Summary of /Clear and Simple as the Truth, by Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner

A few days ago, I stumbled upon a copy of Clear and Simple as the Truth, by Francis-Noël Thomas & Mark Turner. The book was on top of one of the shelves of the Future of Humanity Institute, where I spend most of my working time these days. I have been meaning to take a look at this work since 2009, when I read an enthusiastic blog post about it by Robin Hanson (“the best book I’ve read in years”). Below is my summary of Part one of the book (the first 120 pages or so). Part two is a “museum” of classic texts and part three is a guide to further reading. The summary quotes liberally from the original; I restate a point made in the book with my own words only when I feel that this aids clarity or concision.

Update (September 14th, 2017): I just discovered that a second edition of this book was published in 2011. The summary below was made based on the first edition, published in 1994. The second edition includes an entire new section (“The studio”) with exercises for the reader.

Clear and simple as the truth

Writing is an intellectual activity, not a bundle of verbal skills.

For classic style, successful presentation consists of aligning language with truth, and the test of this alignment is clarity and simplicity. Good style is defined not by a set of techniques, but by an attitude toward writing. What is most fundamental to that attitude is the stand that the writer knows something before he sets out to write, and that his purpose is to present this knowledge to a reader.