Keep it clear, keep it simple
A speech from MM Lee 30 years ago still holds true today when it comes to clear, clean written English. -ST
Sun, Mar 01, 2009
The Straits Times
Thirty years ago today, on Feb 27, 1979, then Prime Minister
Lee Kuan Yew called a meeting of ministers, ministers of state and
senior civil servants to discuss how government papers and minutes can
be written in clear, clean prose.
Singapore's GDP has grown almost sevenfold since 1979. Marina Bay
didn't exist then. Changi Airport was still two years away from
completion. Singapore has been transformed beyond recognition in the
last 30 years. But the same, alas, cannot be said of the quality of
written English, which remains recognisably the same now as it did in
1979. We reprint excerpts of Mr Lee's address to mark a melancholy
anniversary.
I WANT to discuss the importance of simple, clear, written English.
This is not simple. Dr Goh Keng Swee gives every officer whom he thinks
is promising and whose minutes or papers are deficient in clarity, a
paperback edition of Sir Ernest Gowers' The Complete Plain Words.
It presupposes that the man who attempts to read the book has reached
a certain level of literary competence. The book, written words, cannot
convey to you the emphasis, the importance, the urgency of things,
unless the receiver is a trained reader. And in any case, human beings
are never moved by written words. It is the spoken word that arouses
them to action. Arthur Koestler rightly pointed out that if Adolf
Hitler's speeches had been written, not spoken, the Germans would never
have gone to war. Similarly, Sukarno in print did not make great sense.
The spoken language is better learnt early; then you will have
fluency. However, my thesis is that the written language can be mastered
at any age without much disadvantage. It is learnt fastest when your
written mistakes are pointed out to you by a teacher, friend, or senior
officer. That was the way I learnt.
When I was in school my compositions were marked. When my children
were in school they simply got grades for their written work. Their
teachers had so many essays that they never attempted to correct the
compositions. This has contributed to our present deplorable situation.
I want to convince you, first, of the importance of clear, written
communication; second, that you can master it, if you apply yourself.
The use of words, the choice and arrangement of words in accordance
with generally accepted rules of grammar, syntax and usage, can
accurately convey ideas from one mind to another. It can be mastered.
When I was a law student I learnt that every word, every sentence has
three possible meanings: what the speaker intends it to mean, what the
hearer understands it to mean, and what it is commonly understood to
mean. So when a coded message is sent in a telegram, the sender knows
what he means, the receiver knows exactly what is meant, the ordinary
person reading it can make no sense of it at all.
When you write minutes or memoranda, do not write in code, so that
only those privy to your thoughts can understand. Write simply so that
any other officer who knows nothing of the subject can understand you.
To do this, avoid confusion and give words their ordinary meanings.
Our biggest obstacle to better English is shyness. It is a
psychological barrier. Nobody likes to stop and ask, 'Please, what does
that mean?' or 'Please tell me, where have I gone wrong?' To pretend you
know when you don't know is abysmal folly. Then we begin to take in
each other's mistakes and repeat them, compounding our problems.
The facility to express yourself in a written language is yet another
facet or manifestation of your ability, plus application and
discipline. It is a fallacy to believe that because it is the English
language, the Englishman has a natural advantage in writing it. That is
not so. He has a natural advantage in speaking the language because he
spoke it as a child, but not in writing it. It has nothing to do with
race. You are not born with a language. You learn it.
Without effective written communication within the government, there
will be misunderstanding and confusion. Let me give a few recent
illustrations of writing so sloppy that I had to seek clarification of
their meanings:
- 'With increasing urbanisation and industrialisation, we will
require continued assistance particularly in the technological and
managerial fields.'
I asked myself: What have I missed in this? What has the first part
about urbanisation and industrialisation to do with the second part
about continued assistance? Why do we need more assistance, particularly
in technological and managerial skills, because of increasing
urbanisation and industrialisation?
It is non sequitur. We need technological and managerial assistance anyway. The first part does not lead to the second part.
- 'It is necessary to study the correlation between language
aptitude, intelligence and values and attitudes to ensure that the
various echelons of leaders are not only effectively bilingual but also
of the desirable calibre.'
I read it over and over again. It made no sense. This is gibberish! I
enquired and I was told, well, they were trying to find out how
language ability and intelligence should influence the methods for
instilling good social values and attitudes.
Well, then say so. But somebody wanted to impress me by dressing up
his ideas in big words. Next time impress me with the simple way you get
your ideas across.
- 'France is the fourth major industrial country in Europe after West Germany, Britain and Italy.'
Calculating backwards and forwards, I decided France cannot be the
fourth. I queried. The reply was that France was fourth in terms of
number of industrial workers. Now, China probably has the largest number
of industrial workers in the world. In some factories they may have
14,000 workers when a similar factory in America would have 4,000. Does
that make China the first industrial country in the world?
- 'The Third World has the stamina to sustain pressure for the
Common fund. Progress will probably be incremental with acceleration
possible if moderation prevails.'
Now what does this mean? By 'incremental' the officer meant 'slow'. 'Slow', I understand; but 'acceleration possible', I do not.
If we do not make a determined effort to change, the process of
government will slow down. It will snarl up. I have noted this steady
deterioration over the last 20 years. I want to reverse it. If we start
with those at the top, we can achieve a dramatic improvement in two
years, provided the effort is made.
Now I want to discuss how we can do this:
To begin with, before you can put ideas into words, you must have ideas. Otherwise, you are attempting the impossible.
The written English we want is clean, clear prose - not elegant, not
stylish, just clean, clear prose. It means simplifying, polishing and
tightening.
Remember: That which is written without much effort is seldom read
with much pleasure. The more the pleasure, you can assume, as a rule of
thumb, the greater the effort.
When you send me or your minister a minute or a memo - or a draft
that has to be published like the President's Address - do not try to
impress by using big words; impress by the clarity of your ideas.
I speak as a practitioner. If I had not been able to reduce complex
ideas into simple words and project them vividly for mass understanding,
I would not be here.
The communists simplified ideas into slogans to sway the people's
feelings - to get them to move in directions which would have done us
harm. I had to counter them. I learnt fast. The first thing I had to do
was to express ideas in simple words.
My experience is that attending courses helps but not as much as
lessons tailored for you. You have written a memo. Somebody runs through
it and points out your errors: 'You could have said it this way'; 'this
is an error'; 'this can be broken into two sentences' and so on.
In other words, superiors and peers and even subordinates who spot
errors should be encouraged to point them out. My personal assistants
point out my mistakes; I tell them to.
Some final examples on how urgent the problem is, from two papers
coming before Cabinet: The first, a very well-written paper; the other
badly written. But even the well-written paper contained a repetitious
phrase which confused me. Because it was well-written, I thought the
repeated words must be there to convey a special meaning:
- 'If the basis for valuation is to be on a basis other than open
market value as evidenced by sales, arbitrariness and protracted
litigation would occur, thus tarnishing the credibility of government
machinery.'
I ran my eye back to the opening words. I queried: 'Do we lose
anything if we dropped the words 'to be on a basis' before 'other'.'
Answer came back: 'No meaning is lost.' And this was in a well-written
paper.
Let me read from the second paper, which tried to explain why we must set up an institute:
- 'The need for such services is made more acute as at present,
there is no technical agency offering consultancy services in
occupational safety and health.'
I asked: 'What's happening 'as at present'? Why 'as at present'?'
What the officer meant was: 'There is acute need because there is no
department which offers advice on occupational safety and health.'
We have taken each other's mistakes. He had constantly read 'as at
present', 'as of yesterday', 'as of tomorrow', so he just stuffed in
three unnecessary words - 'as at present' - into his paper.
There is such a thing as a language environment. Ours is a bad one.
Those of you who have come back from a long stay in a good
English-speaking environment would have felt the shock when reading The
Straits Times on returning.
I spent a month in Vancouver in October 1968. Then I went on to
Harvard University in Boston. For one month, I read the papers in
Vancouver. They were not much better than The Straits Times. They had
one million people, English-speaking. But there was no sparkle in their
pages.
The contrast in Harvard was dazzling. From the undergraduate paper,
The Harvard Crimson, to the Boston Globe, from the New York Times to the
Washington Post, every page crackled with novel ideas, smartly
presented. Powerful minds had ordered those words. Ideas had been
thought out and dressed in clean, clear prose. They were from the best
trained minds of an English-speaking population.
Let us try to do better. We are not doing justice to ourselves. I
know the ability is there; it has just not been trained to use the
written word correctly and concisely. And it is not too late to start.
It is not possible to conduct the business of government by talking
to each other with the help of gesticulation. You have to write it down.
And it must be complete, clear and unambiguous.
This article was first published in The Straits Times.
