Ernest Hemingway kept a piece of writing advice taped above his desk: "The first draft of anything is shit." The advice was blunt, but the implication was practical: clarity is almost never achieved in the first attempt. It is something you impose on writing, through deliberate revision, after the ideas are down.
Most people who struggle with writing think the problem is that they do not know what to say. The actual problem is usually structural or stylistic: they know what they want to say but have not organized it for the reader's benefit, or they have written in a way that makes ideas harder to extract than they need to be. Both problems are fixable.
This guide covers the research on what makes writing clear, the structural principles that apply at every scale from sentence to document, and the specific habits that distinguish writers whose prose is consistently easy to follow from those whose prose consistently makes readers work harder than they should.
Why Clarity Matters More Than Ever
The average knowledge worker receives approximately 120 emails per day and writes extensively as part of their job. Business writing that is hard to read does not just fail to communicate -- it costs money. A Carnegie Mellon study estimated that US employees spend 23 hours per week in email, a substantial portion of which involves deciphering poorly written messages.
Clear writing is not a nicety. In organizations that run on written communication, it is the primary medium through which thinking is evaluated, decisions are made, and work gets done. A poorly written memo that forces the reader to work for the conclusion is a tax on every person who reads it.
The research on what actually makes writing clear is extensive and surprisingly consistent. It points to a small number of high-leverage interventions: sentence length, word choice, structure, and the strategic use of plain language. None of these require native genius. All of them can be learned.
The Science of Readability
Flesch Reading Ease
In 1948, Rudolf Flesch published a formula that quantifies reading difficulty. The Flesch Reading Ease score uses two variables: average sentence length (in words) and average number of syllables per word. The formula produces a score from 0 to 100:
| Score | Difficulty | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 90-100 | Very easy | Children's books |
| 70-80 | Easy | Conversational text |
| 60-70 | Standard | Newspaper writing |
| 50-60 | Fairly difficult | Professional writing |
| 30-50 | Difficult | Academic writing |
| 0-30 | Very difficult | Legal and scientific writing |
Most plain language guidelines for general audiences recommend a target score of 60-70. The US federal government's plain language guidelines, mandated by the Plain Writing Act of 2010, recommend writing at a grade 8 reading level for public-facing documents.
An important clarification: the Flesch formula measures the mechanical difficulty of processing sentences, not the depth of ideas. Complex ideas can be expressed clearly. Simple ideas can be expressed obscurely. The score is a proxy for cognitive load, not a measure of intellectual content. Writing for a grade 8 reading level does not mean dumbing down; it means removing unnecessary friction from the transfer of ideas, whatever those ideas are.
What the Research Shows About Sentence Length
The research on sentence length and comprehension is remarkably consistent. Studies of reader processing speed and accuracy show:
- Sentences under 14 words are processed easily by most readers
- Sentences of 14-22 words introduce moderate processing load
- Sentences over 25 words significantly increase cognitive load and error rates
- Sentences over 40 words are associated with high error rates even for skilled readers
The mechanism is working memory. Readers hold the beginning of a sentence in working memory while processing subsequent clauses. When a sentence runs long, early elements fade from memory before the sentence completes, requiring backtracking. Shorter sentences eliminate this problem entirely.
Average sentence length in accessible journalism (The Economist, The Atlantic) runs 18-22 words. Academic writing typically runs 25-35 words. Legal writing regularly exceeds 40 words per sentence.
Word Frequency and Processing Time
Words differ in how quickly readers process them, and the difference is substantial. Research on lexical access (the process of retrieving word meaning from memory) finds that high-frequency words -- common words used often -- are processed significantly faster than low-frequency words. The difference can be 50-100 milliseconds per word, which accumulates across a document to meaningful reading time differences.
This provides the scientific basis for the "use simple words" principle. Not because readers do not know complex words, but because common words are processed faster and with less error for everyone, including expert readers. The surgeon who writes "utilize" instead of "use" is not demonstrating expertise; they are adding 50 milliseconds per occurrence and signaling that they have not thought carefully about their reader.
Structural Principles
The Pyramid Principle: Answer First
Barbara Minto, a consultant at McKinsey in the 1970s, developed what she called the Pyramid Principle to address a persistent problem in professional writing: writers who buried their conclusions.
The traditional academic model of writing -- introduce the topic, present evidence, build toward a conclusion -- is backward for most professional contexts. Professional readers want the conclusion first. They want to know whether to read the document, what to look for, and how to evaluate the evidence before they encounter it.
Minto's structure:
- Governing thought (the answer): State your conclusion, recommendation, or key finding at the very beginning.
- Supporting arguments: Provide 2-5 main reasons or supporting points.
- Supporting data: Provide the evidence for each supporting point.
The result is that readers who have limited time get the most important information immediately. Readers who want depth can continue. The structure is forgiving in the way that bottom-up writing is not: a reader who stops after the first paragraph of a Pyramid document has the conclusion; a reader who stops after the first paragraph of a bottom-up document has only context.
This principle applies at every level of document structure:
- The first sentence of an email should state its purpose or request
- The first sentence of each paragraph should state the paragraph's main point
- The first page of a report should state the document's conclusion
"The hardest part of writing clearly is deciding what you want to say. The second hardest is saying it first." -- William Zinsser, On Writing Well
Signaling and Transitions
Readers navigate documents by using signals that tell them where they are and what to expect next. Weak writers assume readers will infer the connections between ideas. Strong writers make connections explicit.
Paragraph-level signaling: The first sentence of each paragraph should tell readers what the paragraph is about. They should not have to read the whole paragraph to find out its point.
Explicit transitions: Words like "however," "therefore," "as a result," and "in contrast" are not filler -- they carry logical information about how ideas relate. Removing them forces readers to infer the relationship, which adds cognitive load and introduces the possibility of misinterpretation.
Consistent noun use: When writers refer to the same concept with different words for variety -- "the proposal," "the initiative," "the plan," "the project" -- they force readers to track whether these are the same thing. In clear writing, the same thing gets the same name.
George Orwell's Six Rules
George Orwell's 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language" argued that bad writing is not just a stylistic failure but an ethical one -- that unclear prose serves to obscure meaning and enable dishonest communication. His six rules remain the most cited and most useful writing advice in English:
Never use a metaphor, simile, or figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Cliched language is inert. "Move the needle," "think outside the box," and "circle back" transmit information about the writer's familiarity with jargon, not about the subject.
Never use a long word where a short one will do. "Utilize" for "use." "Terminate" for "end." "Facilitate" for "help." Long words signal effort, not clarity.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Every unnecessary word is a tax on the reader. "Due to the fact that" means "because." "At this point in time" means "now." "In order to" means "to."
Never use the passive where you can use the active. Passive voice conceals agency and requires more words. "The decision was made" raises the question: by whom? "The committee decided" answers it.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Jargon is efficient for experts communicating with experts. It is exclusionary and obfuscating everywhere else.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. Rules are defaults, not laws. The goal is clear communication. When a rule impedes it, ignore the rule.
Orwell's essay is worth reading in full. His argument that political prose is deliberately obscure -- that vague, bureaucratic language protects dishonesty -- has not lost relevance. The relationship between unclear writing and unclear thinking runs in both directions.
Common Clarity Killers
Nominalization: Turning Verbs into Nouns
Nominalization is the process of turning verbs and adjectives into nouns. It produces writing that is dense, abstract, and slow to read.
Examples:
- "The implementation of the plan" vs. "implementing the plan"
- "We conducted an investigation" vs. "We investigated"
- "The consideration of options" vs. "considering options"
- "Make a decision" vs. "decide"
Nominalized writing feels formal and authoritative in a way that may appeal to writers who confuse formality with quality. But formality and clarity are different things. Nominalized prose requires more words, buries the action deeper in the sentence, and produces the specific feature of bureaucratic writing that makes it so numbing: everything feels like a thing happening to things, rather than people doing things.
The fix: identify the hidden verb and restore it.
Throat-Clearing Openings
Many writers begin documents, paragraphs, and sentences with phrases that delay the actual content:
- "It is important to note that..."
- "One thing to consider is..."
- "There are several factors that..."
- "In today's rapidly changing world..."
- "As we all know..."
These openings are the written equivalent of saying "Um" before speaking. They do not convey information. They buy time for writers who have not decided how to start. Delete them and begin with the content itself.
Excessive Hedging
Precision is valuable; excessive hedging is not. "It might possibly be suggested that perhaps..." is not more accurate than "it seems that" -- it is just longer and less confident.
Professional writers use hedges deliberately and sparingly: when genuine uncertainty should be conveyed, a hedge is accurate and useful. When a hedge is added reflexively to soften any claim, it adds words without adding information.
Ambiguous Pronouns
"The manager told the analyst that she would be responsible for the report."
Who is "she"? The sentence is ambiguous. The fix requires rewriting: "The manager told the analyst that the analyst would be responsible" or restructuring entirely. Ambiguous pronoun reference is one of the most common sources of misunderstanding in professional writing, and the fix is almost always simple.
The Buried Lede
"Burying the lede" is a journalism term for putting the most important information deep in a piece rather than at the top. It is the structural opposite of the Pyramid Principle, and it is the default structure of much academic and bureaucratic writing.
If a reader stops after the first paragraph, have they received the most important information? If not, the structure is likely wrong for most professional purposes.
Plain Language in Practice
The plain language movement in government and legal writing has produced research and guidance on making official communications comprehensible to the people they affect. The US Plain Writing Act of 2010 requires federal agencies to use plain language in documents addressed to the public. The European Union, the UK, and many other governments have adopted similar requirements.
The core plain language principles:
Use "you" and active verbs: "You must file within 30 days" is clearer than "Applications must be submitted within 30 days." The first version tells readers directly what they must do.
Use the simplest accurate word: "Help" not "assist." "Start" not "commence." "Find out" not "ascertain."
Use bullet points for lists of three or more items: Inline lists ("the report must include the date, the author, the project number, and the approval signature") are harder to process than bulleted lists.
Use headings to organize documents longer than one page: Readers scan before they read. Headings allow scanning. Documents without headings require reading from the beginning to find anything.
Write sentences that average 14-18 words: Not every sentence should be 14 words. Variety in sentence length improves rhythm. But the average matters.
The plain language research shows these principles work. A 2011 study by the UK Department for Work and Pensions found that rewriting benefit letters in plain language reduced call center contacts by 20% -- people understood the letters and did not need to call to ask what they meant. The economic benefit was substantial.
The Revision Process
First drafts are almost never clear. Clarity is imposed through revision. Professional writers typically spend more time revising than drafting.
A systematic revision process for clarity:
First pass: structure. Does the document start with the most important information? Does each section and paragraph begin with its main point? Is the logical flow explicit?
Second pass: sentences. Are there sentences over 25 words that could be broken in two? Are there passive constructions that could be active? Are there nominalizations that could be restored to verbs?
Third pass: words. Are there long words that could be short words? Are there jargon terms the reader may not know? Are there hedges that could be removed?
Fourth pass: cuts. Can anything be removed without losing meaning? A document that says the same thing in fewer words is always better than one that says it in more.
Reading aloud is one of the most effective revision tools available. The places where you stumble, slow down, or run out of breath before reaching a period are the places where your readers will struggle. If you cannot read it fluently, they will not be able to read it easily.
Writing Clearly Is Thinking Clearly
The deepest point about clear writing is that it cannot be separated from clear thinking. Writing exposes thinking. A sentence that is hard to understand is usually hard to understand because the idea behind it is not yet clear to the writer.
This is why the revision process is not purely cosmetic. When you struggle to make a sentence clear, you often discover that you do not fully know what you want to say. The discipline of clarity forces precision of thought that the speaker's tool -- spoken language with its hedges, restarts, and supplementary context -- does not demand.
William Zinsser, whose "On Writing Well" has been in print since 1976, put it directly: "Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly can write clearly, about anything at all."
The inverse is also true. Unclear writing usually reflects unclear thinking. The remedy is not more words or more sophisticated vocabulary but more time spent figuring out what you actually mean -- then saying it, simply, as directly as you can.
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes writing clear?
Clear writing presents ideas in the order readers need them, uses the simplest words that accurately convey the meaning, keeps sentences short enough to hold in working memory, connects ideas explicitly so readers do not have to infer the links, and structures content so the most important information comes first. Research on readability consistently shows that shorter sentences, common words, and active voice significantly improve comprehension speed and accuracy. Clarity is not about dumbing down; it is about respecting the reader's attention and making the transfer of ideas as frictionless as possible.
What is the Flesch Reading Ease score?
The Flesch Reading Ease score is a formula developed by Rudolf Flesch in 1948 that estimates how difficult a piece of writing is to read. It is calculated from average sentence length and average number of syllables per word. Scores range from 0 (very difficult) to 100 (very easy). Standard writing scores around 60-70; academic writing often scores below 30. Flesch also developed the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, which expresses readability as a US school grade level. Most plain language guidelines recommend writing for a grade 8-10 reading level for general audiences -- not because readers are less intelligent, but because simpler language is faster to process for everyone.
What is the Pyramid Principle in writing?
The Pyramid Principle, developed by Barbara Minto at McKinsey in the 1970s, holds that written communication should begin with the answer or conclusion, then provide supporting arguments, then provide the data underlying each argument. This top-down structure, which Minto calls 'answer first,' matches how most professional readers want to receive information: they want the conclusion immediately, and they want the supporting evidence available if they need it. The principle applies to memos, reports, emails, and presentations. Writing that builds through evidence to a conclusion at the end forces readers to hold context in memory without knowing where they are going.
What are George Orwell's rules for clear writing?
George Orwell's six rules, from his 1946 essay 'Politics and the English Language,' are: 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; and break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. The final rule is important: Orwell was not laying down absolute laws but identifying default habits that produce clearer writing when followed.
Why is passive voice a problem in writing?
Passive voice obscures who is doing what, which is the most important information in most sentences. 'Mistakes were made' conceals agency in a way 'We made mistakes' does not. Passive constructions also typically require more words and take longer to process cognitively. Research on sentence processing consistently shows that active sentences are understood faster and more accurately than passive ones. The practical rule is to write in active voice as the default and use passive voice deliberately when the actor is genuinely unknown or when the receiver of the action is more important than the actor -- which is less often than most writers think.