Clarity

If there's one writing quality that Nuts and Bolts emphasizes more than any other, it's clarity. Being clear in your thoughts and your words—saying what you actually intend to say, and doing it in such a way that your reader understands you—is your highest duty as an expository writer, more important than beauty or elegance or even originality. Without clarity you're not really communicating, just going through the motions.

　　And yet many students use a writing style that makes clarity difficult or impossible to achieve: instead of short active verbs （to convey action）, subjects that match up with their actors （to bring the main action into the central subject-verb structure of their sentences）, concision （to keep the reader focused on what really matters）, and a sustained flow of sentences from a single point of view （to keep the story unfolding in a way the reader can follow easily）, many students choose the opposite approach on each of these points: passive voice, being verbs, nominalizations, wordiness, and herky-jerky jumps in point of view and time. This wordy, inert style makes it hard for the writer to convey what she means—or even to know what she means, as Goethe suggests.