Your style is the manner in which you express your ideas. That is the words you use and the order in which you use them.
Your aim should always be for clarity. Your style should be an attractive and as easy to read as you can make it. When I say attractive, I mean that at least it should be attractive to you and sound good when you read it yourself. If you don’t like your style, then it is most unlikely that anybody else will either. But, remember this all your writing life, whatever style you develop it should be unique to you. Of course, you can learn a lot by studying the style of other writers. Even so, do not attempt to write exactly like them. It would only be, at the best, as second-rate imitation.
Your style must develop naturally from within yourself. Neither I nor anybody else can impose a style upon you and say it will suffice you for the rest of your writing life. It is unlikely that you will have a perfect, natural style from the start. It has to be worked at and honed until you produce attractive prose. It takes time to develop a style, too. Practice leads to a facility to write and, of course, the more you practice and write, the more confident and better you will become.
In eighteenth century Jonathan Swift, the famous novelist, commented on writing style as follows: Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style.
Here the 5 C’s – correctness, conciseness, clarity, coherence and completeness should be considered and be applied in writing of non-fiction.
- Correctness – your facts must be accurate and your use of the English language must also be correct.
- Conciseness – this does not necessarily mean brevity. You can write a long article and still be concise. What it does mean is avoiding irrelevant facts, unnecessary words and long-winded explanations.
- Clearness – avoid ambiguity. Make what you write clear to your reader by giving him all the necessary information and expressing it in a way he will be sure to understand.
The readers should not have to read a sentence or paragraph more than once in order to understand its meaning. If your meaning is obscure readers will not spend time puzzling over it. They will turn to something else which can be understood easily, that is if the work is even published in the first place.
Clarity in writing must be preceded by clarity of thought. If you are not sure what you hope to say you cannot expect to express your meaning in the correct words. The better you are at thinking, the more skilled you should be at writing. You should have a clear of what you want to say at the start, middle and end of an article or story when you sit down to begin it.
- Coherence – this means presenting your ideas in an orderly, logical way so that your reader is able to follow your reasoning process.
- Completeness – ensure that your reader has all the facts that are available without being burdened with what is unnecessary or trivial.
