Word selection: A new principle of emphasis in near-mode

”Never use a long word where a short one will do,” is often repeated and seemingly unobjectionable advice, whose failures reveal additional principles of emphasis. Previous entries have treated far-mode emphasis, but there is also a near-mode form: emphasis by word length.

Near-mode and far-mode is shorthand for concrete and abstract construal processes in Trope and Liberman’s construal-level theory. To extend construal-level theory to phenomena beyond those studied in the laboratory, the following distinction is particularly useful: whereas near-mode adds components, far-mode averages them. (Weaver, K., Garcia, S. M., & Schwarz, N., The Presenter’s Paradox (2012). Far-mode’s proportionality seeking is the foundation of the brevity principle of emphasis. A short word will emphasize each of its component phonemes more than will a long word. This pertains to Euphony, but words are the most elementary meaningful units. Because of the additive character of near-mode, readers expect longer words to contain more information. This inference is supported by language evolution, which some researchers conclude enforces standards of communicative efficiency under which long words are less predictable than short—by that measure, conveying more information.

Readers will expect more information from longer words. Short words typically have the merit of fluency, but a judicious dispensation of long words will prepare readers for informative words, which they might dwell on a few milliseconds longer.

An example of a word choice based on its length in this entry occurred in writing this sentence: “Far-mode’s proportionality seeking is the foundation of the brevity principle of emphasis.” I considered this wording: “the brevity principle governing far-mode emphasis, but a common preposition's sufficiency shows that it doesn’t convey rich information.

A related half-truth: “Short words are powerful.” The kernel of truth in this falsehood is found in a countersignaling process: when it is very obvious that a word is important, its importance is further enhanced by omitting the signal (long word), its superfluousness itself serving as a signal of heightened importance.

Near-mode emphasis also answers another question of editorial choice: when to use phrasal verbs rather than simple verbs. Simple verbs are favored for Concision and fluency, whereas phrasal verbs lend an air of informality. But the phrasal verb occasionally serves a legitimate purpose of emphasizing the predicate. Consider this sentence: The visitor entered the office and defenestrated the occupant’s cat. The longer “threw the cat out of the window” is an example of the minority of cases where the longer verb is more fluent because it mirrors the term’s informativeness.

Tight writing is generally better than loose writing. Why? The most obvious reason is Concision, but the weightier factor is fluency—an aspect of Clarity. This analysis of near-mode emphasis explains the greater fluency of tight writing, which is due to omission of misleading cues about the informativeness of particular words. This theory of near-mode emphasis clarifies the distinction between emphases in the two modes. Near-mode emphasis concerns the amount of information; far-mode emphasis, degree of relevance.

Univocality, the highest stage of clarity

The conquest of ambiguity

Language is inherently ambiguous, but the classic-prose writing style entails minimizing conceptual ambiguity. Because precluding foreseeable confusion is the essence of communication, the highest form of clarity is univocality (unambiguousness). This isn’t widely understood, as this anecdote illustrates:

In a Stanford artificial intelligence theory class, while the prof tried to present relatively precise claims, students constantly asked if he was really trying to say distantly related claims X, Y, or Z. My exasperated friend cried "Why can’t they just treat it like math – assume nothing you are not told you can assume!" ("Against Disclaimers.")

To treat natural language as if it were an artificial language, as the anecdotal lecturer demanded, is an unhelpful suggestion because readers can comprehend only by drawing on information that seems relevant, and apparent relevance depends on the reader’s background information and intelligence. But it also depends on the writer’s univocal expression. Since more able to detect them, the intelligent reader may be particularly confused by ambiguous cues.

The quest for univocality isn’t confined to avoiding words with unwanted associations (and issuing the necessary disclaimers if that isn't possible). It rests primarily with emphasis, through means such as the new topic/stress principle, the brevity principle, and unobtrusive repetition. It also involves avoiding every manner of self-contradiction.

Varieties of clarity

The great irony in contemporary writing advice is that all extol “clarity” but none is clear on the term’s meaning. The consequence of the nearly universal failure to appreciate the different varieties of clarity causes writers to ignore some of them—particularly the most central, univocality.

These are the three varieties of clarity in writing and their definitions:

Fluency: Understanding the argument’s detail with minimal effort.

Rigor: Understanding the argument’s detail with high effort.

Univocality: Conceptually unambiguous understanding at all effort levels.

These distinctions are pragmatic rather than logical. They describe varieties of clarity furthered by different strategic choices, which advance one variety of clarity and often undermine another.

Clarity and construal level

You may be struck more by the dissimilarities between the varieties of clarity, and you will then wonder why anyone would use the same term for all of them. The common element in all varieties of clarity is their reference to the amount of relevant information conveyed, the distinctions between them concerning the amount of effort required (low or high) or the kind of information (detail or disambiguation). One obstacle is that we seem only to think of clarity as meaning one or another of its varieties, the most common interpretation of “clarity” being fluency: clear writing is understood with ease.  

An analogy might help. A drawn picture will show clarity of the fluent variety when the details can be taken in with a glance; of the rigorous variety to the extent it contains all relevant information, leaving little to guesswork or intuition: and of  the univocal variety if it doesn’t look like anything other than intended.

The varieties of Clarity have a peculiar structure predictable from  construal-level theory (as I’ve construed it). The theory varieties of clarity can be generated by crossing required effort with construal level:

Since effort—allocated in near mode—doesn’t vary in far mode, univocality depends only on construal level being abstract. The features of each variety of clarity point to how each relates to effort level and construal level. Cognitive fluency is promoted by simplicity; I’ve previously discussed its limitations and offsets. Rigor must be applied selectively. Readers use subjection to rigor as a guide to meaning, so being unnecessarily rigorous about some point distorts. Rigor is governed by two of the philosopher Paul Grice’s Maxims:

1. Be as informative as required for the purpose of the communication.
2. Don’t be more informative than is required.

Disclaimers reclaimed

Univocality is the highest stage of clarity which—its skills developed later—comes to govern the other varieties. I’ll conclude with the starting topic, the disclaimer, which has been the victim of some bad connotations due to its legalistic abuse. Disclaimers serving only to comply with (supposed) legal requirements are deplorable from the standpoint of univocality: conceptually superfluous disclaimers are not innocuous, as they distort the intended meaning.

Whether due to skill limitations, audience resistance, or nuanced message, sometimes univocality is furthered by disclaimers. Artificial intelligence, the anecdote’s subject, exemplifies a topic subject to both resistance and preconception, where conceptual disclaimers further univocality. An example of a disclaimer occurs in the present entry under the subhead “Varieties of clarity”: “These distinctions are pragmatic rather than logical.” Readers can judge whether it was helpful.

Constructing sentences for precise emphasis: The fundamental principle of advanced writing

A legal-writing authority advises:

 View your reader as a companionable friend—someone with a warm sense of humor and a love of simple directness. Write like you're actually talking to that friend, but talking with enough leisure to frame your thoughts concisely and interestingly. John R. Trimble, Writing with Style 73 (2d ed. 2000). (HT: Bryan Garner, Usage Tip of the Day, November 12, 2013.)

Some writers hail Trimble’s advice as profound, while others ignore it as meaningless, but I hold it is quite wrong. Legal-brief writing (like other efforts at exerting intellectual influence) differs from conversation not just in degree: influential intellectual writing differs from conversation in its guiding formal virtue. Whereas good conversation is (or seems) spontaneous, good writing is clear.

One way the difference manifests is that competent writers force important new ideas to the sentence’s end. The last word or tight phrase preceding the point of syntactic closure (period, semicolon, or colon) is termed by Joseph M. Williams (Style: Toward Clarity and Grace) the stress position; and according to another student of sentence structure, George D. Gopen (A new approach to legal writing), failure to exploit the stress position is legal-writers’ single greatest formal weakness: out of hundreds of lawyers Gopen has trained, the stress position was properly used by a handful. Proper use of the stress position is at the threshold of competent writing, but misuse of the stress position doesn’t always sound bad. Locating trivia in the stress position produces limp sentences, but often lawyers fill the stress position with misleading substantive language. When a document contains sentences with misleading emphases, readers—due to conflicting cues about what’s important—find the document’s meaning hazy.

The stress position isn’t unique to written English; spoken English sentences end in higher pitch, but in spoken English, stress position is subordinate to nonverbal cues. It is also subordinate to standard word order, which conversation usually follows because reorganized sentences sound contrived, violating the conversational norm favoring spontaneity. Take as an example the previous paragraph’s final sentence, which trades moderate disfluency for high clarity:

When a document contains sentences with misleading emphases, readers—due to conflicting cues about what’s important—find its meaning hazy.

This is too contrived for good conversation; without the engineered word order, we might say:

Readers find a document’s meaning hazy, due to conflicting cues about what’s important, when it contains sentences with misleading emphases.

The talk version beats the clear version in cognitive fluency (and in apparent spontaneity), but it loses in clarity (partly) because of its misuse of the stress position. Hazy meaning is the sentence’s key contribution, whereas the talk version stresses misleading emphases, an idea previously introduced. Stress position isn’t the only way reorganized sentence structure departs from talk, but Gopen’s experience indicates that, in legal writing, it’s the most ignored. Exploiting the stress position requires sentences differing from talk.

Haziness takes a toll on all argumentative writing; in abstract endeavors, it detracts from thought itself. With clarity being much about emphasis, reorganizing sentence structure is a medium through which clear writing deepens thought. (“Plain-talk writing” is inherently inimical to clear thought.)

In the next entries, I’ll discuss how and why the importance of Williams and Gopen’s discovery of the stress position is almost invariably missed by writing authorities. Resistance to exploiting the stress position will be seen rooted in a misguided attachment to the pragmatics of talk. We will also see that clear writing’s difference from talk has implications for … you guessed it, the comma. It supplies the last big piece to the comma puzzle.

Emphasis by brevity of sentences, paragraphs, and sections

To emphasize an idea, put it in a short sentence. To emphasize a sentence, put it in a short paragraph. To emphasize a paragraph, put it in a short section. In general,

Readers will give information relative emphasis in inverse proportion to its density.

I haven’t seen this principle articulated, and it only became apparent to me through the lens of construal-level theory; although the tip to use very short sentences for occasional emphasis is a commonplace, to use long sentences for de-emphasis isn’t. That the principle hasn’t been generalized might be because the effect is often subtle: it is only one of at least five means of emphasis, but a more interesting reason that the effect has gone unnoticed will emerge, in that the construal processes explaining emphasis by brevity also explain why writers aren’t apt to notice.

I’ll begin with an example at the sentence level. Compare this very long sentence to the constituent propositions:

With capitalism’s evolution, a decreasing proportion of the value produced is constituted of labor directly employed, an increasing proportion from labor already concretized in capital goods, since mechanization of production is the fundamental means to increasing economic efficiency, where capital goods contribute to the value of a product to the extent they are consumed in its production. (Context: Juridical Coherence.)

The simple ideas the sentence contains, such as that mechanization of production is the fundamental means to increasing economic efficiency, are commonplace ideas others have expounded at length. To subordinate their importance to the ideas I deemed novel, I demoted them by including them in one complex sentence.

Construal-level theory explains why emphasis by brevity works, by the low granularity of far-mode. The theory predicts and experiments find that reading occurs in far-mode, whereas writing occurs in near-mode (I conclude that the latter is lamentable), where far-mode apprehends in global units as we see from afar. In far-mode, each sentence has equal value; the more thoughts occurring in a sentence, the less the relative value of each. The theory also explains why emphasis by relative brevity isn’t common knowledge. Even while writing in far-mode, the writer is nearer his work than the reader because the self-other axis is a major dimension of construal level, and in near-mode, the longer sentence is more important than the shorter, rather than the reverse—near-mode adds when far-mode averages.

The phenomenon of emphasis by brevity confirms some standard writing advice and rebuts other standard advice. Commentators have expressed surprise at the degree to which variation in sentence length improves comprehension, suggesting more is at work than maintaining interest by variety. Varying sentence length makes writing clear by informing the reader how important the writer regards each component idea.

The misguided advice includes limiting sentences to one idea, implying writers should avoid compound sentences (and semicolons). Compound sentences serve to de-emphasize the ideas they contain, so their avoidance sacrifices emphatic contrast. Other misguided advice concerns paragraphs. Consistently short paragraphs have the same leveling effect on importance as consistently short sentences. And routine use of separate paragraphs for transitions between paragraphs is bad practice because the merely transitional usually doesn’t merit emphasis.

For a document’s sections, one all-too-common practice gravely offends against construal-level theory. A conclusion is almost mandatory in legal briefs and is necessarily short, but nonetheless, the emphasis it receives is often bestowed on a platitude with an initial “whereas,” in all caps no less. The better practice is to reserve a memorable idea for the short concluding section.

Emphasis: Prosody or Grammar

Various devices can impart emphasis:

1. Emphatic and de-emphatic language
2. Specialized punctuation (dash and colon)
3. Short-sentence exceptions
4. Typography 
5. End (stress) position in sentence
6. Hierarchic grammatical relationship (supposedly)

Numbers 5 and 6 are this entry’s concern.

The end position in a sentence was dubbed the stress position by Joseph M. Williams, according to whom the two most important parts of a sentence are its beginning, where the reader expects the sentence’s topic grounded in old information, and its end, where the reader expects new information. Written language’s acknowledgement of the orally emphatic end position is a concession to prosody; sentence position rather than grammatical relationships determine written as well as spoken emphasis. Although grammar trumps prosody on punctuation, prosody trumps grammar on emphasis.

Joseph M. Williams best explains the connection between sentence position and emphasis, but he isn’t alone in concluding that the end position is emphatic. Citing six supporting authorities, Bryan Garner counsels, “To write forcefully, end your sentences with a punch.” (The Winning Brief, 36.)

To Garner I turn now for the view that subordination connotes de-emphasis. Garner replaces the meaningless demand to limit every sentence to a single idea with the formalistic one to limit them to a single main idea, which Garner equates with the sentence’s main clause—where Garner advocates putting important information. For Garner, subordination is de-emphasis:

As Trimble suggests, convert a “starveling”—a short sentence that says little—into a subordinate clause and merge it with another sentence. (The Winning Brief, 40.)

Elsewhere, Garner derogates subordinate clauses when he advises giving them separate sentences if they state important arguments.

One reason to question that grammatical relationship imparts emphasis is that its doing so conflicts with number 5, using the end position for emphasis, since that's where (supposedly de-emphasized) subordinate clauses usually occur. Garner’s four examples of combining sentences by subordination avoid the conflict by moving the subordinate clause to the beginning. But this surprising word order shouldn’t be routine.

Putting the main clause in the stress position, as in Garner’s rewrites, comports with Garner’s teaching that the main clause should contain information more important than the subordinate clause contains. But the following example shows that the subordinate clause can rightly be more informative, while Garner’s analysis, equating “subordinate” with “less important,” leads to putting it not in the most forceful position at the sentence’s end. Garner’s rewrites reveal the problem with Garner’s approach: a subordinate clause may properly contain a sentence’s most important information, and then it usually belongs at the sentence’s end. Consider one of Garner’s rewrites:

The original. Third, there are no extraordinary circumstances to support setting aside the court’s judgment. Consequently, there is no basis either to reconsider the Court’s decision or to grant Reynolds leave to amend his complaint.

Garner’s rewrite. Third, in the absence of extraordinary circumstances, the Court should not reconsider its decision or grant Reynolds leave to amend his complaint.

Garner misplaces the emphasis. Instead, stress-locate the subordinate structure:

My rewrite. Third, the Court should not reconsider its decision or grant Reynolds leave to amend his complaint in the absence of extraordinary circumstances.

Despite its subordinate grammatical status, “in the absence of extraordinary circumstances” receives the greatest emphasis. This seems right, since it’s a trivial move from no extraordinary circumstances to the lack of basis to reconsider.

Garner’s approach reveals the harm of equating subordination with lesser importance. If, like Garner, you also recognize that the final element is stressed, you’ll be reluctant to put subordinate elements at the end of sentences, with two adverse consequences: 1) you’ll overutilize a sentence pattern that doesn’t start with the subject, and 2) you’ll underutilize the stress position.

The language has good reason to accord emphasis to the stress position rather than to main clauses; grammatical hierarchy has another function, that of expressing factual and logical dependence. In the example above, “No exceptional circumstances” presents as a condition limiting a legal rule, and the rule belongs in the main clause because it's logically fundamental. But the condition, “no extraordinary circumstances,” is the argument’s real point, and it belongs in the stress position, despite being grammatically subordinate.

The dialectic of clarity: Cognitive fluency vies with cohesion

Joseph M. Williams, my favorite writing authority, advises:

Some argue that the harder we have to work to understand what we read, the more deeply we think and the better we understand. Everyone should be happy to know that no evidence supports so foolish a claim, and substantial evidence contradicts it. (Williams, "Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace" (9th ed. 2006) p. 221.) [HT: Vlastimil Vohánka, Comment to Cognitive Fluency: Simpler Isn’t Always Better.]

Williams’s summation is outdated after researchers reported that difficult texts promote better learning. (See Diemand-Yauman, C., et al., "Fortune favors the bold (and the italicized): Effects of disfluency on educational outcomes." (2010) Cognition.) Williams errs because he confuses Clarity, which measures the likelihood that the message succeeds, with fluency, which measures the effort the reader must expend to receive the message.

Social-psychological research points to two reasons for the divergence between Clarity and cognitive fluency (also called simplicity or cognitive ease). First, some matters are more intelligible and some beliefs more malleable when they engage an abstract (or “far”) construal level rather than a concrete (or “near”) construal level. Then, disfluent items will be more comprehensible. (“Construal-level theory: Matching linguistic register to the case's granularity,” in this blog, and “A taxonomy of political ideologies based on construal-level theory,” in Juridical Coherence, discuss construal-level theory.)

Second and more important practically, a trade-off between fluency and cohesion should discourage writers from always opting for the most fluent sentences, which must be bought at the expense of cohesion. The second reason explains disfluent clarity in legal writing better than the first because the writer should approach messages calling for abstract construal amelioratively, by imposing greater cohesion or greater Concision to complexify the text.

Joseph M. Williams himself best pinpoints the tension between fluency and cohesion.

The problem—and the challenge—of English prose is that, with every sentence we write, we have to strike the best compromise between the principles of local clarity and directness and the principles of cohesion that fuse separate sentences [ideas] into a whole discourse. But in that compromise, we must give priority to those features of style that make our discourse seem cohesive, those features that help the reader organize separate sentences [ideas] into a single, unified whole. (Williams, Style: Towards Clarity and Grace (1995) p. 48 [emphasis added].)

My change—“ideas” for “sentences”—emphasizes that consolidating the information contained in several sentences into a single sentence can contribute to cohesion.

The diagram below depicts the interactions leading from their causes to the two substantive Writing Virtues. (I save for another day the interaction between cohesion and omission, causing Concision).

Open in separate window

The diagram shows that writers must balance fluency and cohesion for Clarity; omission and cohesion for Concision. The centrality of cohesion, which contributes to both Clarity and Concision, helps explain why Williams is correct to stress cohesion over fluency (“local clarity”).

Confusion of fluency with Clarity—or at least, emphasis of fluency over cohesion—is the main technical deficiency promoted by the “plain writing” school.

“For Who [sic] the Bell Tolls”: Who-Whom and the native-speaker dogma in descriptivist linguistics

Usage of "whom" instead of "who" for grammatical objects is declining in written communication and has almost vanished from oral communication. Should writers continue using "whom"?

The Writing Virtues framework provides standards for assessing this disputed issue, which concerns Clarity. Warranting use until it has become so rare its presence distracts, each semantic and syntactic distinction the language affords can help readers grasp the writer’s intention precisely and quickly. Sentences with whom for grammatical objects are more cognitively fluent than sentences with whom replaced by who: the distinction informs the reader earlier of the word’s grammatical role. Whom isn’t distracting in legal writing, and unless the m receives butler-like stress, it’s not distracting even in ordinary talk. Writers cripple themselves when they abandon a distinction that’s neither redundant nor distracting.

The dispute on the fate of whom and the best practices concerning its use arose when Twitter announced a feature called “Who to follow." Not being a reader or writer of Tweets, I abstain on whether Twitter ought call it “Whom to follow,” but I contest some of the claims made by descriptivist linguists, who would prematurely erase whom from the lexicon. The key issue in this debate should be Clarity, but neither side realized it; none related usage to the cognitive-fluency research, which demonstrates that modest changes in reading ease produce dramatic effects on retention and persuasiveness.

Besides possible ignorance about the cognitive-fluency research, whom’s antagonists seem biased against whom due to how they classify it. They treat the who-whom rule as what I call a hyper-grammatical rule; in fact, they’ve applied the term. But hyper-grammatical rules—such as the rules not to start a sentence with a conjunction or end one with a preposition—are Formalities, whose occasionally necessary observance muddies the message, whereas whom clarifies it by marking a syntactic distinction.

Their discussion of this point reveals a certain dogma among descriptivist linguists. Because whom is used rarely in speech, writers must sometimes expend a moment thinking about which form to use; but the descriptivists claim that native speakers intuitively know their language’s grammar. This descriptivist contention is unpersuasive because many grammatical distinctions sometimes require a moment’s thought. The similar distinction between I and me fails to be entirely intuitive, although—unlike who-whom—it’s still common in talk. And a verb’s number can be unintuitive, so writers may err on subject-verb agreement.

Descriptivists commonly offer a compromise: only use whom after a preposition. The compromise illustrates the neglect of Clarity: when used after a preposition, the whom form informs less than it does when the preposition ends the sentence. If the main complaint about whom is that it makes writers self-conscious, then the best solution for writers could be always using whom in the conventional manner, as inconsistency induces hesitation. Writers of German or other highly inflected languages don’t hesitate in speaking their language’s pronoun forms.

Elegant variation: A pseudo-solution for repeated words, not repeated concepts

Rarely do positions on writing's disputed issues collide head on, but Mark Nichol's post, "7 Sentences Energized by Elegant Variation," advocates the elegant variation—avoiding proximal repetition by replacing the repeated words with synonyms—despised by writing teachers, who warn students against enticement by variety and euphony when they compromise clarity. Legal-writing teacher Wayne Schiess writes, "Even in other legal writing [besides drafting], precision and clarity matter, and since elegant variation can lead to imprecision and confusion, it is to be avoided. It makes readers stop to figure out what you're referring to."

Although elegant variation flops worst in legal writing, advisors on general writing agree with Schiess. Fowler inveighed against this "incurable vice" of "the minor novelists and the reporters." In Economical Writing, Deidre N. McCloskey defines elegant variation and discourages its use: "Simply put, elegant variation is using many words to mean one thing. For example: 'History is concerned not only with what happened but also with why events turned out the way they did.' The reader will interpret that 'what happened' and 'events [that] turned out the way they did' as two different things, when in fact they are the same thing."

Why does Mark Nichol disagree? Because he accepts the conventional analysis, that elegant variation's practitioners sacrifice clarity for a bit of "elegance"; he believes that uneuphonic repetition is the main problem elegant variation misguidedly addresses. This ignores the more basic problem of repeated concepts, untouched by elegant variation and illustrated by the revisions I reject.

Unenergized sentence: “Finding a job at 55 is much harder than finding a job in your 40s.”

Mark's revision: “Finding a job at 55 is much harder than landing one in your 40s.”

My version: Finding a job at 55 is much harder than in your 40s.

Mark's revision implies that landing a job, as opposed to finding one, is for younger aspirants. The real problem with the first sentence is using a single concept twice when once will do. You don't need to repeat the concept of finding/landing.

The company is launching a new shelter magazine aimed at women in their 30s, while American Media is developing a shelter magazine for women in their 20s and 30s.

The company is launching a new shelter magazine aimed at thirty something women, while American Media is developing a home-themed title for those in their 20s and 30s.

The company is launching a new shelter magazine aimed at thirty something women, while American Media prepares a similar offering for those in their 20s and 30s.

Mark gets rid of the repeated concept of "women," but in the last clause he substitutes a different term for the concept of a shelter magazine.

Mark's next correction is an egregious example of elegant variation.

Administrators requested waivers for regular students, special-education students, adult students, and students in continuation schools

Administrators requested waivers for regular students, special-education pupils, adult learners, and kids in continuation schools.

Administrators requested waivers for regular, special-education, and adult students as well as those attending continuation schools.

Students, pupils, and learners are alternative names for the same repeated concept, however labeled.

While noting that it's a solution to different problem, let's end with Mark's best revision, which eliminates repeated words without creating confusion.

When Brubeck chauffeured Milhaud, who didn’t drive, to the 1947 premiere, the composer drove the young musician to, as he said, ‘be true to your instincts’ and ‘sound like who you really are.

When Brubeck chauffeured Milhaud, who didn’t drive, to the 1947 premiere, the composer pushed the young musician to, as he said, ‘be true to your instincts’ and ‘sound like who you really are.'

Pushed replaces drove, a revision improving clarity, not just euphony, because the two instances of drove are different concepts. You should represent the same concept with a single word to avoid reiteration, but, as here, you should use different words for different concepts.

The that – which rule: Cure or cause of uncertain meaning

One topic in social psychology concerns behavior reactions when strongly held irrational expectations are disconfirmed; the beliefs may paradoxically strengthen. Remarkably, rules of grammar—such as our topic, the that – which rule—can be the subjects of these strong beliefs. Attorneys sometimes worry that violating one of these imaginary rules of grammar will prejudice judges against them, but believers—as we'll call those who contend the that – which rule governs grammar or usage—don't readily notice disconfirming evidence, and a believing judge won't notice yours. The proof is that when confronted with disconfirmation, believers express shock—not at their own credulity but at the enormity committed upon the English language.

Legal-writing authority Wayne Schiess, I was surprised to learn, strongly upholds the that – which rule, forbidding the use of which without a preceding comma to start a relative clause. (See http://tinyurl.com/yamenoc and http://tinyurl.com/ycz7hvk.) A reader brought Wayne's attention to the violation of this supposed grammar rule in Uniform Commercial Code section 2 – 714:

Where the buyer has accepted goods and given notification (subsection (3) of Section 2 – 607) he may recover as damages for any non-conformity of tender the loss resulting in the ordinary course of events from the seller's breach as determined in any manner which is reasonable.

Wayne's informant stared at UCC, § 2 – 714, most of the day, but he apparently never considered that his discovery controverted the supposed rule. Wayne agreed with his reader about the supposed which error; that should replace which, Wayne instructed, and with Wayne's help, I understand what drives this usage convention. When which appears without preceding comma, believers feel uncertain about the writer's intent, the uncertainty arising from English grammar's reliance on the comma to distinguish nonrestrictive clauses, hence on the omission of a comma to distinguish restrictive clauses. Since it's inherently harder to avoid omission errors than commission errors, the believer wants the added security afforded by confirming the comma's omission.

The rule provides the reader with greater confidence that the author intended a restrictive clause and didn't carelessly omit a comma, but the reader is unlikely to notice and question your meaning unless you err. Believers (probably a small minority of legal readers) derive a sense of security from authorial obedience to the that – which rule only when they are made insecure by deliberately applying the misguided rule.

The subtle distinction between “that” and “which”

Relative pronouns that and which, usually taken for synonyms, differ subtly in sense; distinguishing their uses improves Clarity. Professor Geoffrey K. Pullum, who seems to have first noticed the difference, challenges the that-which rule, whose proponents assume these pronouns mean exactly the same thing; Pullum observes which is used more for conveying new or indefinite information in the pronoun's relative clause and that for established or definite information, but he reports only a mild statistical trend. (See http://tinyurl.com/yjnhhc7) Pullum's basis for distinguishing that from which contradicts the that-which rule, most widely recommended but designed for copy editors' convenience. The copy-editor's solution uses which to start descriptive clauses, that for restrictive clauses; that's occurrence confirms that the writer intended no comma before the relative clause.

Either the meaning distinction between that and which isn't weighty — Pullum's apparent view — or Pullum has missed the distinction's essence by recognizing a correlate. A more exact way to construe the that-which distinction applies which to parenthetical restrictive clauses, that to nonparenthetical ones. Since usage guides mistakenly equate "nonrestrictive" (or "descriptive") with "parenthetic," the notion of a parenthetic restrictive clause may seem nonsensical, but "parenthetic" and "nonrestrictive" name partly correlated but distinct linguistic properties . Restrictiveness concerns whether the modifier changes the reference class of the term modified; parenthesis concerns whether the information is incidental. Parenthesis admits of degrees; restrictiveness affects comma placement.

When instincts for pronoun choice fail, a writer can find guidance in the parenthesis test. Parentheses (the punctuation marks), like dashes, aren't confined to syntactic units. To apply this test, enclose the restrictive relative clause in parentheses. If the resulting sentence makes sense, then which is your choice, despite the absence of a comma. Here's an example of which being used restrictively but parenthetically.

An Originalist judge would likely rule that the patriotic originators, having won a war to preserve the Union, would not have intended to provide a law-breaking incentive which yielded no offsetting gain for the extant inhabitants.

To test, rewrite as:

An Originalist judge would likely rule that the patriotic originators, having won a war to preserve the Union, would not have intended to provide a law-breaking incentive (that/which yielded no offsetting gain for the extant inhabitants).

Since enclosing the relative clause in parentheses isn't illogical, which is the better relative pronoun. The information the clause conveys is marginal — figures as a mere qualification — even though the clause is restrictive.

The Forgotten Topic Sentence

Lawyers seldom design topic sentences deliberately; yet, explicit initial topic sentences demonstrably improve comprehension of difficult material through the cognitive mechanism of semantic priming, whereby concepts become more accessible after being activated when the reader entertains related concepts. Instead of using topic sentences, lawyers often avoid writing them by using trivial statements of dates and case names as substitutes (see http://tinyurl.com/rx3bth), since composing and revising topic sentences seems dreary work. (See, for example, http://tinyurl.com/qw2kzl.)

Most of the discussion of topic sentences — which occurs in the primary-education literature and in the deliberations of teachers of freshman composition — exaggerates the generality of topic-sentence usage. Without the aid of research, educators have long extolled the topic sentence as prerequisite for a proper paragraph. "Language Arts" instruction in the early grades goes further than recommending a topic sentence for every paragraph, calling for a "summary sentence" at each paragraph's end.

Students inevitably notice that, except in textbooks, paragraphs aren't nearly so regular, including paragraphs constructed by the best writers. Even when paragraphs contain strong topic sentences, some serve better at the paragraph's conclusion or, preceded by transitional sentences, toward the paragraph's middle. Students conclude that their searches for topic sentences in English classes serve as an exercise rather than a tool for paragraph construction; that teachers don't criticize the students' schoolday paragraphs for lacking topic sentences reinforces this conclusion. Like any exercise, the construction of topic sentences became a dreary business, and going beyond performing such exercises becomes a mark of the students' sophistication, of their adulthood as writers.

Teaching students a distorted view of paragraph construction is bound to cause disillusionment; so, writers must fashion a more nuanced view of topic-sentence usage. The distortion became apparent when the education world was rocked by Braddock's 1974 study, indicating that initial topic sentences rarely occur in the paragraphs of professional writers. Later research qualified Braddock's findings by showing that topic-sentence usage among professional writers differs with the kind of writing. Researchers found that initial sentences vary in their closeness to the educators' idealization and are classifiable into two broad types: natural topic sentences and ideal topic sentences. Natural topic sentences lack some of the characteristics of classic topics; they serve as point sentences instead of tertiary thesis statements. Ideal topic sentences are those still taught in the schools; each states a claim supported by the rest of the paragraph. Ideal topic sentences grow more useful with the material's difficulty.

An ideal topic sentence doesn't best serve every paragraph. Sometimes an explicit topic sentence will be too heavy-handed if a measure of subtlety is called for; sometimes a paragraph will already be so cohesive that inserting an ideal topic sentence detracts from the paragraph's effectiveness; sometimes a topic is better placed somewhere besides the initial sentence. Despite their lack of universal application, topic sentences are particularly important in writing legal briefs, where unnecessary subtlety is misplaced. Using ideal topic sentences sharpens and polishes a brief dealing with complicated substantive law. On matters where the judge can be presumed knowledgeable, natural topic sentences may avoid the appearance of condescension, but natural topic sentences still require revision — often, reorganization of the sentences — so they correspond to their paragraph's content.

Revising Orwell: Initial Conjunctions as Light Adverbs

Using the adverbial connective however (see "Banish Stock Transitional Expressions") is not an outright stylistic weakness but a device useful, even necessary, in speech, hence in fiction, a device, though often excessive, that persists because of over close identification of competent speech and writing. Characteristics of speech demanding artificial connectors are its short sentences and explicit signposts, so nonfiction writing calling for short sentences and signposts can warrant using adverbial connectives. Writing requires short sentences and signposts when it demands hyperclarity, as for legal briefs in our overcrowded courts.

Some statistics help in grasping the size of sentence-length differences. Many essayists write sentences averaging 22 to 28 words. Bryan Garner recommends sentences in legal briefs average 20 words. Plain-language advocates typically call for sentences averaging 15 to 20 words. Many excellent fiction writers seem to average around 18 words per sentence. (Hat tip to StevenBerlinJohnson.com, where you can find some surprising statistics and observations on writers' sentence lengths.)

If clarity demands only moderately shorter sentences, as in brief writing, occasionally starting a sentence with a coordinating conjunction, such as and or but, is a less distorting method of artificial connection than adverbial connectives, such as however, moreover, nevertheless, and in addition, terms depicting relations between referring clauses, not referenced objects. To appreciate why initial conjunctions are less distorting than adverbial connectives, it helps to understand the connective paradox: when they begin sentences, these so-called conjunctions function as adverbial connectives. A coordinating conjunction at the beginning of a sentence doesn't tie the two sentences together, sometimes advertised: it doesn't function like a semicolon to establish a relationship stronger than separate sentences but weaker than conjoined coordinate clauses. The reader, having read the sentence complete, can't undo the perception, so but no longer functions conjunctively. But takes the meaning of however and comes to exemplify the same lexical category. But always has an adverbial component; otherwise, it couldn't assert contrariety. Dropping the conjunctive component by using but at a sentence's beginning leaves only a light-adverb remainder.

When exceptional circumstances don't limit sentence length, the writer can be more precise by striking the initial conjunction, combining the sentences to turn the initial conjunction into an ordinary conjunction, or rewriting. George Orwell disagreed. Here's an example including an initial conjunction, but, and an adverbial connective (or stock transitional phrase), on the other hand, from George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language":

A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically 'dead' (e. g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.

I would rewrite the passage by eliminating the transitional phrase, using but to connect clauses within one sentence, and replacing the compound predicate reverted... and ... used with a simple predicate and adjective phrase, thus:

A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while a metaphor which is technically 'dead' (e. g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word, generally usable without loss of vividness, but in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.

The transitional phrase on the other hand helped convey that Orwell mentioned the newly invented and the dead as opposite statuses for metaphors. Joining the clause about the worn-out metaphors with the previous sentence, containing the contrast, makes the same point about opposite statuses without using the transitional phrase on the other hand. The clause about the worn-out metaphors introduces the opposites by locating worn-out metaphors between them. The sentence is longer than any of Orwell's, but the passage gains precision using fewer words.

Shortened Paragraphs: Undaunting but Confusing

Plain-writing advocates commonly recommend short paragraphs. Very short paragraphs provide a false sense of Concision, actually compromised by forced redundancy. Short paragraphs also invite ending a paragraph with the following paragraph's topic sentence, a practice inimical to Clarity. Some short paragraphs written by an authoritative plain-language advocate, who practices what he preaches, show how short paragraphs make writing verbose, even as it appears spare. (Examples are from Schiess, What Plain English Really Is (2009) Scribes Journal of Legal Writing, Vol. 9, p. 43, which you can download free from the link.) Wayne writes at page 46:

Professor Crump is right that lawyers must use forms. Lawyers must take advantage of the experience embodied in forms because, as David Mellinkoff puts it, "No one who makes frequent use of the law will ever live long enough to live without forms."

What's the distinction between lawyers' "using forms" and lawyers' "taking advantage of the experience embodied in forms"? These expressions are no less redundant than legalese's dreaded doublets ("true and correct") and triplets ("rest, residue, and remainder"); redundancy in successive sentences, rather than words, is redundancy no less. Wayne could have written "Professor Crump is right that lawyers must take advantage...," but doctrinal preference for short paragraphs necessitates redundancy to get two sentences for the first paragraph: redundancy inspired by author's realization that, even if paragraphs should be short, numerous single-sentence paragraphs reduce the guideline to the absurd.

Under the heading "The suggestion to create a separate document that explains the legal terms in plain English," Wayne writes at page 45:

Though this idea is not Professor Crump's and he does credit it to someone else, it's excellent. Plain-English advocates have already implemented it.

In her book, Plain Language for Lawyers, Michele Asprey reports that in Australia, the Corporations law Simplification Task Force created a Separate "Small Business Guide" within the Australian Corporations Law. The Guide, produced in 1995, is a plain-English version of the official law and has been well received by nonlawyers: "Small business people have told the Taskforce that reading the Guide has been the first time they have understood their obligations."

Short paragraphs damage the logic of these sentences by separating the real paragraph's topic sentence—second sentence of Wayne's first paragraph—from the supporting sentences in Wayne's second paragraph. As the paragraphs stand, the first contains two unconnected ideas and the second misdirects readers' attention from promulgating the plain-English version of law to a book reporting on it.

Good rule, bad rule

Some commonly accepted style rules are simply wrong, such as the high-school-English rules against initial conjunctions and terminal prepositions. The plain-language school denies it, yet the foregoing rules aren’t entirely bad: their use must be limited to creating rebuttable usage presumptions. As absolute rules, they have been discredited in popular culture, discredited excessively, even the presumption in the rules’ penumbra silenced.

New misguided rules waited in the wings. Today, authorities advance a rule as unfounded as the above positional prerogatives. The vogue rule assigns unalterable sentential roles to “that” and “which.” Recognized writers don’t follow this rule, and, even as policy recommendation, it offends Clarity. The putative rule assigns “that” to restrictive clauses and “which” to nonrestrictive, redundant to comma usage. Redundancy should be avoided: A single distinguishing cue for each distinct response is best for overlearned performances, such as comma recognition.

Don't conclude seemingly arbitrary, picayune rules—even those lacking expert endorsement, like the “and, but” rule and the “to, for” rules, above—are always invalid. At least one rule deserving wide recognition gets scant respect in obscure but esteemed sources listing too many comma uses to learn. According to this obscure rule, a causal adverbial clause beginning with “because” is always restrictive and, “since,” nonrestrictive. In its temporal sense, however, “since” always introduces a nonrestrictive clause, the rule's main payoff. These examples of restrictive and nonrestrictive causal adverbial clauses come from another of my blogs:

Canatella 1 found that the Younger abstention doctrine, which protects ongoing state proceedings from federal court interference, did not compel case dismissal, since Canatella filed before the State Bar served him a case-initiating Notice of Disciplinary Charges.

Gentile's practical import is that in 1991 it had already foreclosed opposing disbarment for frivolous filings because they are believed expressive.

Evaluating ghostwriters, you shouldn’t assume breaking a rule resting only on traditional acknowledgment is error. Clarity trumps pedantry.