025 13:57:58 GMT

Forty-six years ago this week, Jimmy Carter gave the worst Oval Office speech in American history. “A Crisis of Confidence” — better known today as the “Malaise Speech” — is not only worse than older readers will remember. It’s worse than younger readers can probably imagine.

Most of speech’s problems were political: the message, the messenger, and the moment were catastrophically out of sync. And yet, somehow, the writing itself was almost as bad.

Remember the setting. It’s summer 1979. Stagflation, gas lines, another recession looming. President Carter, his approval rating now in the low 30s, had already given three major speeches about a seemingly intractable energy crisis. The fourth - scheduled for the evening of July 5 — Carter canceled at the last minute. Then he vanished. No, seriously. He left the White House for a 10-day emotional and spiritual retreat at Camp David, where he met with Important People about What Was Really Wrong With America.

On July 15, he returned to Washington to finally reveal his plan to revive the country. This is the first time Americans heard from their president since he disappeared in the middle of a crisis. Everyone is waiting with baited breath. And Carter opens his speech:

“Good evening. This is a special night for me.”

Say what?

“Exactly three years ago, on July 15, 1976, I accepted the nomination of my party to run for president of the United States.”

Carter talks about his convention speech, three years earlier. Then Carter talks about all the other speeches he’s given since! Then he talks about the speech he just canceled — and how great it was going to be! Then he talks about his Me Time with celebrities at Camp David:

“It has been an extraordinary ten days, and I want to share with you what I’ve heard.”

In the first seven paragraphs of his speech, Carter uses some version of the words I or me 21 times!

He spends the next three minutes quoting his Camp David guests. And what do you know, almost all of their thoughts aren’t about the energy crisis at all. They’re about… Jimmy Carter! Eight hundred words into a speech about a national economic crisis, the president has only talked about two subjects: himself and what other people say about him.

Finally Carter gets around to his big takeaway from all his deep conversations and soul-searing. He was right all along:

“These ten days confirmed my belief… but it also bore out some of my long-standing concerns…”

Eight of Carter’s next nine independent clauses feature the word I as the subject:

“I know… I've worked… I have… I have… I want… I want… I do… I do…”

This guy, huh?

After nine minutes exonerating himself from blame for the country’s problems, Carter hones in on the real culprit: the American people!

“The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.”

The Nib can’t even. Note the threat Carter diagnoses is “invisible in ordinary ways” — that is, to people less perceptive than Carter.

He laments people’s doubts about “the meaning of their lives” and “loss of unity of purpose.” But he just spent nine minutes congratulating himself for his personal virtue and focus.

At this point it’s clear, the malaise speech is not even about malaise. It’s about how much better a person Jimmy Carter thought he was than the selfish, venal, mouth-breathing ingrates he was trying to lead!

No surprise, then, that when Carter finally gets around to the policy substance of the speech — the energy crisis — almost every solution he proposes involves giving President Carter more power. The one exception? Urging the 224,999,999 Americans who didn’t just helicopter up to the mountains on a whim for some Me Time to stop using so much energy!

Finally, if you had any doubt, yes: even Carter’s peroration is obnoxious!

“In closing, let me say this: I will do my best, but I will not do it alone.”

What the &$#@ is the matter with this guy? "I will not do it alone"? How vain, how arrogant, how out of touch did Carter have to be to not say, “… but I can not do it alone” there?

Vain, arrogant, and out-of-touch enough — after a half-hour, self-congratulatory harangue of his countrymen — to then say, three sentences before signing off:

“Whenever you have a chance, say something good about our country.”

The lesson this week is very simple. Read the Malaise Speech, and then never write like that.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #79 Speechwriting Workshop: J.D. Vance in Munich, Part III

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 13:09:26 GMT

So far, so good.

Vice President J.D. Vance opened (more or less) his February speech to the Munich Security Conference with a clear statement of his thesis: that Europe’s governing elite was retreating from democracy and free speech ( Nib #76 ). In the very next sentence, Vance launched into a 900-word origin story for his argument ( Nib #77 ).

Traditional rhetorical structure says Vance should have next pivoted from the past tense into the future tense to lay out the stakes ( Nib #70 ) of the choice he’s putting to his audience.

And sure enough:

“But let me also ask you, how will you even begin to think through the[se] kinds of budgeting questions if we don't know what it is that we're defending in the first place?”

For the next 300 words or so, Vance continues in this subjunctive vein — partly predictive, partly speculative — about the future.

“If you are afraid…”

"If you’re running in fear of your own voters…”

“If you’re going to enjoy competitive economies, if you’re going to enjoy affordable energy and secure supply chains…”

Vance closes the loop on all those ifs with a pointed “then” :

“…there is nothing America can do for you. Nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump.”

There is some structural and rhetorical sugarcoating in this section (whether intentional or not). But Vance’s core message was stark: America’s strategic alliances with Europe are ultimately based on a shared commitment to western values. A Europe that turns its back on freedom, democracy, and the rule of law is a Europe that would be choosing to have a very different relationship with the United States.

What speechwriters should note here is how natural and intuitive rhetorical structure makes Vance’s assertion. Had this been posted this as a tweet, it would come across as aggressive and caustic. Coming after his origin story, it’s obvious.

In this context, the threat of authoritarianism is not coming from America or Donald Trump - or the populist conservative parties now sweeping European politics. It’s actually Europe’s elites who are threatening democracy… and the Western alliances.

See how Vance’s argument builds. See how this structure — from thesis, to background narrative, to future stakes — primes an audience for the persuasive payoff of the substantive ask.

This is what good structure does for a speech — and why speechwriters should study and use it. Parts 1, 2, and 3 give speeches a chance to close the sale in parts 4 and 5. Next week, we’ll see what policy reform Vance thinks can pull Europe back from the brink.

Until then… keep writing!

Nib #78 Our Founding Essay

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 23:50:26 GMT

This Independence Day, a reminder to writers everywhere that the greatest nation in the history of the world was founded with an essay. If you haven't read it in a while, it's worth the five minutes. Good writing really can change the world.

Happy Fourth — and God Bless America!

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Until next week... keep writing!

Nib #77 Speechwriting Workshop: J.D. Vance in Munich, Part II

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 11:31:39 GMT

Most political debates boil down to contests over origin stories. To win an argument about where we go from here , you have to convince your audience how we got here in the first place ( Nib #10 ).

Vice President J.D. Vance’s much ballyhooed speech to the Munich Security Conference in February offers a good example of the technique.

As we saw last week ( Nib #76 ), Vance opens his speech with a clear, bracing thesis: that European elites are retreating from the values of democracy and free speech. So far, so good.

Traditional rhetorical structure ( Nib #75 ) would have Vance quickly jump into the past tense to start telling his origin story. Does he? Well, here is his very next sentence:

“Now, I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election.”

Notice the past tense verbs: sounded , warned , annulled . So it goes for most of the next 900 words. Vance talks about the former Soviet Union. Then he connects its unlamented legacy to recent censorious, authoritarian policies imposed by Brussels, Sweden, the U.K., Romania, and potentially Germany too.

For Vance, this is an ideal frame. He knows that among liberal elites on both side of the Atlantic, he and President Trump are disparaged as authoritarian thugs. Vance’s origin story turns the tables of this narrative. Actually, he’s arguing, it’s Europe’s woke elites who are the real threat to Western values like tolerance, pluralism, freedom, and democracy. Importantly, he does it using facts and stories, not adjectives. ( Nib #23 .)

This framing softens Vance’s audience up for the rest of his speech. That’s why origin stories should usually come before the stakes and substance of an argument — the parts of Vance’s speech the Nib will turn to next.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #76 Workshopping J.D. Vance's Munich Speech, Part I

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 12:18:42 GMT

Last week’s Nib presented the five parts of classical rhetorical structure in one convenient speechwriting cheat sheet. For the next few Nibs, we’ll see what that structure looks like in practice, with a close reading of the most talked about speech of the year (so far!): Vice President J.D. Vance’s February remarks to the Munich Security Conference.

Vance’s speech made headlines on both sides of the Atlantic for its stringent criticism of our European allies’ retreat from free speech and democracy. (You can watch the speech here and read the full text here .) Pundits have understandably focused on the substance and strategy of Vance’s speech.

Aspiring speechwriters should focus instead on its structure — because the speech’s framing is one of the reasons it had such an impact.

Let’s start with Part I: The Introduction.

Remember, the purpose of a speech’s intro is to grab the audience’s attention. The best way to do this is usually with a clear, direct statement of the speech’s thesis. By announcing up front the problem the speaker wants to highlight, the solution he’s proposing, or both, a good intro simultaneously makes a speech more persuasive and the audience more persuadable.

Did Vance?

Well, the vice president opens his remarks with 300 words of pleasantries. That feels like a lot. On the other hand, it was a long speech. In Munich, Vance was technically his audience’s guest. And he knew that in a few minutes he’d be ripping them. There was also some breaking news about a terrorist attack that required some sensitive attention, too. So in this case, the longer-than-normal windup was appropriate.

Notice, though: once Vance gets into his formal remarks, he goes all-in:

“But while the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine, and we also believe that it's important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense, the threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values -- values shared with the United States of America.”

Boom.

No hedging. No bank shots. Right out of the shoot, Vance unequivocally tells his audience — European leaders, the U.S. media, etc. — exactly what this speech is going to be about.

Task #1 is accomplished: he has their attention.

The lesson for aspiring speechwriters here is simple: resist the urge to ease into your argument. Don’t fumfer around. It’s not disarming; it’s annoying. One of the greatest signs of respect a speaker can show his audience is to not waste their time.

“Yesterday, December 7, 1941…”

“First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen…”

“If we are mark’d to die, we are enow / To do our country loss; and if to live, / The fewer men, the greater share of honour.”

You only a have few seconds to win your audience’s attention. Don’t waste them on throat-clearing. Sentence one, paragraph one: light the candle. Clearly announce your intention so that you can then get into the narrative of your argument — where the persuasive process really begins.

Next Nib, we’ll look at Part II of Vance’s speech: The Beginning of the Story.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #75 A Speechwriting Cheat Sheet

Fri, 13 Jun 2025 12:41:36 GMT

Now that the Nib has covered all five parts of Classical Rhetorical Structure, this week’s puts them all together into an easy-peasy speech-outlining cheat sheet.

If you’re ever asked to write or give a speech — and you don’t know how — here’s where you start.

First, as always, identify your audience and clarify the purpose of the speech. (If this takes more than 60 seconds, you’re probably overthinking it.)

Then move on to the outline, like this:

Part I. Introduction ( Nib #71 ): Open your speech — paragraph one, sentence one — with a clear, concise statement either of the problem you want to solve or the solution you’re advocating (or both). Don’t bother with opening jokes, stories, or ice breakers at this point. Get right to it.

Part II. Background ( Nib #10 ) : Immediately after your intro, give your idea an origin story. Literally use the past tense. Tell your audience a compelling story about how we got here, and they’ll be more receptive to your ideas about where we should go from here.

Part III. Stakes ( Nib #70 ): From the past, jump to the future. Like an advertiser, pitch the audience not on the technical details of your idea, but on the benefits it will yield to them . Paint a picture of how their lives will be better if we adopt your proposal — or worse if we don’t.

Part IV. Substance ( Nib #72 ): Present your solution — your preferred policy, candidate, strategy, whatever — as the bridge that can carry the audience from the broken present to that better future you just described.

Part V. Conclusion ( Nib #28 ): Don’t just “tell ‘em what you told ‘em.” Instead, assume you have proven your point — that we need this reform, this candidate, this solution. And then answer the question “So what?” What action should the audience take now that they are persuaded?

That’s it. Seriously. Just open a new document or pull out a sheet of paper and write:

Audience: ____________________
Purpose: ____________________
Introduction: ____________________
Background: ____________________
Stakes: ____________________
Substance: ____________________
Conclusion: ____________________

And then fill in the blanks.

In three or four minutes, you’ll have a strong outline. It’s like punching your destination into your GPS at the beginning of a trip. This structured outline won’t take you to where you’re going. But it will make the work of getting there much, much easier.

In coming weeks, the Nib will look at some famous historical speeches to show just how ubiquitous — and useful — this format really is.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #74 Using AI in Your Writing, Part 1

Fri, 06 Jun 2025 10:17:44 GMT

“How should writers use AI?”

It’s the question the Nib gets more than any other nowadays. We’ve held off answering it for two reasons. First, because there are so many non-AI tips young writers need more! And second, because the question is impossible to answer in a few hundred words.

But.

The technology is here. Young writers are using it. And the way most are reportedly using it — just having ChatGPT write for them — won’t do.

Future Nibs will try to break this huge subject down into bite-sized tips about how to use AI as a writer without undermining your development as a writer. But for now, this one overarching piece of advice: Use AI for ideas, not paragraphs.

That is, use AI to help you think about a writing project — to plan, target, support, and hone your prose. Don’t use AI to do the writing for you. Use it as an intern, research assistant, or an extra pair of eyes. Don’t use it as a ghostwriter — no matter how convenient it seems, or how unjust it feels knowing that’s what your peers are doing.

Why?

Because, for all its speed, AI’s writing is meh . It takes a good writer to make use of its middling world salad. Young, developing writers using AI to write for them will end up with the worst of both worlds: handing in lame work without even gaining any practical knowledge from the effort.

In a professional setting, the stakes are even higher. If you screw up in a draft — cite a bad example, misread some statistic — you’ll at least be able to explain why you made the mistake. If, however, you can’t explain an AI-generated mistake (and they’re common) in your work, your bosses will conclude that you’re incompetent and dishonest.

To put the point even more bluntly: every kind of writing project you let AI write for you is a job that AI, very soon, will take from you . Set aside the moralizing and the “you owe it yourself” guilt trip. Strictly as a matter of naked self-interest, there is no upside to using AI as a ghostwriter as long as its mediocre work product is better than yours.

Remember: in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the astronaut only survives HAL 9000’s attack because he already learned how to manually open the pod bay doors himself! Trial-and-error can be cumbersome and often humiliating, but it’s the only way to learn anything as hard as writing.

There's much to say about this topic. And the Nib will say plenty! But this general rule will run through all of it. Use AI to help you write, not to write for you.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #73 The Easiest Speechwriting Mistake to Avoid

Fri, 30 May 2025 12:19:16 GMT

There is nothing more frustrating than discovering — 20 minutes into cooking a nice dinner — that you’re missing a crucial ingredient. And there is nothing more frustrating about this frustration than knowing how easily it could have been avoided. A 30-second cabinet check before you went grocery shopping is all it would have taken.

Young speechwriters make this mistake all the time. They forget to inventory their ingredients before they start cooking. In their case, it’s not unsalted butter or balsamic vinegar they overlook, but important points and messages that key coworkers want included in a speech.

Let’s say your boss, a congressman, wants to give a four-minute speech about the big tax bill that the House of Representatives just passed. The congressman voted for it, and he especially likes the bill’s extension of the 2017 tax cuts. So you draft a speech about that. You polish it, tighten up a few things, and send the draft up the approval chain.

But then the Communications Director adds a paragraph attacking the other party for opposing the bill. The chief of staff says she wants something in there specifically touting some committee work the congressman did on the bill. The District Director says the speech must explain how the bill would help local small businesses. The MLA says it also has to highlight the bill’s increased funding for an Army base in the state. The political guru says he’d like to see more pro-Trump rhetoric.

Pretty soon, you reach a deflating conclusion. It’s going to be easier to start over and write a whole new speech than to incorporate all these various notes into the current draft. Speechwriters complain about this scenario all the time. “ Frankensteining ,” it’s called.

But it’s usually their own fault.

The speechwriter could have gathered all these inputs before starting work on the speech. He could have asked the comms people what they want, what the policy folks need, what the political strategists and state staff would like to see.

By collecting these “must haves” before the first draft is even outlined, all those key messages can be integrated into a coherent text from the beginning rather than slapped on or crammed in after the fact.

There is no downside to this ingredient-gathering practice. First, it signals to your coworkers that you care about their opinions. Second, the guidance and content ideas you receive make the writing of each speech easier. Third, it streamlines the approval process. And fourth, it will enhance your reputation in the office!

Of all the common mistakes and challenges that vex young speechwriters, “Frankensteining” is the easiest to avoid. The solution to back-end chaos is front-end communication.

Gather all your ingredients before you start cooking.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #72 The Secret to Writing About Policy Details

Fri, 23 May 2025 11:27:11 GMT

The secret to writing persuasively about policy details is to not write about policy details.

To explain.

Substance is the fourth of the five traditional parts of persuasive argumentation structure. If you’ve done your job with the first three - the Introduction ( Nib #71 ), Origin Story ( Nib #10 ), and Future Stakes ( Nib #70 ) — the substance should become mostly incidental.

Remember, with the Introduction, all you’re trying to do is get your audience’s attention by highlighting the problem you’re trying to solve or the solution you’re offering. Then, if you tell a compelling backstory about where today’s problem came from, you’ll win the audience’s trust and empathy. Finally, if you paint an appealing picture of an imaginary future in which we did and/or didn’t adopt your solution, you’ll start to win their enthusiasm.

If you do all that, then your specific solution is no longer just a candidate or a bill or an amendment or strategy. Rather, your solution becomes a bridge — from the unhappy present to a happier future.

That’s what public policy debates really are. They’re competitions to define our problems, their true sources, and what kind of future we want to build. As a matter of governing , the solutions — the How We Get There part — are paramount. As a matter of persuasive argument, however, those details matter far less.

Like a bridge. People don’t care whether a bridge is arched or cantilevered or suspended. They only care if it will get them to where they want to go.

This bridge-building mindset also helps writers with the always knotty question of “How much substantive detail do I need to include here?” The answer: only as much as is needed to win the specific points your framing raises.

Let’s say you’re advocating a school choice reform — an issue awash in arguments for and against. If you frame your argument around test scores and greater opportunities for classical curricula, then your Substance section should hit those points and mostly ignore the others. Show how your plan will connect your audience to higher scores and Great Books programs, and deprioritize things like costs, values education, parental authority, etc.

As always, your focus should be on what your audience needs to hear, not what you — or your policy staff — want to say. Different audiences and different writing projects have different purposes. So a speech pushing school choice to parents might feature a different frame than an op-ed aimed at state legislators — and so should emphasize different details. And of course sometimes — as in a think tank white paper or legislative memo — the audience may be so expertly familiar with the topic that the granular analysis is the point . In each case, what matters is intentionality -- write for your audience, not about a topic.

Policy details should always serve your writing, rather than the other way around. Give the audience enough substance to support your narrative — but not so much that the argument collapses of its own weight.

Again, like a bridge.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #71 How to Write an Introduction

Fri, 16 May 2025 13:37:33 GMT

Introductions are not as hard to write as they seem.

Most of the stress around writing them comes from misunderstanding the maxim that your opening paragraph should “hook the audience.”

We tend to fixate on that verb, “hook.” So we often try to think up gripping, shock-and-awe lines to open our compositions. But the critical part of “hook the audience” isn’t the “hook.” It’s “the audience.”

The target of your introduction is not the great mass of humanity who don’t care about your topic. It’s the relative handful of people who already do.

Think for a moment. Is there a lede paragraph sexy enough to get you to read an oped about veganism or sock-darning? Probably not — unless you’re already into veggie diets or sewing.

The purpose of your introduction, then, is just to signal to your audience — not everyone in the world, just the people you’re trying to reach — that the following composition is something they already want to read.

Once you approach introductions like this — from the audience backwards — you’ll feel the stress melt away. You really can just cut to the chase. To people who care about, say, tax reform, “The United States should abolish the income tax” is a great opening line. It’s not flashy, but it’s relevant to them — and that’s what matters.

If a story can hook your audience, great. If it’s a new statistic or news item, that works too. Given the diversity of topics, audiences, and formats, there are lots of ways to open a piece. But one method really fits them all.

If you want to hook readers, first identify your audience, write an intro that bat-signals them — and don’t worry about everyone else.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #70 Sell the Stakes

Fri, 09 May 2025 09:53:31 GMT

Most audiences don’t care about the technical details of whatever it is you’re advocating. They only want to know what’s in it for them. That’s why toothpaste commercials are short on hydrated silica, and long on whiter teeth and minty freshness.

Advertisers sum up this idea in the catchphrase, “Features tell, benefits sell.” In politics, this might be translated as “Sell the stakes.”

No one advocates for tax cuts because 25% is inherently better than 33%. No one promotes their idea for welfare reform based on the proposal’s elegant inter-jurisdictional design. Persuasive advocacy is always about how good the sausage tastes, not how cleverly it was made.

New jobs. Higher wages. Reduced poverty. Better schools and health care. Safer streets. Freedom, justice, security. These are the things most audiences care about.

That is why Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech contains no draft legislative language for a future Civil Rights Act. Nor did Ronald Reagan’s Oval Office address after the Challenger disaster get into the details of reauthorizing NASA for the next fiscal year. No, King was pitching color-blind justice and racial harmony; Reagan was selling an undeterred national commitment to space exploration.

Don’t get me wrong. Policy details matter. They just aren’t persuasive to most audiences. Washington people, in particular, can be so immersed in policy that they forget other people are not. This is a crucial hurdle every speechwriter, activist, and staffer must overcome.

When writing a speech or memo or oped, remember to sell the stakes. Include a few paragraphs about how your proposal will change the future. What will happen — to your audience — if we implement the policies or strategies you espouse? What will happen if we don’t?

In traditional rhetorical structure, the Stakes typically comprise Part 3 — right after the background. So, when you’re done with your idea’s “Origin Story,” avoid the temptation to jump into the wonky details. Instead, pivot from the past tense to the future. Define and personalize the stakes of the debate — and then sell your audience on them.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #69 Avoid Weasel Words

Fri, 02 May 2025 11:57:52 GMT

Good writing clarifies. Weasel words confuse.

These are the qualifiers, the caveats, the punch-pullers — the words and phrases that undercut all the other words in your sentences. You know the ones: almost, somewhat, relatively, arguably, might, potentially , and in many ways . We call them “weasel words” after that animal’s habit of cracking a hole in eggshells to suck out the yolk. If you’re not careful, that’s what they will do to your writing.

So, don’t write that you’re “somewhat happy”; just be happy. If that doesn’t describe your feelings, find the single word that does: content or wistful or even okay . If you can’t commit to a certain word, find another.

In persuasive, political writing, don’t assert that a proposed tax cut will “arguably create up to as many as potentially two million new jobs.” Instead, say it will create as many jobs as you’re prepared to assert without the hedge. Otherwise, the audience won’t be dazzled by the “two million new jobs” — they will be suspicious of whatever your weasel words are hiding.

If a point needs more precision, support it with facts rather than caveats. “An NIH study found that 98 percent of patients taking the drug reported no negative side-effects” is much stronger than “Almost everyone who took the drug had few or no side-effects.”

Sometimes you will need qualifiers (like ‘sometimes’ at the beginning of this sentence!) — to limit a claim or in moments when softening a point is the point. But use them sparingly — weasel words can shield you from overpromising, but only at the expense of your credibility.

Better to use strong language for modest claims than weak language for bold ones. Don't let weasel words suck the clarity out of your writing.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #68 How to Edit Like a Pro

Fri, 25 Apr 2025 13:31:48 GMT

Many of the problems that plague young writers today are really editing problems. After all, everyone’s first drafts are terrible. The biggest difference between a well written final draft and poorly written one is the editing they go through.

Most young writers today have never had to thoroughly edit their work — so they don’t really know how. And though it’s a skill that can only be developed in practice (Sorry!) , there are a few guidelines that can help flatten that learning curve. Here are five:

Read your drafts out loud. This is the single most valuable piece of writing advice in the world. Because human beings are hardwired for speaking and listening, our ears are much better editors than our eyes. Read your work aloud, and you will hear mistakes, clunky phrasing, inapt word choices, overlong sentences, and logical digressions that your eyes would never notice just sight-reading.
Edit to Your Audience. Never write a generic argument for X. Rather, your writing should advocate X to a specific audience . So as you edit your work (Out loud!), have that target audience front-of-mind. Their age, sex, politics, jobs, interests, and goals should inform your word choices, the points you make and the order you make them, your tone, the level of detail and abstraction, etc.
Avoid Repetition. One of the things that makes first drafts bad is that we tend to repeat ourselves in them. We all have favorite words, phrases, and sentence structures we use too often. Learn yours, and keep an ear out for them. When editing, if it ever sounds like you might be repeating yourself, you probably are.
Streamline. This is the editing skill young writers struggle with most. Good editing isn’t about cutting text; it’s about economizing it. Look for 18-word sentences you can rewrite in 13. Look for back-to-back sentences in paragraphs that say basically the same thing — delete one. Look for back-to-back paragraphs that analyze the same issue from two perspectives, and see if you can combine them into one. Trust me: these kinds of redundancies will exist in every first draft you ever write.
Just Communicate . Write to inform and persuade — not to impress. Good writing simplifies; bad writing complicates. Don’t show off. Don’t try to “sound smart.” Don’t adorn your writing with obscure references and esoteric intellectualisms. Strip away the affectations, and what’s left will be truth, well put — which is what we mean by good writing.

So, the next time someone tells you to “give it a once-over” or “clean this up a bit,” read your work aloud with these tips in mind. You’ll be surprised how much and how quickly it helps.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #67 “Limbo”

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 11:53:08 GMT

This triduum weekend, do yourself — and your writing — a favor and read this poem, “Limbo,” by Sr. Mary Ada of the Oblates of Saint Joseph.

Limbo

The ancient greyness shifted
Suddenly and thinned
Like mist upon the moors
Before a wind.
An old, old prophet lifted
A shining face and said:
“He will be coming soon.
The Son of God is dead;
He died this afternoon.”

A murmurous excitement stirred
All souls.
They wondered if they dreamed —
Save one old man who seemed
Not even to have heard.

And Moses standing,
Hushed them all to ask
If any had a welcome song prepared.
If not, would David take the task?
And if they cared
Could not the three young children sing
The Benedicite, the canticle of praise
They made when God kept them from perishing
In the fiery blaze?

A breath of spring surprised them,
Stilling Moses’ words.
No one could speak, remembering
The first fresh flowers,
The little singing birds.
Still others thought of fields new ploughed
Or apple trees
All blossom-boughed.
Or some, the way a dried bed fills
With water
Laughing down green hills.
The fisherfolk dreamed of the foam
On bright blue seas.
The one old man who had not stirred
Remembered home.

And there He was
Splendid as the morning sun and fair
As only God is fair.
And they, confused with joy,
Knelt to adore
Seeing that he wore
Five crimson stars
He never had before.

No canticle at all was sung.
None toned a psalm, or raised a greeting song.
A silent man alone
Of all that throng
Found tongue —-
Not any other.
Close to His heart
When the embrace was done,
Old Joseph said,
“How is Your Mother,
How is Your Mother, Son?”

Happy Easter, and until next week… Keep writing!

Nib #66 Ten Poems Speechwriters Should Memorize

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 10:59:27 GMT

James Michael Curley — the oft-elected, oft-imprisoned “Rascal King” of Boston’s Democratic political machine — used to give up-and-coming politicians a list of 10 poems he felt all public speakers ought to know.

Today these poems are, if anything, even more valuable to political speechwriters. For people who write for a living, memorizing poems is like a basketball player developing new moves or a musician learning a new instrument. They’re tools. The more poems you know by heart, the more tools you have to tackle any rhetorical challenge.

Reading poems is great. Reading them out loud is even better. But to have poetry, you really have to memorize it — so that their imagery, arguments, and insights become yours , too.

Even if you never have cause to recite these (or any) poems. Even if you never quote more than a line or two in all the speeches you’re ever called upon to write. Memorizing poems will enrich your approach and execution of the speeches you do write.

Curley curated his list over a lifetime of public speaking. It was like his golf bag, full of different clubs serving different purposes. Some were for eulogies, others for graduations or retirement parties, some for impromptu private remarks, others for political events.

So, if you’ve ever thought it would be cool to have some poems on call but didn’t know where to start, try Jim Curley’s list:

1. Polonius’s speech to Laertes in Hamlet (“To thine own self be true…”)

2. “The Deserted Village” by Oliver Goldsmith

3. “It Can Be Done,” by Edgar Guest

4. “Abou Ben Adhem,” by Leigh Hunt

5. “Around the Corner,” by Charles Hanson Towne

6. “If,” by Rudyard Kipling

7. “Friendship,” an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson

8. “A Psalm of Life,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

9. “The Man in the Glass,” by Anonymous

10. “Rules of the Road,” by John Boyle O’Reilly”

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #65 Be a One-Eyed Writing King

Fri, 04 Apr 2025 10:36:11 GMT

Unless you spend hours every week reading young Americans’ writing, it’s impossible to understand just how bad it has gotten. That’s the takeaway from two short, damning essays published earlier this week.

First, there is “We Need to Do Something About Student Writing,” by Liza Libes. Libes is an educational consultant who coaches high school seniors on their college applications and essays. She puts the point bluntly enough:

“over the past several years, I have noticed an alarming trend amongst my seventeen-year-olds: no one knows how to write anymore.”

The second essay, by a college professor who writes under the pseudonym Hilarius Bookbinder, is even less delicate: “The Average College Student Is Illiterate.”

Bookbinder describes his students’ writing submissions as either awful — “Spelling is atrocious, grammar is random, and the correct use of apostrophes is cause for celebration.” — or otherwise obviously produced by AI.

For the purposes this Nib, what matters here is not who to blame for young Americans’ inability to write, or how to fix the problem. What matters is simply the opportunity it offers to any student or young professional who sincerely sets out to improve his or her writing.

Teens and 20-somethings today do not have to become great writers to stand out anymore. They don’t even have to be very good. Producing merely competent, coherent, consistent prose will make them comparative Shakespeares and Hemingways and Austens among their peers.

Let the old lament this state of affairs; the young should exploit it! Take the time, take the care. Read good writing, and hone your own. Anyone can do it, and the few who try will be rewarded for it. In a generation of blind “illiterates,” even one-eyed writers will be kings.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #64 When Lincoln Wrote Badly on Purpose

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 11:19:40 GMT

Abraham Lincoln was the best writer to ever serve as president. His speeches and letters ring with the poetic rhythms of Shakespeare and the King James Bible. The moral clarity of his prose is part of how he led the United States through the Civil War — and earned his unique position in our history.

Why, then, is the most important document he ever penned a clunky, impenetrable, legalistic slog?

The operative sections of the Emancipation Proclamation comprise some 648 words organized into just seven sentences: 92 words a pop!

The literary artist who gave us “of the people, by the people, for the people” and “with malice toward none, with charity for all” also subjected us to this:

"the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith, represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority…”

What gives? Did Lincoln suddenly forget how to write? Of course not. The Emancipation Proclamation, like most of what Lincoln wrote, is brilliantly written — for its intended audience and purpose.

Lincoln’s most famous oratory — like the Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural — was written to inspire the moral courage and republican patriotism of everyday Americans. The Emancipation Proclamation, while serving a heroic moral cause, was specifically written to downplay its own moral heroism. It was couched as “a fit and necessary war measure” — a targeted, tactical move to undermine the Confederacy, not a world-historical triumph of human rights.

Lincoln needed the Proclamation to stand up in court. He needed it to not spook border states. In short, he needed the Emancipation Proclamation to come across as moderate, procedural, even “squishy.” Not because Lincoln himself was soft on slavery, but because he knew that in this case, boring, Jesuitical legalisms was the best way to achieve his ends.

Speechwriters in our hyperventilating political discourse today should go to school on Lincoln’s persuasive strategy here. Honest Abe was perfectly capable of making the Emancipation Proclamation a fiery polemic or a poetic symphony.

But he knew doing so would have undermined his purpose. Lincoln’s camouflaging of the Proclamation’s moral significance in inaccessible bureaucratic jargon is why it worked.

Lincoln succeeded in grand oratory and in stealth persuasion because he wrote for the audience and the purpose, not for his ego. Toning down one’s rhetoric for skeptical audiences is not a sign of weakness, but of political and literary skill.

There is nothing inherently wrong with pulling on heartstrings, or logical argument, or hot-blooded partisan attack, or gentle suasion. Writers should learn how to use all of them — and just as importantly, when .

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #63 Break Up Long Paragraphs

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 09:27:13 GMT

We’ve all been there. It’s late. You’re tired. You’re really tired of reading this thing. Maybe it’s a briefing paper for work. Maybe it’s a book for school or book club. Your eyelids are sagging, but you’re determined to power through and at least finish this section, this chapter. You’re not a quitter. You’re the guy or gal who does the reading . It’s a battle of wills between you and whoever wrote this thing, and you’re not about to lose it.

Then you turn a page. And you see the next page is One. Single. Block. Of. Text. No dialog. No sub-headers. If it’s a book, you look to the right-hand page, and it’s still that one interminable paragraph.

What happens? You close the book. You put down the brief. You close your eyes and mutter, “Not today Satan.”

So… don’t be that guy. Paragraph so as to make the world a better place. When you’re editing your work and you see you have drafted a 610-word paragraph that bestrides the page like a Colossus, break it up.

As Strunk and White put it, “Paragraphing calls for a good eye as well as a logical mind. Enormous blocks of print look formidable to readers, who are often reluctant to tackle them.”

Remember: reading is hard. A lot of good writing comes down to generosity, sympathy, and hospitality for your readers. One way to deliver those virtues is by sparing them the mephitic hellscape of overlong paragraphs.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #62 Slotkin’s Rope-a-Dope Response

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 10:27:45 GMT

The official Democratic response to President Donald Trump’s big speech before Congress last week offered the country not only a contrast of political visions, but of rhetorical strategies.

Trump’s address was defined by — and indeed, succeeded on — the strength of its concrete details: specific programs cut, specific heroes lauded, specific private-sector investments announced (See Nib #61 ).

Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin’s nationally televised speech immediately following Trump was, too. But not obviously.

Most of the specific details of the speech were biographical, in the first 100 words. After that, Slotkin glazed over issues with airbrushed generalities:

“We need to bring down the price of things we spend the most money on…”

“… change doesn’t need to be chaotic or make us less safe…”

“Today’s world is deeply interconnected…”

“We are a nation of strivers.”

The climax of Slotkin’s speech was almost a parody of homogenized political banalities. The two things we need to overcome today’s challenges, according to Slotkin and her speechwriters: “Engaged citizens and principled leaders.”

Woof.

On the other hand, Democrats know this poll-tested pap won’t move the needle. So what’s really going on here? The most likely answer is what boxers call the “rope-a-dope.”

That is, Slotkin’s — and by extension her party’s — plan here is to put up perfunctory, superficial resistance to bait Trump into overreaching or punching himself out. This is what Muhammed Ali famously did to George Foreman in 1974.

(Sen. Chuck Schumer’s announcement this week that he will help Republicans pass their stopgap spending bill reflects the exact same strategy.)

The success of the rope-a-dope strategy depends picking the right moment to pounce off the ropes and decisively attack the exhausted opponent. That’s what Ali did to Foreman in Round 8 of the Rumble in the Jungle, leading to his stunning knockout.

So when might Democrats spring from their shell and go on offense? The one concrete, specifically paragraph in Slotkin’s speech tells us:

“And one more thing: In order to pay for his plan, [President Trump] could very well come after your retirement – the Social Security, Medicare, and VA benefits you worked your whole life to earn. The President claims he won't, but Elon Musk just called Social Security ‘the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.'”

This is old school, lunch-pail Democrat “looking-out-for-the-little-guy” partisanship, not bespoke identity politics or green-energy fan fiction. It signals where Democrats — even now in their weakened position — think they have the high ground, and where they plan to set their trap.

Slotkin’s response to Trump was a case study in rope-a-dope, speechwriting. Anyone wondering where she and her party think they are on defense, and where they can go on offense, need only follow the details. Speechwriters take note: when on the attack, specify; when on defense, generalize.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #61 Trump’s Secret Speechwriting Weapon

Fri, 07 Mar 2025 09:31:40 GMT

President Donald Trump’s address to Congress Tuesday night was a masterclass in the power of specific detail.

To be clear, all the pundits praising the speech’s popularism — repeatedly putting Trump on the strong side of 70-30 issues — and criticizing congressional Democrats’ performative “resistance” are not wrong. But it was the text’s specifics — the details of the stories Trump told, the problems he identified, and the solutions he offered — that made his position seem so popular and his opponents so petty.

Characteristically, Trump opened the speech with some chest-thumping about his victory last November. Had this section touted vague exaggerations about “the greatest landslide in history,” Democrats’ eye-rolling might have answered. But when Trump pivoted from bragging to facts — we “won counties in our country, 2,700 to 525” — the opposition’s glowering only looked sour and petulant.

The same thing happened when Trump talked policy.

On the issue of trans athletes playing women and girls’ sports, Trump did not generalize about unfairness. He told the story of paralyzed volleyballer Payton McNabb. He talked about women losing a long-distance race by five hours and 14 minutes. He mentioned sports like boxing and weightlifting that vividly illustrate his point.

On the budget, Trump did not muse about “fiscal discipline.” Instead he offered a litany of specific programs he had defunded:

“$22 billion from H.H.S. to provide free housing and cars for illegal aliens…”
“$45 million for diversity, equity, and inclusion scholarships in Burma…”
“$1.5 million for voter confidence in Liberia…”

Insofar as Democrats protested cutting these dubious line-items, they looked out-of-touch or even corrupt instead of liberal or compassionate.

On the economy, Trump didn’t laud abstractions like “markets” and “entrepreneurism.” He cited specific investments from SoftBank ($200 billion), OpenAI and Oracle ($500 billion), and Apple ($500 billion).

Crossing one’s arms during those announcements would look like rooting against America.

For 90 minutes, Trump told fact-rich stories about victims of violent crime. About law enforcement heroes. He called out the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gangs by name. He celebrated a 12-year old cancer survivor and announced an aspiring cadet’s acceptance to West Point.

This was tremendous theater — but it was more than theater. In this era of deep distrust of political elites, Trump’s specific details broke through in ways that partisan talking points can’t anymore.

In a typical beltway food fight, insults and slogans — like those Democrats inscribed on their little whiteboards and paddles Tuesday night — can be effective. But when Trump counters with gripping stories, specific details about real problems, and verifiable truths about ongoing successes, those concrete facts are going to win every time.

Speechwriters everywhere should take note. Even for a master political communicator at the top of his game, specific detail - not showmanship, barbs, or lofty rhetoric — was Trump’s secret weapon Tuesday night.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #60 Very Significantly Unnecessary Words

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 11:35:29 GMT

This is one of those tips that will improve any kind of writing you do, from legal briefs to love poems: reconsider your intensifiers.

Intensifiers are adjectives and adverbs whose meaning boils down to “really a lot.” Words like very , significantly , quite , extremely , highly , exceptionally , really , absolutely , and utterly .

There’s nothing wrong with these words, exactly. But when combined with the nouns or verbs they modify, intensifiers often prolong sentences and muddy rather than clarify their meaning.

Consider the phrase “very smart person” — where the adverb very modifies the adjective smart , which modifies the noun person .

First , there are individual adjectives that already mean “very smart” without the adverb. Wise . Brilliant . Deep . Quick .

Second , note how different all those specific adjectives are from each other. Any one of them could more precisely render the writer’s meaning while also shortening the sentence by a word. (And all things being equal, remember, shorter is better .)

Third , there are nouns that communicate “smart person” without any adjective or adverb. Genius . Einstein . Sage . Prodigy . Guru . Polymath . Here again, each word is different, and would put a different spin on the idea and picture in the reader's head.

If in the editing process, you can turn a three-word phrase like “very smart person” into a single word like “prodigy,” chances are it’s worth considering. (Especially if the single word is a verb or a noun: see Nib #42 .)

This is not to say that writers should never use intensifiers. (As writer whose name I have forgotten once put it, “Of course you need the word ‘very,’ it means very.” ) Rather, it’s a reminder to writers to use intensifiers — like all other words — intentionally . When you come across intensifiers as you edit and revise your drafts (and you will!), just take a moment and see if there is a less-wordy, more concrete way to render the same thought.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #59 Précis Writing

Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:08:05 GMT

Not too long ago, young writers honed their craft by writing précis ( “pray-see” ) — brief synopses (in their own words) of longer works. Turn a given story or speech or essay into a single paragraph. Turn a long paragraph into a couple sentences. That kind of thing.

Précis are out of fashion today, along with most other exercises that actually help people learn to write. But in our era of social media character counts and “smart brevity,” the discipline of précis-writing is probably more valuable than ever.

After all, reading, analyzing, strategically condensing, and re-presenting content is more or less what professionals do. It’s the defining skillset for lawyers, PR reps, advertisers, agents, journalists, teachers, salespeople, consultants, lobbyists, government aides, etc.

Précis-writing can help writers of every age, skill-level, or academic or professional field. Very young professionals especially could not but benefit from spending 30 minutes a few days a week summarizing an oped or cable news rant in 100 words. Précis teach writers how to prioritize and simplify, how to edit language down to its essence. They force us to take ownership of the ideas we read about, and to restate them with concision and clarity.

In other words, précis will teach you — force you — to think and write like a writer. Give it a try!

And until next week… keep writing!

Nib #58 Two-Cent Press Releases

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 11:50:57 GMT

In almost every form of writing, concision trumps verbosity. (Of course, concision also trumps mere brevity, as noted in Nib #48 .)

Nowhere is concision’s value more evident than in press releases. Specifically, the quotes in press releases issued by Republican politicians.

Too many public figures and their press teams assume that the purpose of a press release is to ‘state their case’ on some issue. No. That’s what opeds and speeches and other, longer-form formats are for.

Press releases are only designed to add two cents into a public and media discussion. And two cents should usually mean two sentences.

There are three reasons why:

1. Reporters don’t really care what rando politicos say. Unless it’s the president, or a central figure in a breaking, headline-grabbing emergency (like a natural disaster or career-threatening scandal), you’re not getting more than one or two quotes into the media’s coverage of the story. So don’t waste your breath.

2. Message discipline. The more sentences you include in a press release quote, the more power journalists have over your boss’s message. For Republicans, surrendering this power to liberal-leaning reporters is malpractice. If a release quote is five sentences long, biased reporters can print the weakest of the five and make your boss look bad all while putatively practicing journalistic fairness. So don’t let reporters choose your message.

3. On social media, shorter is better anyway. Even if you ignore reporters altogether, pithier, punchier quotes make for better social media posts anyway. So don’t dilute your own message.

There is nothing wrong with including context and background information in a press release. Dates and places and bill numbers and cosponsors, and people the politician met with, etc. But that stuff can all come before the quote and after the quote.

Like all writing formats, press release quotes should be written intentionally and strategically. Who is the message for? What is its purpose? How best can it be delivered to that audience and achieve that end?

If you need more space to make a longer, more complex argument, that’s what essays and think tank panels and even books are for.

Most Republican press releases, most of the time, do best when they express their two cents in one or two sentences.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #57 Make Writing a Habit

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 11:23:13 GMT

If you want to make writing a strength, first make it a habit. Write every day — especially on the days you don’t want to. Be warned: there will be lots of those. Writers have to grind. “Just sit down at your typewriter and bleed,” Ernest Hemingway said.

It’s no picnic. But — as with other unpleasant habits like exercise and eating well — consistency compounds.

Renowned poet and critic Dana Gioia ( who, by the by, you should read! ) recently posted a YouTube short about his own nightly writing habit. Every night, Gioia writes for 90 minutes, with a goal of producing “one good paragraph” of prose or “one good line” of poetry.

That seems like a paltry target. It’s not:

“If you actually write a good paragraph every night, at the end of the month, you’ll have 30 good paragraphs. Which is to say you’ll have a whole article. You’ll have an essay. You’ll have a short story. You do that 12 months of the year, you have a book. Writing for 90 minutes a day, doing it in a disciplined way, can make you as productive as many full-time writers.”

Remember Lesson Zero ( Nib #3 ): writing is hard. Writing whole a book can seem almost impossible. So don’t write a book. Write a paragraph today. Tomorrow, write another. And the next day. And before long, it’ll become a habit. You’ll be someone who writes every day. You know what we call people who do that?

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #56 No One Cares What You Think

Fri, 31 Jan 2025 11:32:37 GMT

This is of the harshest but most essential lessons young writers must learn to become better, more persuasive and creative writers: No one cares what you think.

Learning this lesson in school is almost impossible. For our first 15 years as writers, our audiences — our teachers — are literally paid to closely read everything we write. So we grow up intuiting that our authorship as such makes something worth reading.

This is not the case after graduation. No one outside your closest circle of friends and family will ever read your stuff just ‘cuz. They will only read what is worth their time to read. People read for themselves, not for authors’ sakes. (Don’t believe me? Think for a moment how you ruthlessly delete 98% of your emails mere seconds after receiving them.)

Good writers, then, strive to make their compositions good to read: informative, interesting, entertaining, and always clear. Once a writer overcomes this psychological hurdle — no one cares what I think — the actual work of writing comes into much sharper focus.

You’ll start to see your writing through the eyes of your audience. All of a sudden, evidence is not there simply to support your argument, but to convince your reader. Word choice and phrasing and cadence don’t just express your inner thoughts; they capture your audience. Paragraphing becomes less about textual organization and more about reader momentum.

Things like the passive voice, overwriting, and overlong sentences become easier to spot and correct. You become better at identifying and avoiding digressions. You stop showing off. You quit trying to write and start trying to connect and inform and frame and persuade — which is what we really mean by good writing in the first place.

Authorial humility is a paradoxical superpower. The sooner you accept your readers’ indifference to your opinions, the better you’ll be at convincing them your opinions are right.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #55 Trump’s Aggressive Inaugural Humility

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 12:55:46 GMT

In political debate, paraphrasing Carl Sandburg:

“When public opinion is against you, argue the policy. If the policy is against you, argue public opinion. If public opinion and policy are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.”

But what if public opinion and the policy merits are with you? How should you argue then? Humbly .

That is the lesson writers should take from President Donald Trump’s second inaugural address. Trump, famous for his swaggering, insult-comic oratorical style just gave an object lesson in the power of rhetorical humility.

The heart of the speech was litany of executive orders Trump promised would launch “a revolution of common sense” and “a thrilling new era of national success.” Policy specificity is an odd choice for an inaugural address, especially for a president not known for wonkery.

So why make the choice? Because Trump’s agenda is the most popular, unifying thing about his second presidency.

Look closely at Trump’s litany. The executive orders cover the border, inflation and the economy, free speech and the rule of law, and global peacemaking. Those are the issues that won him the election. However polarizing Trump’s brash personality can be, the agenda he laid out in his inaugural address is utterly uncontroversial.

Which was the point.

For this president, in this moment, announcing popular, unifying policy details in his inaugural address was a double-edged sword. First, it allowed Trump to rally the large, multi-racial, middle-class coalition he leads and through which he hopes to govern. And second, it trapped congressional Democrats on the horns of a dilemma.

By offering a radically reasonable agenda as the answer to the country’s problems, Trump is forcing Democrats to choose between their partisan comfort-zone and their political self-interest. This term, Trump is saying, being “Never Trump” will mean “resisting” mainstream reforms that Democrats’ own voters support.

(So far, the strategy is working. Dozens of congressional Democrats already bucked their leaders to help Republicans pass a popular, illegal-immigrant crime bill. Now they are reportedly divided over a House bill condemning anti-Semitism at the International Criminal Court.)

Trump could have used his inaugural address to spike the football and rub his comeback in his critics’ faces. But that would have given the Left something other than policy to oppose. With the politics and the policy merits already on his side, Trump banging on the table would only have helped Democrats.

Instead, Trump and his speechwriters argued humbly for popular ideas — keeping his agenda front and center — and were rewarded with the best week of his political career.

The lesson? When you have the high ground, humility is aggression.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #54 Joe Biden's Un-Fond Farewell

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 13:37:35 GMT

There were a thousand things wrong with President Joe Biden's biting, pharisaic Farewell Address. And a thousand lessons speechwriters can take from it.

But the Nib will only take up the speech's biggest unforced error: how badly it missed the moment.

You wouldn't know it from listening to the president Wednesday night, but Joe Biden wasn't on the ballot in November. Officially, he left office on his own terms. By rights, this ought to have been the retirement speech of a well-liked (by modern standards) elder statesman.

It could have been warm and gracious, full of paeans to bipartisanship and the American Dream. That kind of speech would have fit with its Oval Office setting -- dignified and intimate.

There are traces of this kind of speech in the text: the extended metaphor about the Statue of Liberty, the poignant autobiographical details, and even the short litany of his administration's accomplishments.

The American people would have appreciated that speech, if it wasn't too long. But the speech the president delivered wasn't really for the American people. It was for Biden and his inner circle. To vindicate. To settle scores. The whole thing came across like a stump speech for an imaginary do-over re-election campaign Biden is apparently running in his head.

The caustic tone and content shrunk the president. It made his halting delivery seem shambling instead of grandfatherly. It also invited pointed rebuttal, a strange choice for a president leaving office with a 36% approval rating.

Sections of the speech were pure cringe. Blaming the Los Angeles fires on climate change? Decrying billionaires' political influence after giving George Soros a presidential medal? Warning about the dangers of free speech?

No doubt some partisans ate it up. But presidential farewells shouldn't be partisan. They are a conspicuously non-partisan civic ritual. They're about burying hatchets, turning pages, and coming together. They are supposed to rise above personal grievances and partisan politics, and by example encourage the country to do that same.

That's what the moment demanded. And Biden was perfectly capable of meeting it. Better speechwriters would have given him the chance.

The lesson for speechwriters: meet the moment, don't try to hijack it.

Until next week... keep writing!

Nib #53 — John Thune and the 5% Rule

Fri, 10 Jan 2025 13:54:49 GMT

With the new Congress gaveled in and a new Administration coming to town, it’s Big Speech Season in the nation’s capital! So this ‘winter of content,’ we’ll be mining leaders’ opening arguments for Nibs, starting with the maiden speech of newly minted Senate Majority Leader, John Thune.

The speech illustrates one of the most important lessons of modern rhetoric and speechwriting: the 5% Rule.

The hard truth is that for most speeches, only about 5% of it really matters. Occasionally it’s one or two good lines, maybe an attack. Usually it’s a statement of policy. The rest of the speech is just the frame, which adds value mostly by not being distractingly bad.

In Thune’s case, the 95% was boilerplate: throat clearing about current events, a welcome to new Senators, a paean to the Constitution, a laundry list of Republican policy goals, some clichés about growing up in a small town, and thank yous to loved ones.

Yet despite this banal content and Thune’s unexceptional oratorical skills, it was a really effective speech. Why?

Because of his 5%:

“Unfortunately, today there are a lot of people out there who would like to see the Senate turn into a copy of the House of Representatives. That, Mr. President, is not what our Founders intended – or what our country needs. And one of my priorities as leader will be to ensure that the Senate stays the Senate. That means preserving the legislative filibuster.”

Compared to the rest of the speech, this passage crackles with dash and moral courage. It’s a barbed shot at radical “reformers” on the Right and Left who dislike the Senate’s super-majoritarian nature. It’s a clear statement of purpose and principle.

Note, too, how the force of the sentiment even charges Thune’s words with rhetorical energy. That “the Senate stays the Senate” bit was the best line in the speech. And the newsiest, too! Media outlets around the country covering Thune’s accession not only mentioned his filibuster defense in their stories, but cited it in their headlines (a comms coup for Team Thune).

This isn’t a coincidence. When a leader has something to say , he tends to say it — and his writers tend to write it — with a little more snap and spark.

Young politicos — weaned on The West Wing — often assume that soaring poetry is what gives speeches their power. It’s almost never the case. Especially today, when politicians can’t perform like Daniel Webster or Martin Luther King, good speeches - like Thune’s last week — draw their strength from their substance.

What leaders have to say usually matters more than how they say it. And the how (the word choice, the cadence, the punchiness) usually improves in direct proportion to the clarity of the message.

The lesson to speechwriters: focus on that 5% — the message, the language, the politics, the tone, the audience. Get that right, and the other 95% will fall into place.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #52 — Congressional Speechwriting Pt. I: Congressman Who?

Fri, 03 Jan 2025 12:54:32 GMT

With the new Congress gaveling in today, a new class congressional speechwriters will soon be trying their hands at the old Mr. Speaker, comma, I rise in dot dot dot. So intermittently over the next few months, the Nib will try to help young staffers make congressional speeches great again.

Like most valuable writing advice, the best speechwriting tips are less about technical skills and more about habits of mind. Like this hard truth:

Congressmen aren’t all that.

One of the biggest mistakes congressional speechwriters make is assuming that their bosses are as central to their audiences’ lives as they are to their own. As if millions of people wake up in the morning desperately wondering what Rep. Smith thinks about H1-B visas or net neutrality.

Except for two or three senior party leaders, members of Congress are anonymous and seen as interchangeable, if not totally irrelevant. (If you doubt this, ask yourself how much you would care if a rando Midwestern congresswoman tomorrow announced she was for a flat tax or Medicare for All.)

Embracing this humbling — and deeply American — fact is the first step toward improving congressional oratory. Because it impels speechwriters to focus on their speeches rather than on the politicians reading them.

That Congressman Jones supports a carbon tax or a border wall is not significant. Why he supports it, on the other hand, could be. It’s the why — the background, the evidentiary record, the analysis — that has the power to persuade.

At the end of the speech, you want the audience thinking, “Good point,” not “Congressman who?”

Hill speechwriters, then, should eschew both rhetorical platitudes (“America deserves better” or “wrong side of history”) and pretensions to authority (“Let us…” or “This isn’t who we are”). Instead, they should make good arguments — tight, cogent, and substantive — and let their speeches’ beauty come from their clarity and concision, not any bumptious affectations.

The one thing all congressional speeches have in common is that no matter who the speaker is, the audience is actually his or her boss. Good congressional speeches build from the humbling fact of public service up, rather than from assumed VIP status down.

Happy New Year. Happy new Congress.

And until next week… keep writing!

Nib #51 — Writer’s Block is All in Your Head

Fri, 27 Dec 2024 14:15:43 GMT

There is lots of good advice out there about overcoming writer’s block.

If you’re stuck, move to a different room. Write longhand instead of typing. Read for a while. (This one I strongly endorse, especially reading weird, modernist poetry. It resets the linear, logical mind very well.) Copy out a page from a book you like. Go for a walk.

All of these suggestions work for at least some writers, at least some of the time.

But the important thing to understand about Writer’s Block is that it’s all in your head. It’s not a disease or a bad habit or a moral failing. It’s mostly a symptom of distraction. Writer’s Block is what happens when a writer thinks about writing, rather than about what he or she needs to write.

Notice, we don’t really get Talker’s Block. In conversation, our audience is so close by, so concrete, so responsive and stimulative that we focus on them . We are too busy communicating to think about how to communicate.

It’s the same with writing. We tend to get blocked when we ask ourselves, “How do I want to put this?” or “What am I trying to say?” Those questions draw our minds inward. Once on that path, it’s only a matter of time before we face truly toxic questions like, “Why can’t I do this?”

Self-analysis is the creativity killer.

If Writer’s Block is in your head, then the solution is to get out of your head . Focus on the audience. Or the characters in your story, or the points in your argument. Don’t think about what you are trying to say (that’s what editing is for anyway). Think instead about what the audience needs to hear to achieve its goal.

Why should voters support your border security proposal? How would students do better under your school reform plan? How will men benefit from buying your innovative new brand of razor? How would the heroine of your novel escape from her enemy’s trap?

Think about what your story, your essay, or your audience needs, and the words will come. In writing, as in most areas of life, the quickest route to success is to stop thinking about yourself.

Happy Christmas, and until next week… Keep writing!

Nib #50 — Dickens’ "Show, Don’t Tell" Masterclass

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 11:41:41 GMT

“Show, don’t tell” is one of those literary chestnuts that most writers have heard, but may not quite understand.

So this week - this week in particular! — let’s consider the maxim in the context of Charles Dickens’ classic, A Christmas Carol.

Everyone knows the story is about wicked old Ebeneezer Scrooge. Dickens says as much on page 2: “Scrooge. A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner.”

This is telling .

It’s not terrible, as exaggerated adjective runs go. (It’s Dickens, after all, and there are some great word choices in there.) But note how weak and thin these descriptions are. Think the blubbering mess you are at the end of A Christmas Carol — none of Dickens’ emotional payoff is sown here.

Fast forward a few pages, and see how brilliantly Dickens shows us this character.

Consider Scrooge’s Stave 1 interview with his nephew Fred. We’re so desensitized to the “Bah humbug” bit that it’s easy to overlook. But two other moments remain as achingly evocative this December as they were when the story was first published.

When Fred asks Scrooge why he won’t come to Christmas dinner, Scrooge responds:

“Why did you get married?”

Go read the passage. (Indeed, read the whole book, every December!) It’s an abrupt, weird transition. Scrooge changed the subject in the middle of the conversation, like a petulant child. Almost as if he’s jealous of Fred’s marriage, or secretly preoccupied with the subject. We don’t know it yet, on page seven of the book, but this is the first inkling of Scrooge’s real self. He’s wounded, not evil.

Consider the end of the same scene, when Scrooge is trying to shoo Fred from the office:

“Good afternoon,” said Scrooge.

“I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?”

“Good afternoon,” said Scrooge.

“I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I’ll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So A Merry Christmas, uncle!”

“Good afternoon!” said Scrooge.

“And A Happy New Year!”

“Good afternoon!” said Scrooge.

Again, it’s easy to miss. But Scrooge never makes a case against Christmas. It’s all empty scorn (“Bah!”). He can’t even explain why he won’t come to dinner — because deep down, even he knows there is no good reason. He’s not a cold, calculating villain. He’s just a kid throwing a tantrum.

Or consider the moment in Stave 2 when Scrooge explains Old Fezziwig to the Ghost of Christmas Past:

“It isn’t that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count ’em up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”

He felt the Spirit’s glance, and stopped.

“What is the matter?” asked the Ghost.

“Nothing particular,” said Scrooge.

“Something, I think?” the Ghost insisted.

“No,” said Scrooge, “No. I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now. That’s all.”

No adjectives. No description of anyone’s body language or facial expressions or tone of voice. But we can feel Scrooge’s conscience pangs, his longing to be more than the man he has become.

This is the real game — for fiction and non-fiction writers alike. Don’t tell your readers what to think. Show them the truth — of your story, your argument, your idea — such that you don’t have to.

Happy Christmas. God bless us everyone.

And until next week… Keep writing!

Nib #49 — Kidnap Your Darlings

Fri, 13 Dec 2024 12:21:24 GMT

Most writers have heard the graphic editing advice, often attributed to William Faulkner, “Murder your darlings."

It’s a great line because we’ve all been there. We coin a phrase or write a killer sentence… and we know it. The words’ imagery, beauty, or force dazzles us. We can’t wait to publish it.

But as we revise the first draft, and then the second, a chilling realization emerges: it doesn’t fit . That perfect line proves to be off-topic, inapt, or part of a larger section you know you should scrap.

We know what we have to do. But a voice in our heads whispers: Keep it. It’s too good to cut.

Then we start editing around the darling we don’t want to murder. We preserve the sentence even though it doesn’t work. We try to save the whole extraneous paragraph just to keep the punchline. We even try adding superfluous text around it like flying buttresses, to save the collapsing prose. And all of a sudden, we’re not only wasting time — we’re making the text worse.

Emotional attachment from one’s writing is hard to overcome, hence the violent metaphor. But it’s essential. The good news, you don’t actually have to murder your darlings.

You can just kidnap them.

Copywriters all keep what they call “dump files” or “swipe files” — documents (or notebooks, back when) full of ideas for other projects that didn’t pan out. They don’t pitch them — they save them, for use later on. All writers can adopt this practice.

A good idea — for a character or plot twist, a phrase or metaphor, example or argument or description — is no less good just because it doesn’t fit the thing you’re writing today .

Contra Faulkner, never murder your darlings . Kidnap them. Save them. Collect them. Keep them somewhere you can come back to — for repurposing. For inspiration. Or even just to remind a blocked, discouraged, despairing future you that yes, you can do this — and here is the proof.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #48 — Concision

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 11:28:06 GMT

One of the most important qualities of good writing — second, perhaps, only to clarity — is concision. Writers should strive to pack as much information as they can — to cover as much ground, as it were — per word.

Concision is distinct from brevity. Brevity means shortness as such — short sentences, short paragraphs, short compositions. Concision, on the other hand, refers to economy of language — speed and efficiency, conveying ideas in as few words as is necessary.

Think of it this way: a 300-word memo is not necessarily better than a 1,000-word memo. But if it clearly communicates everything the 1,000-word memo does, the 300-word memo is almost certainly better.

Concision saves time and reduces confusion. It also spurs writers toward eloquence.

Consider the little passages below. Try to ignore their familiarity and poetic beauty, and consider instead just how much information — identities, ideas, images, emotions — they communicate in a few words:

“Hope is the thing with feathers — That perches in the soul…”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”

“… government of the people, by the people, for the people…”

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Think about how many sentences — paragraphs! — it would take you to convey the fullness of those thoughts in your own words.

That’s the power of concision. It charges writing the way reducing intensifies a sauce, or eliminating wasted motion gives an athlete more speed and power. The fewer words used expressing a thought, the more potent each word — and the overall composition — becomes.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #47 — 5 Writing Tips from C.S. Lewis

Fri, 29 Nov 2024 14:45:52 GMT

What with all the food coma, Black Friday shopping, and family-time to catch up on today, this week’s Nib is going to be even nibbier than usual.

To wit, five writing tips from one of the O.G. Inklings, C.S. Lewis, offered in response to a letter from a young writer in the summer of 1956. Enjoy:

1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.

2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.

3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”

4. In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the things you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us the thing is “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers “Please, will you do my job for me.”

5. Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Happy Thanksgiving, and until next week… keep writing!

Nib #46 — Of Course You Can Start a Sentence with And or But

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 13:42:27 GMT

One of the strangest obstacles adults face as they try to improve their writing is the nonsense they were taught in middle school.

“Never split infinitives.” “Never use contractions.” “Never end a sentence in a preposition.”

And worst of all: “Never start a sentence with and or but.”

Guys, this is not a rule. It’s not even a guideline. It’s just wrong.

Even the most Puritanical grammarian allows for linking independent clauses with coordinating conjunctions (IC, cc IC), like:

“Superman has super powers, but Batman does not.”

Well, what in the name of Strunk and White is the difference between that and:

“Superman has super powers. But Batman does not.”

There is no difference. It’s the exact same thoughts, the exact same words, expressed in the exact same independent clauses.

When you think about it as a matter of communication and clarity — instead of Pharisaical pedantry — there are lots of reasons a writer might want to start a sentence with a conjunction.

Maybe a sentence is too long, so the writer needs to break it up in the interests of readability. Maybe the writing’s rhythm demands an extra beat, an extra syllable, between two thoughts. Maybe a writer wants to emphasize the specific connection between two thoughts and so gives it pride of place and a capital letter.

Every human conversation more than a few minutes long features sentences starting with conjunctions . Shakespeare wrote them. So did the authors of the Bible, hundreds of times! And if it’s good enough for God …

The bottom line is that writing is hard enough without having to jump through make-believe hoops. Of course you can start sentences with and and but . And sometimes you should!

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #45 — Resumé Writing Tips

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 17:03:04 GMT

With so many young Washingtonians vaulting into the job market this month, here are the Nib’s Top Five Resumé-Writing Tips (plus a bonus tip at the end!):

1. Revise Your Resumé Every Time You Send It

Don’t have one, static resumé that you blindly shoot off every time you hear about an open position. Rather, re-tailor your resume for each opportunity.

Different offices prioritize different things. If one is looking for policy experience, project management, academic credentials, published writing, or whatever else, rework your resume to emphasize that quality.

2. Nail Your Verbs

Verbs are the most important words in your resumé, so get them right. Make them active, specific, and vivid. Avoid vague, directional verbs like engaged or impacted or effected . Prefer direct, concrete verbs like produced or spearheaded or partnered or delivered .

3. Use Specific Details

Most job descriptions sound similar because, in general, most jobs are similar. Specific details are differentiators — and resumés that communicate them stand out.

Instead of saying “assisted in drafting constituent letters” say “drafted 79 constituent letters on issues ranging from school choice to fracking.” If you helped write bills or organize hearings, name one well-suited to the position you’re applying for.

Those details are more interesting than another line that goes “interfaced with staff to coordinate and implem zzzzzzz… ”

4. Be Concise

Resumés should generally be one page long, even if only to signal one’s humility and discipline. No padding; no overwriting.

Remember, the people reading your resume would be superior to you in the office if you got the job. If your resumé comes across as self-aggrandizing, they might reasonably assume you’ll be a pain to manage.

5. Proofread Your Resume Out Loud

As always, read your drafts out loud. It’s the most valuable writing tip anyone can ever teach or learn. Typos on a resumé are obviously a red flag. But reading aloud will also help with the four other tips listed above: audience targeting, verb choice, specificity, and concision. The ear always hears what the eye doesn’t see.

Bonus!

Attentive readers might notice that the five tips above are not only applicable to resumé-writing, but to all writing formats, from love letters to random notes. Use them liberally, especially all you conservative job-seekers descending on D.C.!

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #44 — What to Read to Become a Better Writer

Fri, 08 Nov 2024 13:11:39 GMT

One of the most common questions I get from students and young professionals is, “What should I read to become a better writer?”

The short answer is everything . But of course that’s no fun.

So, here are few thoughts on Reading To Improve Your Writing :

1. Read old things. The classics are classics for a reason. The U.S. education deprives students of them, so must of us have to make up for as adults. If you haven’t read the ancient epics — the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid — you should probably start there.

2. Read poetry. Another of modern education’s blindspots, poetry is writing at its most vivid and trenchant. Its concision and imagery, shorn of clutter and distraction, show what language can do when wielded with enough care and thought. (If you’re not sure where to start, Homer, Shakespeare, Dickinson, Eliot, and Frost will keep you busy for a while.)

3. Read out loud. Language is meant for the ear, not the eye. Writing involves more than vocabulary and syntax. Rhythm, flow, imagery, tension and other qualities of good writing are most easily learned by hearing how it’s done.

4. Read the King James Bible . Even Catholics who think it’s missing a few books cannot but grow — mind and soul — in the KJV’s pages. It’s the book most responsible for shaping American culture and honing the English language into the world-conquering force it has become.

5. Read different writers. Reading Hemingway and Wodehouse is fun. Reading Faulkner or Joyce, less so. But reading different kinds of writers — seeing how each tackles different situations, character types, action and introspection — will help you learn how to do it in your voice.

6. Read different subjects. The human brain is the only computer that runs faster them more information you put in it. So, fill it with all kinds of stuff, not just content immediately relevant to your daily life. What do you know about farming? Or quantum mechanics? Or high finance? Or Uruguay? Or Martin Van Buren? Or bluegrass music? Good writing comes from good thinking — new and novel combinations and syntheses of ideas. The more stuff you know, the more of those connections you’ll be able to make, and the more inventive and compelling your writing can be.

7. Read Jane Austen. No other writer condenses more moral or psychological insight in such lively prose. It’s like the Bible, with jokes.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #43 — “This Sentence Has Five Words.”

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 11:41:19 GMT

One of the best writing tips the Nib has ever seen comes from the late author Gary Provost , who would have turned 80 this month.

It’s called “This sentence has five words.” And it’s famous for a reason. In just 160 words, Provost covers key composition principles like variety, writing-for-the-ear, audience empathy, and sentence structure. Check it out:

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It's like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety.

"Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals—sounds that say listen to this, it is important.

“So write with a combination of short, medium, and long sentences. Create a sound that pleases the reader's ear. Don't just write words. Write music.”

On this weekend of All Saints and All Souls Days, Inkling remembers Gary Provost the best way a writer can be remembered: with a quick prayer, and by re-reading his best stuff.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #42 — Write with Verbs and Nouns

Fri, 25 Oct 2024 10:40:46 GMT

Why do writing instructors — from Strunk & White on down — always urge students to prioritize verbs and nouns over the other parts of speech?

Because verbs and nouns are real in a way that the other parts of speech are not. They are specific and tangible, like bricks. The other parts of speech are like mortar — essential, but only for holding the bricks together.

If you looked at a brick wall that was 50 percent mortar — half gray and only half red — you would question its structural integrity. That’s usually how clunky writing is: too many adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions. And not because of some literary, artistic choice, but because the sentences are loose and indirect.

Two-word sentences are bracing in their clarity and force:

Enemies prowl. Jesus wept. I do.

It’s not a coincidence that you can only make such sentences out of nouns and verbs. ( “The very” or “If purple” don’t make sense.) It’s also not a coincidence that those two-word sentences lose their power when cluttered up with unnecessary modifiers:

If “Jesus wept” were instead, “When the sad news finally reached the gentle and loving Jesus, he wept mournfully,” it would not be one of the Bible’s most famous verses.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #041 — Benefits, not Features

Fri, 18 Oct 2024 12:10:38 GMT

Persuasive writing is all about communicating the value of your idea to your audience.

That’s the insight behind one of copywriting’s many mantras: “Benefits, not Features.” That is, don’t write about why a product or service is good or interesting or ingenious. Instead, focus on how it will help the customer .

The same principle applies to writing about politics and policy. No one is going to support your plan to reform the veterans health system or Pentagon procurement programs until they believe it will help them .

Political debates are not like school, where the audience — the teacher — was literally paid to read and care about what you wrote. In the real world, where people mostly ignore uninteresting debates, the job of the staffer, the activist, or the lobbyist is to make their debates interesting. And not in some abstract, Platonic sense, but interesting specifically to their targeted audience.

Why will higher or lower taxes help them? Why will more or less spending on a certain social program help them? Why will military intervention or nonintervention help them?

This is not a warning against wonkery. Arguments designed to persuade policy experts should be wonky, because that’s how to reach that audience. Just as arguments targeting ideologues, donors, politicians, young people, retirees, or journalists should cater to each group’s particular interests, identities, and opinions.

So next time you have to write a speech, letter, memo or oped about a bill or amendment, think less about why your boss voted Yea or Nay and think more about why the boss’s position helps your audience.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #040 — Pete Rose and Rhetorical Charity

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 11:24:42 GMT

Nib #040 — Pete Rose and Rhetorical Charity

There are good reasons for people to disagree with you.

This seems obvious in the abstract. But it’s one of the hardest lessons for young writers to learn — especially amidst today’s toxic national discourse. The good news is, rhetorical charity is not just a more virtuous approach to writing — it’s much more effective.

Consider the case of Pete Rose and the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Rose was the Cincinnati Reds legend banned for life from Major League Baseball for gambling on games (including Reds games) as a player and manager. The ban left Rose ineligible for Cooperstown.

Ever since, Rose’s Hall of Fame candidacy has been the source of endless, often heated, debate. Rose’s death last week (RIP) revived the argument — and the passion it elicits from both sides.

The arguments boil down to:

“Rose is the all-time hits leader. Put him in.”

And…

“He disgraced the game (and lied about it for decades). Keep him out.”

Neither argument is crazy, however many rants they inspire. But each is also a bit superficial.

To people who care about the integrity of sports, Rose’s gambling on games is really bad. Rose advocates chanting “Hit King! Hit King!” does not answer that legitimate concern.

In the same way, that gambling businesses are now MLB corporate partners undermines of League’s moral authority.

The closer you look, the more interesting and persuasive potential arguments become.

Shouldn’t Rose’s death open the door to a reassessment of his “lifetime” ban?

What does Rose’s pattern of not betting on the Reds when a certain mediocre pitcher was on the mound do to the pro-Rose talking point that he only ever bet on his team to win ?

Grappling with these kinds of questions would help either side break through the “Tastes Great! Less Filling!” monotony.

To really change readers’ minds, writers need to answer the other side’s best arguments. Learning how to do so — with empathy, justice, and generosity — will make you a better advocate, a better writer, and ultimately a better person.

Until next week… Keep writing!

Nib #39 — The Rule of 'That'

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 11:17:49 GMT

A quick Nib this week on a teeny, tiny little tip to streamline your writing, one word at a time. Call it the Rule of That:

Any time you use the word ‘that’ in a sentence, take a moment to read the sentence without the ‘that.’ If the sentence still means the same thing, omit the ‘that.’

So,

“Thank you for the gift that you sent.”

…becomes…

“Thank you for the gift you sent.”

And,

“Jack knew that Jill loved basketball”

… becomes …

“Jack knew Jill loved basketball.”

The Rule of That may not change your life. But it will help you shave a few extraneous words from your prose -- or at least one. And isn’t that what life is all about?

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #38 — How to Find the Right 'Tone'

Fri, 27 Sep 2024 09:27:22 GMT

One of the most common questions I hear from young writers is about tone .

How, they ask, should a given piece of writing sound on the page? Light or grave? Breezy or direct? Informative or persuasive? Submissive or dominant?

The short answer is, “It depends.” Importantly, though, it doesn’t depend on the writer . It should depend on the writer’s audience and the writer’s goal.

Imagine you’re in a great mood one day and your phone rings, and it’s a friend telling you her dog died suddenly. The tone of your speech will immediately, unconsciously, conform to the needs of the moment. You’ll be — and sound — sympathetic, supportive, and deferential. You’ll listen rather than talk. You’ll offer to help. You’ll look out for appropriate opportunities to offer some gentle cheering up.

This is one of the thousand ways writers do well to write more like they talk. Only sociopaths have one tone. Everyone else adjusts theirs, constantly, to the communicative needs of the moment. That’s what writers should do, too.

The question to ask is not, “What tone should this composition take?” Rather, think strategically and begin with the end in mind: “What tone will most effectively win this audience on this point?”

Sometimes it will be breezy. Sometimes direct. Sometimes gentle, sometimes curt. Sometimes humorous, sometimes officious.

Just as film directors use different camera lenses to create different cinematic effects for different kinds of scenes, so writers use different tones to communicate different messages to different audiences.

If you’re ever stuck, ignore for a moment you’re writing. Take a moment and think about what you would say, and how you would say it, if your audience were right there in the room with you.

The trick is not to fixate on what you should say , but what the audience needs to hear . Write like that, and you’ll be surprised how quickly the correct tone presents itself.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #37 — Don’t “Let us…”

Fri, 20 Sep 2024 11:58:31 GMT

Here’s a Nib for all you speechwriters and speech-givers out there — which is all of us at some point in our lives. Are you ready? Here it is.

Don’t start sentences with, “Let us…”

“Let us…” is one of the speechy-est of all speechy expressions. It’s the kind of thing that sounds like the kind of thing you hear in important speeches (which is to say, John F. Kennedy used it a lot).

But hold on, you might say! Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, John Paul II, and Winston Churchill all used “Let us…” from time to time. And if it’s good enough for the greatest orators of the age, why not for everyday congressman or school board member or town hall speakers?

First, because chances are they are not among the great orators of the age — speechy rhetoric is hard to pull off. Second, and more importantly, because “Let us…” is an assertion of deep, earned leadership and trust. It’s a rhetorical technique of speaking for rather than appealing to one’s audience.

When Dr. King said “Let us…” to civil rights activists, his own part in that “us” was acutely, heroically authentic. And President Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural — “let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds” — not only spoke for the ravaged Union he represented, but conspicuously included the conquered southern states in its “us.”

Of course, there are more ways to earn trust than leading millions of people through harrowing crusades. We all know beloved institutional leaders — clerics or business executives or headmasters or coaches — who have earned it over many years of devoted, sacrificial service.

Without that kind of trust, “Let us…” comes across as presumptuous and cringe. Imagine being a lifelong employee at Apple Computers, dating back to its Golden Age, how different “Let us…” might sound coming from Steve Jobs vs. Tim Cook. Just think about how you would receive “Let us…” from a politician you dislike in behalf of a cause you oppose.

In our increasingly divided and trust-deprived culture, would-be leaders should be submitting ideas to their audience rather presuming to speak for them.

Let us all help stop orators from claiming trust they have not earned.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #36 — Hide the Poetry in the Alpo

Fri, 13 Sep 2024 10:16:34 GMT

You know the trick of getting a dog to take medicine by hiding the pill in his food?

There is a lesson in that for writers (like me!) with a weakness for quoting poetry, inspirational adages, and the words of Great Men in their work.

Don’t get me wrong. People cite the Bible and Shakespeare and Nelson Mandela and Abraham Lincoln for a reason. Good quotes can add depth, humor, or force to any piece of writing. It’s a club every writer needs in his or her bag.

On the other hand, gonging open a sentence with, “As the poet Maya Angelou once wrote…” or “In the words of Winston Churchill…” risks breaking the delicate mental communion between writer and audience.

Many a good speech, oped, and academic paper has been derailed by an inapt, ostentatious cameo from Whitman, Orwell, or the Psalms.

So how can a writer know whether a given quote adds or detracts from his draft?

Here is a three-part test to help decide.

First, does the quote contribute to the argument or story you’re writing? Is it “on the way” or more of a detour?

Second, can the quote be grafted seamlessly into your text, or does it require extra explanation and context? The more you’re writing about the quote, the more the quote needs to be worth it.

Third — and this is often the hardest part — are you using the quote to persuade and clarify, or just to impress? If it’s the latter, murder that darling.

The goal here is not to excise quotes from your writing, but to avoid “ quotiness .” Don’t draw attention to your quotes unless you’re sure it serves the larger goal of the piece. Instead, weave the quotes into your arguments, stories, and reports so naturally and subtly that the readers — happily concentrating on the content of your writing — hardly notice.

Hide the poetry in the alpo.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #35 — Be a “Taker-Outer”

Fri, 06 Sep 2024 10:48:38 GMT

When it comes to editing, do yourself a favor: be a “taker-outer” and not a “putter-inner.” Here’s how.

Step one is pre-writing. Before you do anything else, make a plan of everything you want to say. Every argument, every statistic, every point, analogy, and anecdote.

Step two is including all of that content in your first draft — no matter how clunky or disorganized. Leave nothing out. This may make your first draft overlong. But that’s okay.

So long as the draft includes everything you want to say, you put yourself ahead of the game. Because then your editing process will be less about “re-writing” (which is hard) and more about de-cluttering (which is easier).

A good, content-comprehensive first draft allows writers to approach the editing and revision process the way Michelangelo approached sculpting:

“The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”

That’s what editing is at its best: chiseling away the superfluous material until all that’s left is the tight, compelling composition you meant to write all along.

Take time in your pre-writing and drafting process to get everything you know you need in there. Then “all that’s left” is taking out what you don’t.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #34 — Sean Connery and The Iron Law of Outlining

Fri, 30 Aug 2024 11:07:12 GMT

There are as many ways to outline a planned piece of writing as there are writers. There’s the traditional Harvard format. Visual techniques like mind maps and flow charts. Loosey-goosey free-writing brain dumps. Even plain old lists. They all work.

So however you’re most comfortable mapping out your arguments and analyses, that’s how you should. There’s just one absolute and inexorable caveat, the Iron Law of Outlining: Write it down.

Most writers learn the Iron Law the hard way. Late at night, hours into a draft, they realize they forgot to include a key point they meant to make. And now there’s no easy place to air-drop it in. So they face the nightmare dilemma: whether to scrap a bad draft and start over or risk disfiguring Frankenstein-style surgery that may only make it worse.

To avoid this literary Sophie’s Choice, don’t just make a plan. Write it down. In outlining, as in most things, listen to Sean Connery:

If you’re a belts-and-suspenders type, you can even paste your plan into the bottom of the document you’re composing. Then cross out each point as you go, like a writing to-do list — which is after all what an outline is.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #33 - Paragraph Transitions

Fri, 23 Aug 2024 12:09:19 GMT

One of the easiest places to lose readers is between paragraphs.

Logical and narrative steps that seem obvious to a writer aren’t always obvious to readers.

So good writers take pains to make the jump from one paragraph to the next as clear as possible. Paragraph transitions are the literary equivalent of calling out, “Step up here” when you’re helping an elderly relative negotiate a curb or stairs. It signals the change, so as to prevent tripping.

Unlike speakers, writers can’t use body language or voice inflections to signal a coming shift in topic. Writers need to put their transitions into words. Literally, they’re called “transition words.”

Words like Then . Later . At the same time. Therefore. So. On the other hand. In contrast. Also. Too. For example. Specifically.

Think of transition words like the street signs in your own neighborhood. They might seem superfluous to you (the writer). But they are not there for you. The signs are there for the out-of-towners (the readers) visiting for the first time.

So, when revising your work, keep an eye and ear out for the readers least familiar with your thinking or the topic. Ask yourself: could they follow every paragraph jump? Would they trip over any stairs or curbs?

Use your transitions to call out each step, signal every turn, and hold on to Granny’s hand until you reach the end of the journey.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #32 - Stick the Landing

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 13:04:45 GMT

There are three reasons writers should apply Strunk & White’s 22nd principle of composition: “Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end.”

First, as Strunk and White themselves note, the end of a sentence is the logical place to introduce new information — the punchline, the pivot, the conclusion, the twist, the reveal.

Second, there’s the beat. Even when reading silently, readers pause slightly in between sentences. The last word before the period hangs in the air, charging that brief moment with its energy, like the last note of a musical phrase. Strong closing words propel readers forward like a springboard.

Finally, because concluding thoughts with strong words makes for more effective communication, human beings already talk like that. Think of your favorite movie lines, Scripture passages, or inspirational quotes — they’ll all stick the landing.

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn .”

“Mr. Gorbechev, tear down this wall .”

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit .”

“In the beginning was the Word .”

“Leave the gun. Take the cannoli .”

Next time you’re struggling to make a sentence work, try moving its strongest word to the end, and reorganzing from there.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #31 — Sentences: How Long is Too Long?

Fri, 09 Aug 2024 12:40:52 GMT

Short sentences are easy to read.

Long sentences — not just because they contain more words, but because all those words are patched together in unpredictable patterns of relative, dependent, and independent clauses — are much harder to read, and — as you may be noticing even now — their reader-unfriendliness tends to grow with their word counts.

See?

There is no hard rule about how many words make a sentence too long . Psychologists tell us that at around 30-35 words, even smart readers start to forget how the sentence began. And we all know from personal experience that for the reader, the end of a sentence “never comes too soon.” As usual in writing, all things being equal, shorter is better. But sometimes things are not equal. After all, too many short sentences in a row make for choppy reading. So what is the Goldilocks principle was applied to sentences -- not too short and not too long?

The strike zone for most writers is an average of 15-20 words per sentence.

The key word there is average . You’ll still need short sentences, which are great for quick clarifications, hard pivots, and revelatory mic drops. You’ll still need longer sentences to draw disparate ideas together in the reader’s mind. And of course, you’ll need both for flow — providing your readers the ear-pleasing sentence-length variety that echoes human speech.

Three more quick points on this topic:

Don’t worry about sentence-length as you write. Whatever length of sentence you think in , that’s what your first draft should look like. Right-sizing sentences can wait for the editing and revision process.
When cutting and breaking up sentences, start at the back. That’s where we tend to put cumbersome, superfluous phrases and clauses. If, once scrutinized, they prove important enough to keep, then they are important enough to anchor their own sentences.
The best way to tell whether a sentence you’ve written is too long is to read it out loud. You’ll hear prolixity before you’ll see it.

And when in doubt, trust the old maxim: If you think the sentence may be too long, it is .

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #30 — Never Utilize

Fri, 02 Aug 2024 13:14:48 GMT

Bad words come in many flavors.

There are obscenities and vulgarisms unsuitable for polite company. There are all those gross-but-vivid words we inherited from Middle English, like moist , phlegm and curd . And there are words that just rub some people the wrong way, like nuance in Diner :

And then there’s utilize .

Utilize can’t claim to be the worst word in the English language — but not for lack of trying. The indictment against the word checks every box. It’s duplicative (of “use”) without any coloring distinction. It’s long and mechanical. It preens that fake -ize suffix like a peacock’s tail. And it’s French.

Utilize ’s one redeeming contribution to society is as a BS meter. It’s a poseur word, used not to convey ideas but to sound smart. (This is why it’s popular among young writers trying to impress their readers, unaware it has the opposite effect.)

For all its faults, utilize at least gives us one of the few hard-and-fast, universal rules of English composition: never use the word utilize unless you’re writing about the word itself. Otherwise, use use .

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #29 — 10 Quick Tips to Write Faster

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 11:45:43 GMT

Shout-out to subscriber Tim from Virginia, who hit up the Nib Request Line last week with a challenge faced by writers everywhere: how to write faster.

Now, there are lots of ways to speed up the writing process, each worthy of its own Nib. But in keeping with this week’s theme, here is a breakneck rundown of 10 mini-tips to cut down on your writing time.

See your audience. Talking comes easier than writing, in part because we can usually see who we’re talking to. So to write faster, imagine your audience as specifically and concretely as you can in your mind’s eye.
Know your mission. Uncertainty wastes time. Have a clear idea of your purpose — the idea you’re proposing, the product you’re selling, the story you’re telling — before you start writing.
Make a plan. Whether it’s a traditional outline, a list of key points, or some visual scheme like an idea tree, create some kind of map of your path and destination. Like a GPS route, it will save you from time-consuming wrong turns and dead-ends.
Write your thesis first. It may not remain the lead sentence of your final draft. But writing a clear, concise thesis right away vaults you past the dreaded “Where do I begin?” time-suck.
Write disciplined intros. Introduce your thesis and any necessary color or news hook in 1-3 sentences. Avoid throat-clearing and funneling. An intro’s only job is to signal to your intended audience that this is something they’ll want to read.
Pivot quickly to your origin story. Persuasion rests on a foundation of past-tense verbs. Convincing your readers “how we got here” is the indispensable first step toward convincing them “where we go from here.” So head back in time immediately after your intro.
First draft doneness . The most time-intensive part of any writing project is composing the first draft. But: if you’re clear on your audience, goal, and plan, then you don’t need to stress every noun and comma the first time through. Just get the writing part done; editing goes faster.
First draft completeness . When writing your first draft, use that plan you made (#3 above) — and don’t leave anything out. It’s okay if a first draft is too long, so long as everything that needs to be in there is in there. In the editing process, being a “taker-outer” is faster and easier than being a “putter-inner.”
Edit out loud. The most time-saving tip any writer can learn is to revise his or her drafts by reading them aloud. Your ears are already sharper editors than your eyes could ever become.
Trust your voice. Don’t waste time worrying about how people will think you sound; focus on what you say. Aim for clarity and concision, and things like “tone,” “flow,” and “punchiness” will take care of themselves.

The good news is, any of these tips by itself can shave minutes off your writing time. The better news is that this list’s value is greater than the sum of its parts. Because the more streamlining habits you adopt, the better forearmed you become against the greatest writing time-thief of them all: procrastination .

If there’s a time-saving writing tip that you swear by — or if there’s a topic you’d like to see in a future Nib of the Week - shoot me an email. I’d love to hear about it.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #28 — Don’t “Tell Them What You Just Told Them”

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 12:26:19 GMT

One of the few persuasive writing lessons most Americans still learn in school is wrong. It’s the old chestnut about how to organize an essay, speech, or presentation:

“Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Then tell them. Then tell them what you just told them.”

The first part is mostly right. A thesis statement early in a speech or essay shows respect for the audience. The second part needn’t even be said: yes, the body of an argument should make the argument.

It’s in the third part — “Tell them what you just told them” — where this old saw stops cutting. Persuasive arguments should not end with summaries. They should end with conclusions.

What’s the difference?

A summary is an brief encapsulation of an argument. A conclusion , on the other hand, asserts a new insight, obligation, or call-to-action that follows from the proving of one’s thesis. It should answer the question, “So what?”

Think of lawyers’ closing statements at the end of a trial. They don’t just run back through the testimony and evidence and call it a day. No, they close with, “And therefore, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you must acquit/convict.”

In the same way, a memo identifying some new business opportunity should end with some recommended action: buy advertising on a certain platform; spinoff a division of the company; develop a new product.

The same principle applies to any piece of persuasive writing. The reason we go to the trouble of convincing an audience is to get them to do something . Vote for this candidate. Donate to this charity. Hire that real estate agent. Drink this or that soft drink.

Closing your argument with a summary instead of a conclusion squanders the opportunity to improve the world that a successful argument wins you. So no, don’t “tell them what you just told them.” Instead, tell them why what you just told them matters .

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #27: Write the Truth. Don’t “Be Honest”

Fri, 12 Jul 2024 12:38:29 GMT

With the Republican and Democratic National Conventions at our throats just around the corner, this week’s Nib is for all the speechwriters out there working on their bosses’ 150-word paeans to partisanship:

Don’t “be honest.”

By that, I don’t mean lie, of course. Writers — and everyone else — should always tell the truth.

Rather, what I mean is that politicians should never, ever preface sentences with casual, special assertions of honesty:

“Truthfully speaking…”

“In all honesty…”

“To tell you the truth…”

“To be honest with you…”

Why? Because audiences distrust politicians. And when skeptical audiences hear a politician baptize some of his factual assertions with “Honestly…” (or the like), they subconsciously note that he left all his other assertions dry and heathen.

This rule needn’t apply to jokes, stories, and the like, where conversational rhythm can trump verbal integrity. But in persuasive communication, when success depends on credibility, unbidden professions of truthfulness project a “doth protest too much” vibe.

Just think for a moment about the most honest, trustworthy people you know. How often do they talk about how honest they are?

The lesson for young writers — and political speechwriters especially? Write truthfully, all the time, and you’ll never have to waste words telling people when you’re doing it.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #26: Nib 26: Joe Biden and the Risks of Repetition

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 11:48:55 GMT

One of the easiest mistakes writers can make is repeating ourselves. We all have certain verbal tics and habits of mind that lead us to say the same things, or the same kind of things, over and over.

In friendly conversation, these unconscious refrains are endearing — a source of inside jokes and the occasional drinking game. In persuasive communication, however, unintended repetition is a killer.

President Joe Biden turned last week’s presidential debate into a masterclass on this point with his relentless overuse of “the idea.”

He offered the phrase as a scoffing dismissal of Donald Trump’s record and credibility, as in “The very idea…”:

“ The idea that [Trump] did something” to improve the economy.

“ The idea that [Trump] did something” on clean water.

“ The idea ” that the United States would leave NATO.

“ The idea that I did anything wrong” in the Hunter Biden case.

It’s not a bad little phrase. The problem is, Biden said it 31 times in just 35 minutes of speaking time during the debate, including using it twice in the same sentence multiple times. Remember: the debate moderators only asked the candidates about 15 questions!

That means Biden dropped “the idea” twice per answer, almost once per minute for an hour and a half!

This just won’t do.

Repeating a phrase on purpose, for effect, is a powerful persuasive technique. Think of Lincoln’s “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Or King’s “I have a dream…” Or Churchill’s “We shall fight… We shall fight…”

Repeat a phrase accidentally , on the other hand, and you risk sounding like Joe Biden at the debate.

We all have unconscious habits of thought and speech that make their way into our written work — especially our early drafts. Writers must be aware of theirs — and edit out the unintentional repetitions that can sap the strength out of even strong, vibrant words and phrases.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #25: Robot Talk

Fri, 28 Jun 2024 13:26:53 GMT

The most common (and glaring) problem I see in young writers’ work is “Robot Talk” — the stringing of words together in an order no human being would ever speak.

Here is an example, a sentence taken from a mock constituent letter from a congressman, about biological males playing girls’ and women’s sports:

“I have witnessed first-hand the declarations of young females on the fear and injustice they have experienced across several aspects which come with people competing in the category of their chosen gender when it is not their biological sex.”

If you read the sentence carefully, you can discern a vague sense of its author’s meaning. It’s something like, “Young women have told me they find playing sports against biological males unfair and unsafe.”

But how does that turn into “fear and injustice they have experienced across several aspects” ?

I think the reason is insecurity, which explains why Robot Talk-writing is most common among students and young professionals. The problem is not that they are bad writers, or bad thinkers. It’s that they are trying to impress their readers (teachers, supervisors, hiring officers) and fear their own voices won’t cut it.

Robot Talk is literary imposter syndrome. It stems from a desire to sound profound. That’s why it doesn’t work.

Authentically smart people don’t try to seem smart. They try to be clear. They use words and sentences their audiences can easily understand. Go read an essay by Yuval Levin or a dissent by Antonin Scalia. No matter how abstruse the topic, you’ll understand every word.

Only frauds and show-offs, like third-rate academics, deliberately traffic in inscrutable, rococo language. Good writing clarifies; bad writing confuses.

The good news for young writers is that Robot Talk is easy to fix. It’s a two step process. The first is — as always — to read your drafts out loud as you edit and revise them. Your ear will almost always notice Robot Talk when spoken — because it won’t sound like normal speech.

The second, and even more important cure for Robot Talk is … just relax . Don’t try to write like you imagine people smarter than you sound . Trust your own voice.

Good writing doesn’t sound “smart.” It sounds clear. It sounds human. It sounds a lot like you when you’re just being yourself.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #24: Roger Federer’s Writing Lesson

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 12:33:28 GMT

The best part of Roger Federer’s commencement address at Dartmouth College last week was the first of three “tennis lessons” he gave the new graduates:

“‘Effortless’ is a myth.”

Generations of tennis fans have marveled at how Federer made his G.O.A.T run on the court without ever seeming to break a sweat. Federer’s answer? Years of unrelenting discipline and toil behind the scenes.

“The truth us,” Federer said, “I had to work very hard to make it look easy.”

Of course he did! Just like Mohammad Ali, Michael Jordon, or Cal Ripken did. Making anything look easy is one of the hardest things a human being, made of crooked timber, can do.

Writing is no exception.

Reading good writing feels effortless, too. The right words, put in the right order, make a reader — as Stephen King put it — “forget, whenever possible, that he/she is reading … at all.”

Achieving this frictionless, telepathic effect is extremely difficult. It requires fanatical discipline — like the story of Ernest Hemingway spending a whole morning removing a comma from a sentence and all afternoon putting it back in. And it requires emotional detachment — remember William Faulkner’s admonition to “kill your darlings.”

But, as Federer said, when pursuing effortlessness, there is no alternative to “training harder… a lot harder.”

For young writers, “training harder” means writing more, reading more (and better), and editing down your clunky, fatty, awkward drafts until all that’s left is so clear, readable, and true that it looks like it must have been easy to write.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #23: In Personal Writing, Choose Anecdotes Over Adjectives

Fri, 14 Jun 2024 10:53:44 GMT

The “Personal Statement” that accompanies college applications may be the most obnoxious assignment young writers face today. The stakes are unfair. The prompts are dumb. The incentives for performative victimhood are gross. And, let’s be honest, the last thing responsible adults should be asking teenagers to write about is themselves .

However, there is one invaluable habit the Personal Statement can help young writers develop. The rule is, “Anecdotes over adjectives.”

Most of the time, when we describe people — including ourselves — we stay in the shallows. He’s funny. She’s smart. Plays lacrosse or the piano. Acted in the school play. Writes for the school paper.

Those kinds of things don’t say anything distinct or meaningful about a person. They’re too superficial. To really convey an individual’s personality and character, we have to go deeper. We have to tell stories.

This is especially good advice for young writers working on those college app essays. Telling stories is not just a better way of describing yourself to an admissions committee — it’s easier.

If you love baseball, write a story that shows why. Maybe it’s about your grandfather taking you to your first game. Maybe it’s something about baseball’s nerd-friendly statistics or its mystical connection with springtime.

In the same way, that you play the clarinet isn’t very interesting. How you came to play it? Why a certain song is your favorite to play? The moment at last year's Fall concert when you realized how the sound of your clarinet complemented your bandmates?

That’s the stuff.

Don’t just retrace the lines on your resume — color them in. Why did you start that dog-walking business? When did you realize that class you hated in 10th grade actually taught you something worth knowing? Who inspired you to be a camp counselor?

Whether you’re writing about yourself in a college application personal essay, or about a colleague in a letter of recommendation, or about a late family member in a eulogy, don’t use adjectives to describe your subject. Use stories to introduce your readers to them.

The things that make each of us unique — the things that make you you — are the things adjectives can’t describe.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #22: To Find Your Writing Style, Be a Butler

Fri, 07 Jun 2024 12:13:51 GMT

When Anthony Hopkins was researching his role as a butler in The Remains of the Day, a longtime servant at Buckingham Palace told him: “There’s nothing to being a butler, really; when you’re in the room, it should be even more empty.”

I tell this story every time a young writer asks me how to develop “my own writing style.” Because the best advice I can give him is, “You shouldn’t.”

The way to find your writing style is to try not to have one.

To explain.

The purpose of writing is winning your audience — readers enjoying your story, agreeing with your argument, comprehending your message, appreciating your note.

Style only matters to the extent it serves a composition’s purpose … which should be communicating truth … which is achieved by transparent, not adorned, language.

This is not to say all writers should imitate Ernest Hemingway and use only curt, spare sentences. (After all, William Faulkner’s stream-of-consciousness style told his non-linear stories of people haunted by time and memory. And Tom Wolfe’s pyrotechnic style told his stories about this “wild, bizarre, unpredictable, hog-stomping, Baroque country of ours.”)

Rather, writers should surrender themselves — the “my own” part of “my own writing style” — to the writing. Don’t try to write with “style;" write instead with honesty and humility.

Focus on the work. Cut out all the look-at-me word choices and aren’t-I-clever references and turns of phrase. Strip down the language to its purest essence. You’ll find the writing will start to say what you really meant to say, and with more clarity, force, and style than it ever did before.

To find and infuse your writing with your own personal style, make the page “more empty” — of yourself. Next time you sit down at your keyboard, don’t try to be a stylist. Be a butler, and the style will take care of itself.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #21: Donald Trump Bombs at the Libertarian Convention. (Or Did He?)

Fri, 31 May 2024 10:26:14 GMT

Last week, Donald Trump became first U.S. president to ever address the Libertarian National Convention.

As the media gleefully reported, it didn’t go well. Trump’s 35-minute speech was repeatedly interrupted by boos and heckling from the convention floor. And his campaign’s last-minute attempt to win the Libertarian presidential nomination was dismissed out of hand.

By those in-the-room metrics, Trump’s appearance was indeed a flop. But I’m not sure those are the right metrics here.

Given the endearing kookiness of political conventioneers in general — let alone at the proudly fringy Libertarian Party — could Trump’s advisors really have expected to secure the party’s presidential nomination on a wave of emotion after an ecstatically received speech?

It seems more likely Trump was not really talking to the 1,051 Libertarian Party convention delegates at all. Rather, he was talking to the 2 million Libertarian Party voters around the country.

Watch the speech for yourself. Notice that Trump doesn’t do his usual gonzo, stream-of-consciousness, insult-comic routine. He reads text off a teleprompter.

Moreover, he repeatedly dings the Libertarian Party’s complacency with winning their “3 percent” of the vote every four years. Team Trump surely knew this would only anger the delegates and harden their opposition to the Republican nominee.

Which means it was intentional. Which makes sense.

Just as floor speeches by congressmen are not meant for the half-dozen clerks and randos milling around the House chamber, Trump’s speech at the Libertarian Convention was not really for the Libertarian Convention. On the contrary, the speech’s true purpose was to appeal to gettable, libertarian-minded voters in swing states by provoking and exposing the convention delegates’ principled-but-decidedly-idiosyncratic extremism.

This is Triangulation Politics 101.

Trump’s advisors fully understood he was not a plausible Libertarian nominee. But his agenda is more libertarian than President Biden’s record these last three years. And getting anti-Trump Libertarian Party insiders to boo the guy promising to dismantle the Deep State, protect the Bill of Rights, appoint libertarian cabinet Secretaries, and cut federal spending is a smart way of discrediting those insiders in the eyes of undecided, libertarian-inclined voters.

This is not to declare Trump’s speech a success. We won’t know that until November.

But it’s a vivid illustration of a powerful insight: writers should not see a composition’s setting — like the venue hosting a speech or the publication printing an oped — as an exogenous restriction on a pre-set strategy. Rather, it should be considered as an endogenous factor in developing the strategy in the first place.

Team Trump knew that if their man spoke at the Libertarian Convention, the delegates were going to boo. So rather than trying to navigate around this inevitability, they sailed right into it. They crafted the remarks so that the boos were not an embarrassing reaction to Trump’s speech but a key element of the real speech he was giving to his real libertarian audience out in the country.

The lesson for young writers? Before you start writing, think about who you’re really talking to and what you’re really trying to persuade them to do. It will clarify your thinking, strengthen your writing, and open up strategic opportunities you would otherwise miss.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #20: Jerry Seinfeld and the Power of Framing

Fri, 24 May 2024 13:11:31 GMT

In a much ballyhooed Commencement Address at Duke University earlier this month, Jerry Seinfeld put on a master-class in framing — the art of organizing an argument to make its conclusions more lively and compelling.

The speech is worth reading, worth watching , and most of all, worth emulating.

To appreciate Seinfeld’s success here, you first have to see his advice to Duke’s graduates as the bag of clichés it is. Work hard? Pay attention? Fall in love? Seize opportunities? Keep a sense of humor?

How did such mundane content trigger so much praise and criticism? Because of the deftly arresting way Seinfeld frames his points. Throughout the speech, Seinfeld never simply decrees his life lessons. Rather, he sets them up, kind of like — well, exactly like — a comedian’s punchlines.

For instance, Seinfeld’s endorsement of hard work — “pure, stupid, no-real-idea-what-I’m-doing-here effort” — comes only after a two-paragraph bit roasting the undeserved glamour of “finding your passion.”

“The hell with passion,” he says. “It’s embarrassing. Just be willing to do your work as hard as you can with the ability you have.”

When he encourages graduates to “fall in love,” he again crosses up audience expectations. “It’s easy to fall in love with people ,” he says. “I suggest falling in love with anything and everything, every chance you get” — like Bic pens, sneakers, and perfect pizza crust.

He even defends — quelle horreur — privilege! “Use your privilege!” he exhorts, which — for all its Culture War-coded language, is just another way of saying “take advantage of life’s opportunities,” which everyone would advise.

During this riff, Seinfeld drops the best line of his speech: “My point is we’re embarrassed about things we should be proud of and proud of things we should be embarrassed about.” The stadium responded with prolonged applause.

Finally, Seinfeld defends humor. Not only as humanity’s natural medicine against despair: “the most powerful, most survival-essential quality you will ever have or need to navigate through the human experience.” But also, explicitly, as more important than young people’s admirable desire to avoid “hurting other people’s feelings.”

“The slightly uncomfortable feeling of awkwardness,” he says, the “occasional discomfort,” the “occasional hard feelings,” are worth suffering in order “to have some laughs.”

Once again, Seinfeld’s audience — woke academics and campus snowflakes! — burst in to applaud his affable but defiantly bougie, anti-PC message.

Seinfeld’s lesson to young writers here — and to young conservatives in particular — is that thoughtful, counterintuitive framing can charge even the stodgiest ideas with new and electric appeal.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #19: Meet Your Audience Where They Are

Fri, 17 May 2024 11:27:27 GMT

One of the burdens persuasive writers shoulder is knowing more about their topic than their audience. In theory, it’s a benefit, even a prerequisite for making effective arguments. But the same subject mastery needed to make writing persuasive can make writers un -persuasive.

If a writer’s immersion in a topic transcends knowledge acquisition and becomes something like a personal or professional identity, he can lose the ability to discuss the topic with anyone other than fellow experts. Some even see their inscrutability to laymen as a point of pride — evidence of intellectual superiority.

It’s not.

Incomprehensible writing is bad writing. To persuade, writers must meet each audience where they are . As a matter of rhetorical strategy, this means framing and prioritizing points according to the audience’s values and goals, yes. But it should also govern word choice, sentence structure, and paragraph transitioning. How and when to cite references. How much to telegraph and explain an argument’s logical steps.

It’s the writer’s job to persuade, not the audience’s to be persuaded . To move readers from A to B, you have to meet them at A. If you write a speech, memo, oped, or other persuasive composition that your target audience just can’t understand, it’s not their fault for being dumb. It’s your fault for treating them like they are.

Your audience will always — but only — give your writing the hearing it deserves.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #18: Joe Biden’s Pretty Good Campus Chaos Speech

Fri, 10 May 2024 10:10:16 GMT

The Nib of the Week’s frequent criticism of President Joe Biden’s speeches belies the soft spot I’ll always have for the guy. So it was nice to see Ole Joe give a pretty good speech about the snarling “encampments” besetting America’s college campuses this Spring.

Let’s dive in.

The speech begins poorly, alas, with a muddled riff about “fundamental American principles” and some bush-league partisan preening about “authoritarianism” and “those who rush in to score political points.”

But then the tone shifts.

“Violent protest is not protected [by our Constitution]; peaceful protest is. It’s against the law when violence occurs.”

The language is a bit stilted there, but Biden soon hits his stride. In quick succession, he calls out:

“destroying property … vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations … threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear.”

Note the hard, prosecutorial word choices.

Then, Biden goes even further, aligning himself with the students the encampments are harassing. Then, God love him, Biden goes there:

“There should be no place on any campus, no place in America for antisemitism or threats of violence against Jewish students… There is no place for racism in America. It’s all wrong. It’s un-American.”

Conservative readers may question why anyone should give the president credit for a belated and banal endorsement of basic justice and American political norms. But look more closely at what the president did here: he punched, effectively, to his left.

Biden’s biggest problems this election year are the public perceptions that (a) he is a bumbling incompetent in mental decline, and (b) he shares the woke extremism of the New Left.

This speech pushes back on both narratives. Biden energetically indicts the encampments’ criminal tactics and then outright condemns their motivating, anti-Semitic bigotry -- targeting the very voters Biden and Democrats need to win in November.

Theretofore, most elite Democrats had tried to thread various rhetorical needles on the encampments. “Criticizing Israel isn’t anti-Semitic!” “99% of the protesters are peaceful!” “Rioting is the language of the unheard!”

Biden, by contrast, shoves through the bothsidesism like a snowplow. Riots are bad, period . Anti-Semitism is bad, period . Shutting down colleges is bad, period .

No doubt some in the White House wanted more nuance, more “but of course…”, more attacks against Republicans or even — gulp — Israel. But those would have compromised the mission of the speech, which was to re-assert Biden’s membership in the United States of Normal, Everyday Americans.

Good on him — and whoever in the White House speech-approval process kept the text on the rails.

The lesson for young writers — when an issue arises enabling you to triangulate with 97% of the country against a tiny fringe of mouthy, racist criminals, be like Joe and don’t overthink it. Moral clarity still works.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #17: Germanic words, Ja

Fri, 03 May 2024 11:50:00 GMT

One of the coolest things about the English language — granddaughter of both Latinate French and germanic Saxon — is that almost every word has a twin. The germanic word eat means the same thing as the latinate consume . Same with dog and canine or earth and terrain .

The more of these pairs you read out loud, the more you’ll notice — the German words are usually better.

They’re hardier, more fun to say and hear, more grounded and descriptive. Latinate words — with their French iambs and gentle sounds — often seem detached and antiseptic. Sometimes this is a good thing. Think how much easier it must be for doctors and patients to discuss the horrifying prospect of losing a limb in terms of amputation rather than lopping off .

But writers of English should want to use graphic, bracing, sticky words. As Will Strunk and E.B. White put it in The Elements of Style , “Anglo-Saxon is a livelier tongue than Latin, so use Anglo-Saxon words.”

I was reminded of this point when reading President Biden’s State of the Union Address last month. See how it ends:

“I believe in you the American people. You’re the reason I’ve never been more optimistic about our future! So let’s build that future together! Let’s remember who we are! We are the United States of America. There is nothing beyond our capacity when we act together! May God bless you all. May God protect our troops.”

Notice how the crescendoing peroration trips over that “capacity.” There’s nothing wrong with the word as such. But in this context, the ostentatiously Latinate “capacity” (just like that clunky “optimistic” four sentences earlier) stands out as robotic and wonky. It breaks the spell, like a car horn interrupting music.

The whole sentence — “There is nothing beyond our capacity when we act together!” — sounds like it was written by AI or translated from another language. The idea being communicated is good; it’s the word choice that’s awful.

Biden should have said something like, “There’s nothing we can’t do when we do it together!” Or, “Together, ‘we the people of the UNITED States of America,’ can do anything!”

The lesson for young writers: when in doubt, choose those rough-hewn, earthy germanic words over the smooth, antiseptic Latinate ones.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #16: Invest in Grace

Fri, 26 Apr 2024 11:58:48 GMT

Congress’s debate last week about a $96 billion foreign aid bill was an orgy of rhetorical outrage porn — “Traitor!” “Warmongers!” “Putin Caucus!” “Wrong side of history!”

Maybe the most important lesson young writers can take from it is that, just a few days later, it’s already hard to remember who hurled which epithets at whom? The unsatisfying (but very Christian) truth is that invective, however fun to write, is unpersuasive. Insults are not like bricks, but feathers: harmless, except to the reputation of anyone foolish enough to throw them at an enemy.

It’s not a coincidence that the two best floor speeches of the week — from Republicans on either side of the party’s internal populist-internationalist divide — contained no insults at all.

The first was retiring Congressman Mike Gallagher ’s (R-Wis.) farewell to the U.S. House of Representatives. The hawkish Gallagher was a proud supporter of the aid bill, and a prime mover behind its TikTok divestment piece.

“This is how I always wanted to go out,” Gallagher said.

His speech commends embattled Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for bringing the aid bills to the floor and stiff-arms any fellow Republicans plotting against Johnson. But notice how Gallagher does it, without attacking anyone:

“I firmly believe the Speaker has emerged on the other side of this stronger and a statesman. Any Motion to Vacate will fail, the Republican majority will grow as three special election seats get filled in the coming weeks…”

This is a more powerful blow against Johnson’s critics than the personal slurs =GOP elites too often hurl at them. It scores the “Vacate the Chair” caucus not for their supposed sins, but simply because the strategy won’t work. As Establishment attacks against Donald Trump have shown for years, haughty, finger-wagging insults only energize opponents. On the other hand, straightforward descriptions of political reality can discourage radicalization, without anyone losing face.

Meanwhile, the best speech against the aid bills came from Congressman Chip Roy (R-Texas). Roy opened his remarks with a gracious apology to his Republican Rules Committee chairman for having to oppose him in his first week on the job. He then unloads on Democrats (smart, given his Republican target audience) and the bill’s shortcomings before closing with:

“Speaker Johnson said in January: ‘If President Biden wants a supplemental spending bill focused on national security, it better begin with defending America’s national security. We want to get the border closed and secured first.’ To that I say, amen, and I would say where is that Speaker Johnson?”

This is how you hammer someone in a debate. Not with schoolyard insults, but with his or her own words.

Young writers need not agree on the virtues of either Gallagher or Roy’s position in this debate to see that their speeches succeeded because they were rhetorically virtuous. Note well: neither speech pulled punches — neither shied from the fray. Both were charged with political aggression. But both were also written with grace.

In debate - as in other aspects of life — grace is an investment. It cleanses, strengthens, and clarifies even caustic arguments, making debaters more persuasive in the moment and more respected over time. Gracious political rhetoric is not about offering undue respect to one’s opponents, but due respect for one’s audience. That’s why grace’s returns, like those of other virtues like honesty or prudence -- compound. It makes one's arguments more persuasive to more people over time.

There is a reason Gallagher is generally held in higher esteem by anti-establishment conservatives — and Roy seen as more formidable by GOP elites — than most of their factional allies.

Even in the most contentious debates, they both invest in grace and reap its returns. So should all writers.

Until next week … keep writing!

Nib #15: Dress for the Occasion

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 12:56:29 GMT

Most speeches are — and should be — workaday things. People don’t come to PTA meetings or subcommittee hearings for spellbinding rhetoric. And most speech-givers can’t deliver it anyway. So part of a speechwriter’s job is dressing for the occasion.

The writers of President Biden’s State of the Union Address last month failed this test when they gassed up his peroration with this:

“I see a future where we defend democracy not diminish it. I see a future where we restore the right to choose and protect other freedoms not take them away. I see a future where the middle class finally has a fair shot and the wealthy finally have to pay their fair share in taxes. I see a future where we save the planet from the climate crisis and our country from gun violence.

“Above all, I see a future for all Americans! I see a country for all Americans!”

The writers here are employing anaphora — the rhetorical technique of beginning successive sentences with the same phrase to create poetic rhythm. The problem isn’t the writing, as such. The problem is… Joe Biden is not a prophet!

No one sees him as a visionary leader like an Abraham Lincoln, a Martin Luther King, or even a Barack Obama. And with good reason! Biden himself has curated a down-to-earth, back-slapping personal brand for more than 50 years. His entire 2020 presidential campaign was based on the man’s practiced familiarity and normalcy.

But rather than lean into that vibe — and play to their boss’s strengths — Biden’s staff instead committed the cardinal sin of speechwriting: they wrote for themselves instead of the strategy. Joe Biden’s big-speech perorations should be folksy and self-effacing. His rhetorical model should be Bob Cratchit, not Henry V. By ignoring this, Biden’s speechwriters actually undermined their own speech, their boss, and his broader political strategy.

The lesson for speechwriters here: don't bring kale-foam to a cookout or wear a ballgown to a ballgame. Tailor your text to the speaker, the moment, and the strategy -- never your ego.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #14: Biden’s Botched SOTU, Part 4: Inspiring… divisiveness?

Fri, 12 Apr 2024 12:01:16 GMT

The emotional climax of a speech is called the “peroration.” Think Martin Luther King’s “Free at last, free at least, thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” Or Mel Gibson in Braveheart: “… our enemies may take our lives, but they’ll never take our FREEDOM!”

Not every speech needs an inspiring conclusion. Sometimes you want to throttle back, depending on the audience, topic, setting, and goal. But in 99.9% of speeches, even if the moment doesn’t call for soaring poetry, you at least want the ending to be unifying, inclusive, and inviting.

President Biden’s State of the Union Address last month failed this test so badly, so counterproductively, I feel like it must have been added by someone outside the White House speechwriting office.

SOTU Peroration Fail #2: All Americans … except you!

Here is the relevant text:

“Above all, I see a future for all Americans! I see a country for all Americans! And I will always be a president for all Americans! Because I believe in America! I believe in you the American people.

Those “nots” in the first paragraph are straight cringe. Biden is using the peroration — the emotional, “come-on-board-and-join-the-team” section of his biggest speech of the year — to… exclude a lot of people!

Earlier in the speech, Biden established that people who “diminish democracy” refers to everyone thinking about voting for Donald Trump. And that “take [rights] away” bit means people who lean pro-life.

In other words, Biden’s “vision for the country” explicitly excludes about half the country!

Why? Why would he do this? It helps literally no one… except maybe Donald Trump!

And then, as if to put this nonsense on stilts, the president immediately pivots to, “Above all, I see a future for all Americans! I see a country for all Americans!” Except… no! You don’t! Go read the previous paragraph! You just excluded 150 million people from that future, for no reason other than partisan tingles!

Instead of inclusive and inspiring - or at least back-slappingly bonhomie-ish like Biden usually tries to be — the peroration becomes petty, discriminatory, and self-contradictory… to no benefit!

“I see a future where we defend our democracy … where all our freedoms are protected … where the middle class finally has a fair shot.”

But no. That might have appealed to … too many voters! Sigh.

The lesson this week: if a speech meant to persuade people requires contrasts, partisanship, and even attacks — and many do! — don’t put those things at the end. It will leave a bad taste in the audience’s mouth. Close with unity and uplift.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #13: Biden’s Botched SOTU, Part 3: Show, Don’t Tell

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 13:24:20 GMT

Nib #13: Biden’s Botched SOTU, Part 3: Show, Don’t Tell

Writing perorations — the typically uplifting, closing sections of speeches — is hard. For State of the Union Addresses — with so many chefs (of varying skill) in the kitchen — history suggests it’s nearly impossible.

So, that President Joe Biden’s 2024 SOTU ended poorly is neither surprising nor especially damning. But the comprehensiveness of his peroration’s failure is worth young writers’ attention.

Here is the relevant text, 176 words at the end of a 6,000-word speech.

“To lead America, the land of possibilities, you need a vision for the future of what America can and should be. Tonight you’ve heard mine.

“You’re the reason I’ve never been more optimistic about our future! So let’s build that future together! Let’s remember who we are! We are the United States of America. There is nothing beyond our capacity when we act together!”

It starts off okay. A leader needs a vision — this is mine. No muss, no fuss. Honestly, Biden would have done well to end the speech right there. Instead, his speechwriters proceed to commit three-and-a-half totally unforced errors that clunk and clang down through the text like the stone Pippen tosses into the Moria well in The Fellowship of the Ring.

Each of these mistakes deserves its own Nib. So this week, we’ll just take up just the first rake the SOTU speechwriters stepped on.

SOTU Peroration Fail #1: “I see a…”

If you’ve ever taken a creative writing course, you’ve probably heard the maxim, “show, don’t tell.” Good writing does not comment on the things it renders, it just renders them. The goal is to put clear, concrete images in the audience’s mind that evoke an idea, not to describe the idea. As Richard Pryce put it: “You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road.”

By contrast, most of Biden’s SOTU peroration is commentary about his vision rather than the vision itself. “I see a future where we defend democracy … where we restore the right to choose… where we save the planet,” etc.

These platitudes are not Biden’s vision; they are more like what a pundit would say about Biden’s vision.

If the White House really wanted to go this “vision” route — a dubious proposition, as we’ll see — he should have described a personal, concrete future “where every voter is safe from bullying and fraud, where every woman is free to choose her path in life, where every child breathes clean air and learns at a safe school,” etc, etc.

The president should have shown his vision for the country in more specific detail, not told us about it in vague generalities.

Instead, his speechwriters indulged in “speechifying” — drafting rhetoric that superficially feels like the kind of thing John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King would have said, but aims only at the rhetoric’s affect and so falls short of the original’s substance, clarity, and force.

The lesson for young writers? Every first draft you ever write will include missteps like this — where you tell rather than show, where you comment on your argument instead of just making it. The trick is editing and revising your work with eyes and ears peeled for it.

Until next week — when we’ll dive into Biden’s second SOTU peroration fail — keep writing!

Nib #12: Biden’s Botched SOTU, Part 2: Personal Pronoun Problems

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 15:45:32 GMT

As a rule, “Write like you talk” is good advice. Spoken language is human beings’ native tongue. (That’s why writing is so hard: see Nib #3 here .)

One of the few caveats to this rule pertains to personal pronouns. Americans today say I, we, us, you, your, our, and my so frequently and so casually that young writers are stunned by how powerfully those words can come across on the page.

It is apparently a lesson President Biden’s speechwriters are still learning, too.

Last week, we explored the unhelpfully aggressive tone of Biden’s 2024 State of the Union Address and how it undermined what could have been an effective speech.

But there was another glaring unforced error in the text: its misuse and abuse of personal pronouns.

This week, I roughly charted every election-year State of the Union’s use of personal pronouns going back to Jimmy Carter’s in 1980. (See chart below.) It’s a small sample size and imperfect metric, of course. But even so, Biden’s speech stands out.

Biden’s speech used the word “I” 114 times, more than any other election-year SOTU except Bill Clinton’s self-congratulatory swan-song in 2000 (122 times) — and not by a little. He referred to himself more than twice as often as Donald Trump in 2020 (46 I's), Barack Obama in 2016 (44 I's) or 2012 (45 I's), or George W. Bush in 2008 (31 I's) or 2004 (27 I's).

His SOTU used the words “me” (20 times) and “my” (48 times) more than any other’s. He also said “you” — probably the most subtly aggressive, accusatory word in written English — 64 times, more than any other except, again, Clinton in 2000 (83 times).

Moreover, Biden’s use of the more inclusive, first-person plural pronouns “our” (38 times) and “we” (64 times) ranked dead last and next-to-last of the 12 speeches.

Just like last week’s Nib, this is not a critique of Biden’s growling delivery of the SOTU, or the policies it advocated. Strictly as a matter of persuasive writing, 114 I’s cannot but undermine a speech supposedly about the future of the country and fighting for the little guy.

Sixty-four “you’s” from an unpopular president ostensibly trying to unify the country has the same problem. This speech should have been all “us” and “we” and “our.”

In 2024, Joe Biden isn’t just running against Donald Trump and the Republicans. He is running against the perception that his party and administration are elitist, out of touch, and look down on everyday Americans.

His State of the Union should have helped change that perception. Instead, Biden’s personal pronoun problem exacerbated it.

The lesson for young speechwriters? Whenever possible, make the first person plural and the second person gracious.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #11: Biden’s Botched SOTU, Part 1: Propose, Don’t Impose

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 12:55:50 GMT

Democracies run on persuasion. You can’t make people agree with you. Nor, outside the fantasy worlds of Aaron Sorkin, can liberals preen and insult conservatives into ideological surrender. Joe Biden’s speechwriters — all no doubt fans (as I am!) of The American President and The West Wing — forgot this fact when they drafted the president’s sneering, self-indulgent State of the Union Address earlier this month.

Post-SOTU polls found that it was the least well-received SOTU in a generation and won Biden no “bump” in his overall approval ratings.

Why didn’t it work?

One reason is that the speech did not even try to persuade.

Over and over, rather than propose his ideas, Biden tried to impose them, excoriating opponents of his every policy preference as cowards, villains, and threats to the republic.

Skeptics of aid to Ukraine? “Bowing down to Russia.”

Pro-lifers? “My God, what freedoms will you take away next?”

Skeptics of the president’s doomed border proposal? “Playing politics.”

Skeptics of Democrats’ hyper-partisan plan to federalize state election laws? Racist “forces taking us back in time.”

Skeptics his job-killing environmental agenda? Climate deniers.

The speech refused to even entertain the possibility that Biden’s own policies played any role in the problems America faces today. Or that anyone to his right might also want to solve them.

It was a speech written for a country that does not exist — again, except in left-wing movies and TV shows. Its overriding theme was: Agree with me or you are evil.

Except… Most Americans already disagree with Biden on lots of things.

Rather than try to win them over, the speech sought to bully and shame skeptics for their skepticism, like a religious leader threatening heretics.

This messianism is not unheard of in politics, but it does not suit Joe Biden, or serve his interests in 2024.

Both as president and as a presidential candidate this year, Biden should have tried to build up trust with the tens of millions of Americans not already in his camp.

Nor would doing so have required him to alter any of his policy positions! Simply adjusting the tone of the speech would have sufficed.

Had Biden proposed the very same agenda he instead tried to rhetorically impose, he might not have so excited online woke activists who more than anything want to demonize conservatives. But he might have won over the Trump-skeptical Republicans, undecided independents, and Reagan-Clinton Democrats he needs to win in November.

The irony is that throughout his career, those were the kinds of people Joe Biden always courted — and probably would still, if he was really running his White House. It’s Biden’s young progressive staffers, who grew up on Aaron Sorkin’s fairy tales, who botched the SOTU.

Until next week... keep writing!

Nib #10: Give Your Idea an Origin Story

Wed, 20 Mar 2024 12:45:51 GMT

The best part of any superhero’s mythology is the beginning. Superman vs. Lex Luthor? Meh. Baby Kal-El, the last son of doomed Krypton, rescued and exiled to a strange world far away, where he must be hidden and protected from his enemies until he grows into his destiny? Now that’s the stuff.

So it is with persuasive writing. The most compelling part of a persuasive argument is its origin story.

You can’t just lunge right in with “Pass a flat tax!” or “Ban TikTok!” or “Get rid of the designated hitter!” First of all, people may not even know what you’re talking about. And second, your target audience of unpersuaded-but-persuadable readers is likely to bristle at such bluntness.

Roman rhetoricians called the “beginning of the story” phase of persuasive structure the “ contextio ,” the context. They understood that to sell someone on a solution, you first have to tell the story of the problem in such a way that your solution seems the best one.

The most obvious approach is to go back in time. Persuasive writing frames today’s problems in the past tense.

In 1863, when Abraham Lincoln set out to justify his then-controversial twofold strategy in the Civil War — union-restoration and emancipation — he began his argument, “Four score and seven years ago…”

In 1963, when Martin Luther King tried to win white Americans over to the then-controversial cause of civil rights, he opened his case by reminding the country of the Emancipation Proclamation. “Five score years ago,” King began his "I Have a Dream" speech.

When Michael Corleone provokes Hyman Roth in The Godfather, Part II — “Who had Frank Pentangeli killed?” — do you remember how Roth responds? In the past tense, telling the story of his friendship with Moe Greene: “There was this kid I grew up with.”

For an idea of how old this trick is, consider that Pericles’ funeral oration in 431 B.C., after a few sentences of throat-clearing, begins, “I will speak first of our ancestors.”

Advocating a new idea without an origin story is like hanging a new window without a frame. Persuasion depends on empathy. Empathy is about shared stories. And good stories have good beginnings.

Give your idea a good origin story, and your readers will give them a more receptive hearing.

Until next week… Keep writing!

Nib #9: Nikki Haley's Clever Pivot

Fri, 08 Mar 2024 20:05:35 GMT

Speeches ending political campaigns are tough. Not only must they (unconvincingly) put a happy face on defeat. They also self-execute old news. As soon as the candidate says “I’m suspending my campaign,” nothing else he or she says really matters anymore.

Nikki Haley had been facing this speech long before she finally gave it after Donald Trump sewed up the 2024 Republican presidential nomination on Super Tuesday. She gave a creditable performance of Concession Speech Greatest Hits — gratitude to supporters, a little policy checklist, quotes from Margaret Thatcher and the Bible.

But one paragraph in Haley’s speech rose above. Where most drop-out speeches would have included an endorsement of the winner, Haley said this:

“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him. And I hope he does that. At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away. And our conservative cause badly needs more people. This is now his time for choosing.”

This is a clever pivot. Rather than endorsing Trump (yet), she challenges him — encouraging Trump to win the election, yes, while also preemptively blaming him if he loses in November.

The “time for choosing” bit recalls Ronald Reagan’s famous speech of that name. But unlike Reagan, who framed the 1964 election as a time for the American people to choose, Haley is saying 2024 is Donald Trump’s time for choosing. She’s suggesting that the outcome of the November election will be on Trump, one way or the other.

Why is this clever? Because Haley is probably running for president again in 2028.

If Trump wins in November, he will be ineligible to run again, and Haley can begin her campaign by taking credit for Trump doing what she suggested he do. If he loses, Haley’s pitch will be that it was Trump’s own fault, thereby bolstering her case for the nomination even if Trump runs again.

The lesson for young writers here is that even in a composition that is supposed to be formulaic, even clichéd, there is always room for thoughtful, meaningful, strategic prose.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #8: First (Worst) Drafts

Fri, 01 Mar 2024 16:14:57 GMT

Ernest Hemingway put it best: “The first draft of anything is s--t."

Too many writers have never been taught this core fact of the writing life. But it *is* a fact. And by not teaching it, we set young writers up for frustration and failure.

First drafts are clunky, long-winded, loose, and full of outright mistakes. It’s not because writers are bad, but because writing itself is so hard. (See Nib #1.)

The defining quality of any first draft is not its concision, clarity, or vitality, but its *doneness.* Why? Because you can fix crap — you can’t fix nothing.

So don’t think about your first draft as *bad,* or even as a bad version of the finished product. Rather, think of it instead as a big slab of marble you just rolled into your sculpting studio. Only after it’s there can you get to work making it good.

Don’t be embarrassed if your first draft stinks. Of course it stinks — it’s a first draft!

Embrace that fact. Understand that most of what we mean when we say “good writing” is actually “good editing, revision, and re-writing.”

Make that leap and you’ll clear one of the biggest hurdles a young writer will ever face.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #7: Dumb “As-es”

Fri, 23 Feb 2024 20:07:44 GMT

“As a…” is usually a terrible way to start a sentence, especially in a piece of persuasive writing.

You know the tactic. “As a veteran…” … “As a teacher…” … “As a woman/man/mother/father…” and so on.

The “As a…” construction is meant to endow whatever follows with mystical power, to strap the armor of the writer’s personal identity around arguments that would otherwise have to stand on their own merits.

Except, hold on: all arguments *DO* have to stand on their merits!

A writer’s identity has no bearing on whether one plus one equals two. It also has no more bearing on whether, say, a defendant is guilty. Or whether a government program is good for the economy. Or whether a retiring baseball player is a Hall of Famer. Either they are or they’re not.

Lazy, entitled writers use the “As a…” schtick to make their arguments seem stronger than they are. But they usually accomplish the opposite. Readers — even if only unconsciously — will always wonder, “Hey, if this is such a good idea, what does the writer’s age/sex/race/personal-victimhood-narrative have to do with it?”

Don’t be lazy. Don’t be entitled. Respect your readers, and yourself, enough not to be a “Dumb As.”

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #6: White House Whiffs on Pre-Writing Strategy

Fri, 16 Feb 2024 20:15:32 GMT

The first two steps any writer must take before beginning a piece of persuasive writing are:

1. Identify your audience: “Who am I talking to?”

2. Begin with the end in mind: “What am I trying to persuade them to do?"

President Joe Biden and his staff failed this test last week when preparing his prime-time response to Special Counsel Robert Hur’s final report.

The president’s performance has been widely panned, especially his struggles fielding reporters’ questions. But even Biden’s prepared remarks were a strategic muddle.

The gist of the five-minute speech was: "The report absolved me. The investigation was thorough. Donald Trump did the same thing as me, but in a bad way. The report’s characterization of my memory is inappropriate and wrong."

Question 1: Who was the audience for this speech? It wasn't the whole country. It seemed mostly to be targeting the ~60% of the country not already voting Republican this fall: partisan Democrats and gettable independents.

Question 2: What was the speech supposed to persuade that audience to do?

This is a little fuzzier, but it seems mostly meant to refute Hur’s characterization of the president as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Given those answers, the speech never should have been given.

Consider the obvious internal contradictions:

- If the investigation was thorough, why should we doubt its assessment of the president’s mental powers?

- And why mention in the speech — twice! — Biden’s five-hour interview with the Special Counsel, when that only strengthens the report’s credibility?

- Was there any reason to believe Biden’s delivery of the speech would be confident and commanding enough to match its claims of mental acuity?

- If the president was vindicated, why bother to mention Trump at all, let alone in a petty bit of hair-splitting? Who is supposed to have been persuaded by “See, I mis-placed the documents in my garage, but he mis-handled the documents in his basement! Boo-yah!”

- Finally, what was the 50-megaton political message in the speech that White House staffers thought was worth the likelihood that Biden would stumble at the podium? It’s just not there.

The whole exercise was high risk, low reward. Given its audience and mission, Biden’s remarks were doomed before his speechwriters began the first draft.

Pre-writing strategizing should have led Biden’s staff to ignore the memory stuff altogether, and turn the legalistic first half of the speech into an op-ed by the White House Counsel for the New York Times. That the president was reportedly livid about the report is all the more reason his staff should have protected rather than indulged him.

The lesson for young writers? Trust the process more than your principal.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #5: Get to the Point

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 20:23:51 GMT

If you don’t mind, I would just like to take this opportunity, right here at the beginning of this week’s Nib — before we dive into too many specific details — to introduce you to one of the most common and annoying habits young writers pick up at…

*Aaaaaaaand, scene!*

Feel like running into traffic? I don’t blame you. The foregoing was what we call *throat-clearing.* And it’s the worst.

Part of making your writing reader-friendly is respecting your reader’s time. Too many writers waste readers’ time by introducing their introductions rather than just writing them.

You see throat-clearing in loose, first-paragraph phrases like:

“I was just wondering…”

“I would just like to see if…”

“If you don’t mind…”

“…take this opportunity to…”

“… take a moment and…”

No, no, no. Stop all that. Just say it.

Throat-clearing never connotes the humility and deference its writers intend. It’s just annoying. No one wants to slog through half-a-page of “ahem… ahem… excuse me… pardon me” before grasping what a letter, essay, or memo is about.

Respect your readers’ time. Write directly. Write clearly. Cut down on the windup, and get on with the pitch.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #4: Sympathy for Your Reader

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 16:12:18 GMT

Writing is hard because reading is hard. It requires concentration, oftentimes even silence. If you’ve ever had to flip back a few pages in a book and re-read them because you literally can’t remember what you read five minutes ago, you understand.

Good writers, then, adopt a mindset of radical sympathy toward their readers and work to make their writing easy to read. Word choice, punctuation, paragraphing, and outlining can be properly understood as hospitality.

Don’t just invite your readers into your writing. Make them feel at home. Taken care of. Anticipate their wants, needs, and possible inconveniences and preemptively accommodate them as you plan, write, and revise your drafts.

Make your writing easy to read, and people will want to read it. It’s hard work, but it’s worth it.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #3: Lesson Zero

Fri, 26 Jan 2024 15:27:00 GMT

The first thing to understanding about writing is that it is very hard.

Most people who aspire to careers in politics see themselves as the sort of people who should write well. They’re smart. They get good grades in majors that require lots of papers. They read a lot. They assume writing should come easily to them.

But writing doesn’t come easily to anyone. Human beings aren’t made for reading and writing the way we are for talking and listening. Converting speech into written language is unnatural. It requires a lot of practice, a lot of trial-and-error, a lot of failure.

To get better, young writers have to overcome the painful reality that their writing often stinks. That their word choices are clunky. That their sentences meander. That whole drafts are terrible.

The hurdle here is psychological, not technical. Yes, that thing you just wrote may be a mess. What matters is whether you face the fact with resignation, despair, and frustration — or with defiance, curiosity, and pluck.

So what if writing is hard? Everything worth doing is. Like it or not, struggling to improve is the way to improve.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #2: Trump’s Talent for Audience Targeting

Sat, 20 Jan 2024 14:57:30 GMT

This week’s Nib is about a crucial aspect of persuasive writing that too many politicians and their staffers overlook: the audience.

Persuasive writing isn’t about what *you* want to say. It’s about how to get your reader or listener to agree with you. If you can answer “Who am I talking to?” and “What am I trying to persuade them of?” then problems like tone and word choice become much simpler.

At his best, Donald Trump — a salesman by nature and profession — excels at audience identification and targeting. Consider this excerpt from his victory speech Monday night after the Iowa Caucuses:

“We want a country of law and order. So we’re going to rebuild the capital of our country, Washington D.C. We’re gonna scrub those beautiful marble columns. And get the swastikas off them. And we’re gonna get the graffiti off them. And we’re gonna clean the streets. And we’re going to rebuild the streets. And we’re not gonna have rusted medians through the middle that are falling down into the roads where foreign dignitaries from all over the world come and they look.”

It doesn’t sound like brilliant rhetoric, right?

But: who are Donald Trump’s key 2024 audiences? To win in November, Trump needs to make inroads with two groups: (a) moderate Republicans, who agree with Trump on a lot of things but dislike *him*; and (b) moderate Democrats, who may also dislike Trump but feel let down by Biden and strongly dislike woke-ism.

See how Trump communicates to those two audiences in the excerpt above by infusing generic “law and order” messaging with specific personal and partisan energy.

That promise to “rebuild” Washington, D.C. is at once an olive branch to Republican voters still upset about January 6 *and* wizard-level trolling of the Left on the same point. Then with the line about “swastikas” and “graffiti,” Trump ties a general point about crime and public disorder to a specific charge against left-wing anti-Semitism and the urban Democrat politicians who tolerate it. Then he immediately pivots to “rusted medians” and “foreign dignitaries,” layering on top of his attack against Democrats’ incompetence and bigotry an additional indictment on *infrastructural decay* and *national ignominy.*

Few “DC People” on either side of the aisle would find this persuasive. But it’s not meant for them. Trump is talking to affluent suburban Republicans upset about January 6 and crime, and he’s talking to middle class Democrats upset about crime, woke extremism, and government competence.

In a few dozen straightforward words, in language neutral enough to that, like a dog whistle, only his audience will notice, Trump puts lead on all his targets and trolls his haters — always a bonus for him. Like Trump or not, this is layered, subtle, sophisticated persuasion here, and writers and pols on both sides of the aisle would do well to understand why.

Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #1: How to Start Constituent Letters

Sat, 13 Jan 2024 02:56:30 GMT

Of all the questions young conservatives on Capitol Hill face, the easiest to answer may be, “How do I begin a constituent letter ?”

One cannot deny the tyranny of the blank page and blinking cursor. But when answering constituent correspondence, conservatives come to the task with a philosophical life-hack at the ready. Conservatives should always begin constituent letters with the words, “Thank you.”

AEI’s Yuval Levin puts the point best (as usual): “To my mind, conservatism is gratitude. Conservatives tend to begin from gratitude for what is good and what works in our society and then strive to build on it[.]”

One of the things that really does work in our society is the bulletproof understanding -- on the left and the right, in DC and around the country -- that constituent letters must be answered. It’s one of the few concrete proofs left that Washington lawmakers work for the people and not the other way around.

Every communication congressional offices receive from everyday folks back home is a tiny investment in democracy, the Constitution, and the entire American experiment. So, all you conservative interns, staff assistants, and LCs out there: if you’re ever asked to draft a letter back to a constituent, there is only one way to begin: “Thank you…”

Until next week...