Summary
Great prose is no guarantor of great ideas, much less of great social action, grantmaking, or public policy. This is a painful thing for a public affairs writer to admit. Yet the opposite may well be true: A certain kind of awful writing really can be a hallmark, even an underlying cause, of sloppy thinking. There are a handful of toxic words and phrases that have a way of polluting any stream of consciousness, muddying the concepts and making it impossible to see what facts and arguments (if any) lie below the surface. The nonprofit and public sectors have more than their share of these kinds of expressions, which may be one reason that some areas of public debate seem to drag on forever without making much progress. For instance, when people argue for greater "access" to healthcare, you often have no way of knowing whether they want improvements in insurance, public subsidies, transportation, health services, HMO rules, fluency in patients' languages, treatment of people from various cultures, or something else.
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Extract
Sound and Fury
GREAT PROSE IS NO GUARANTOR OF GREAT IDEAS, much less of great social action, grantmaking, or public policy. This is a painful thing for a public affairs writer to admit. Yet the opposite may well be true: A certain kind of awful writing really can be a hallmark, even an underlying cause, of sloppy thinking.
There are a handful of toxic words and phrases that have a way of polluting any stream of consciousness, muddying the concepts and making it impossible to see ...See the full content of this document
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