The Relationship between Thinking and Writing

The relationship between thinking and writing, we are often told, is simple: clarity of expression flows from clarity of thought. But because clear thinking is, for many of us, something worked at rather than a natural resting state, the flow of thoughts into words often looks less like a deep and swift river and more like a creek strewn with obstacles that divert the water this way and that and that sometimes staunch the flow altogether. The “clear thinking leads to clear writing” formula suggests that to clean up this mess we need to focus on our thoughts rather than our words. 

But the relationship between clarity of thinking and clarity of writing actually flows in both directions. By attending to our words, we are clarifying our thoughts. The reverse outlining technique shows how working to improve clarity of expression also improves clarity of thought. The same is true of working on word choice and sentence construction. This is not to suggest that there aren’t ways outside of writing to improve clarity of thinking. There are, but that is a topic for another day. 

Some people disagree with the premise that clarity of expression should be a writer’s chief ambition. They argue that complexity of thinking requires complexity of expression. Bryan Garner debunks this argument in his incomparable Garner’s Modern English Usage. After quoting Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell on the importance of plain expression—two people whose complexity of thinking few would dispute—Garner offers two warnings and an inducement:

1) “those who write in a difficult, laborious style risk being unclear not only to other readers but also to themselves”

2) “obscure writing wastes readers’ time—a great deal of it”

3) “simplifying is a higher intellectual attainment than complexifying…the hallmark of all the greatest stylists is precisely that they have taken difficult ideas and expressed them as simply as possible. No nonprofessional could do it, and most specialists can’t do it. Only extraordinary minds are capable of the task.” [1]

Garner’s first two points underscore the real and related risk that writers of complex prose run. As William Zinsser notes in On Writing Well, if readers cannot understand what the writer is trying to say and/or feel that the writer is wasting their time, they will stop reading. The writer might think that the reader is the loser in this situation, but it is the other way around. Even writers uninterested in what readers make of their work cannot easily dismiss the challenge that Garner issues in his third point, and it is this point that I like best. We are kidding ourselves if we believe that we understand that which we cannot explain clearly. Clarity of thought is often the happy byproduct of clarity of expression, and it is to both that we should labor.

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[1] Bryan A. Garner, Garner’s Modern English Usage (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 697-698.