Snapshot
Clear and Simple as the Truth by Thomas and Turner presents a way to approach life, even though on the surface it appears to be just a writing guide.
The authors begin with a question: Why, even with so many writing programs available today, has the quality of writing not improved? This suggests there is no direct correlation between writing good prose and having stronger technical skills like grammar or vocabulary. Their argument is that writing is not merely a skill but an intellectual activity. In other words, learning how to think—rather than focusing solely on grammar—helps you become a better writer. As a framework for understanding how to write good prose, the book introduces a writing attitude—that is, the classical style.
Because this style is an attitude toward writing rather than a technique, it applies to many areas of life, including public speaking, business management, sales, and many more.
Summary and Notes
Principles of Classic Style
In about three and a half pages, Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner lay out their case that writing is not what we think it is. They ask the question, “Why is American prose as bad as it is today, even with more writing programs than ever?” Their answer is that good writing does not come merely from mastering a set of skills like grammar, vocabulary, and similar technical abilities. Rather, good writing is a consequence of good thinking.
Our answer is that writing is an intellectual activity, not a bundle of skills. Writing proceeds from thinking. To achieve good prose styles, writers must work through intellectual issues, not merely acquire mechanical techniques. (Page 1)
Great painters are often less skillful than mediocre painters; it is their concept of painting—not their skills—that defines their activity. Similarly, a foreigner may be less skillful than a native speaker at manipulating tenses or using subjunctives, but nonetheless be an incomparably better writer. Intellectual activities generate skills, but skills do not generate intellectual activities. (Page 2)
The immediate question that comes to mind is: if learning writing skills does not necessarily make you a better writer, how do you become better at writing? The authors point to one way of doing this:
But it is possible to learn to write by learning a style of writing. (Page 2)
This is the premise that fuels the entire book. From this point onward, the book discusses a writing style for communicating the truth in the simplest and clearest way possible — the classic style.
Classic style is, in its own view, clear and simple as the truth. It adopts the stance that its purpose is presentation; its motive, disinterested truth. A successful presentation consists of aligning language with truth, and the test of this alignment is clarity and simplicity. The idea that presentation is successful when language is aligned with truth implies that truth can be known; truth needs no argument but only accurate presentation; the reader is competent to recognize truth; the symmetry between writer and reader allows the presentation to follow the model of conversation; a natural language is sufficient to express truth; and the writer knows the truth before he puts it into language. (Page 2)
The Concept of Style
We all have our own style of writing, but we often don’t notice it. A good example is the type of font used in this blog post — it’s there, but if I didn’t mention it, you wouldn’t even think about it. Likewise, style is encoded into our writing whether we realize it or not. But it’s important to recognize it, understand it, and refine it for the best outcome.
To write without a chosen and consistent style is to write without a tacit concept of what writing can do, what its limits are, who its audience is, and what the writer’s goals are. In the absence of settled decisions about these things, writing can be torture. (Page 11)
But first, we must define what “style” means in this context. Style is a way of presenting the truth. We can choose from dozens of ways to present the truth; what changes between them is how the truth itself is defined within each style.
Classic style assumes that truth exists, is knowable, and can be directly shown. The writer and reader stand side by side, both looking at reality together. The writer’s goal is not to argue, convince, or lay out their own assumptions about the truth, but simply to show the truth for what it is.
This then begs the question: how does the writer know that what they’re showing is the truth? Can’t the writer be wrong?
Recognizing Classic Style
The short answer is: yes, the writer can be wrong. However, classic style is defined so that the writer presents the truth as they recognize it, to the best of their capacity.
Now, the reader might get defensive about this approach because, obviously, the writer cannot always know the truth. There is always a chance that the writer is potentially wrong about something. Classical style handles this by creating a symmetry between the reader and the writer: the writer shows both the theory and the evidence for their premise, so the reader can test it and see the truth for themselves. In other words, anything written in classical style is falsifiable — the reader can verify it on their own.
At the same time, the classical writer doesn’t oversimplify. They assume the reader is competent enough to test and discover the truth, even if it requires significant effort. This freedom allows the classical writer to not write things like “I think,” “It’s hard to…,” “To the best of my knowledge,” “It seems like,” etc.
For example, here’s an example of classic prose written by the physicist Brian Greene:
Within a few short years, additional mathematical analyses concluded that space itself is expanding, dragging each galaxy away from every other. Though Einstein at first strongly resisted this startling implication of his own theory, observations of deep space made by the great American astronomer Edwin Hubble in 1929 confirmed it. And before long, scientists reasoned that if space is now expanding, then at ever earlier times the universe must have been ever smaller. At some moment in the distant past, everything we now see—the ingredients responsible for every planet, every star, every galaxy, even space itself—must have been compressed to an infinitesimal speck that then swelled outward, evolving into the universe as we know it.
The big-bang theory was born. During the decades that followed, the theory would receive overwhelming observational support. Yet scientists were aware that the big-bang theory suffered from a significant shortcoming. Of all things, it leaves out the bang. Einstein’s equations do a wonderful job of describing how the universe evolved from a split second after the bang, but the equations break down (similar to the error message returned by a calculator when you try to divide 1 by 0?) when applied to the extreme environment of the universe’s earliest moment. The big bang thus provides no insight into what might have powered the bang itself.
The net result of this is that reading good classic prose feels effortless because the writer has done all the work behind the scenes and only shows what is important to the reader.
A good analogy for classical writing is a glass window at a zoo exhibit. The zookeeper — like the classical writer — shows and describes the tiger on the other side. You, the visitor, simply observe. The zookeeper never pauses to talk about the glass in between you and the animal — its strength, thickness, or the engineering behind choosing it. But you know it’s there, doing its job perfectly.
You came to see the tiger, not to admire the glass. Of course, the glass matters — probably countless hours of design and testing went into its creation to make it 100% transparent. But you’ve already paid for the ticket, and therefore the maintenance of the glass window, when you entered the zoo; you don’t need a lecture on materials science to enjoy this view.
Now, think of the writer as the zookeeper, the visitor as the reader, and the glass window as the classical style of writing. Just as the zookeeper doesn’t draw attention to the glass, wasting your time, the classical writer never draws attention to the prose. The style, like the glass window, exists only to facilitate the truth — not to impress. Classical prose, like the glass window, is transparent — it lets the reader see straight through to the truth on the other side.
The Elements of Style
Truth
Classical style treats truth as something that is already out there — the classical writer does not try to make a case for the truth; she just presents it. The classical writer assumes that the reader is competent enough to discover the truth on their own and also assumes that the truth is contingent. Guided by these assumptions, the classical writer’s main objective is simply to point to the truth — to show something that a reader might not have noticed otherwise.
In classic style, opinions stated clearly and distinctly are treated as if they can be verified by simple observation. The writer does not typically attempt to persuade by argument. The writer merely puts the reader in a position to see whatever is being presented and suggests that the reader will be able to verify it because the style treats whatever conventions or even prejudices it operates from as if these were, like natural reason, shared by everyone. It is a style of disguised assertion. (Page 27)
In the classic view, what cannot be universally verified cannot be true. (Page 29)
Presentation
Like in the example above, classical prose serves as a “window” to show the truth — it does not draw attention to the writing. When it comes to presentation, the key is to make reading effortless for the reader. The classical writer does not bother sharing his work or his efforts to find the truth in his writing — he just shows the hard-won truth to the reader with optimum clarity.
To achieve this, the classical writer follows a hierarchy of rules, the most important two being: every word counts, and clarity takes precedence over tortured accuracy.
Clarity is the central virtue of classic prose because the classic writer’s defining task is to present something he has previously perceived. (Page 32)
Scene
Classical prose is conversational. One of the fundamental assumptions that the classical writer makes is that the reader is her peer — she creates a symmetry between herself and the reader. To achieve this, the classical writer adopts the role of a speaker rather than an instrumental writer. Because classical style already assumes that the reader is competent, classical prose is merely a conversation between two peers, no matter how complex or simple the subject matter is.
The reader may conclude that a text is masterful, classic, and completely wrong. In classic prose, the writer takes the pose of competence so as not to waste our time with distractions as he presents those things that allow us to decide whether he really is competent. (Page 55)
Thought and Language
Classical prose is not a way to think something out, nor an art that exists for its own sake — it is an instrument to share what the writer has carefully thought out. The classical writer does not waste words trying to convince the reader that what he is writing about is valuable or interesting — he assumes that the reader is already interested in the subject.
Classical style also assumes that the language used to deliver the message is sufficient, that there is always a right way to put ideas into words. Unlike in other writing styles, the classical writer does not think in terms of “another way to put things,” because there is always a right way to express them.
To the classic writer, the difference between thinking and writing is as wide as the difference between cooking and serving. (Page 60)
Ideas that resonate with me
Speaking is natural, but reading and writing are not
We don’t learn how to talk — we just pick it up as we go. At some point, however, the need arises to keep a record of what we talked about, which is where writing and reading come in. Unlike speaking, writing and reading are not spontaneous — they are recognized necessities. In other words, speaking is biological, while reading and writing are sociological.
We rarely make an effort to separate these two concepts, which leads us to believe that, like speaking, reading and writing also come naturally. This book argues that they do not. However, all three — speaking, reading, and writing — have become equally important in today’s communication. For anyone’s success, the book emphasizes that it is important to recognize this and then shape and optimize our attitude toward writing.
How to apply this to life, not just for writing?
Because this style is an attitude toward writing rather than a technique, it applies to many areas of life. For instance, public speaking can benefit greatly from this approach — it allows the speaker to be both confident and direct because he assumes a symmetry between himself and the audience, so he doesn’t have to persuade them why whatever he is presenting is important. Instead, he simply points to the truth he has discovered with carefully chosen words, ensuring a clean and precise delivery. In many ways, this attitude frees the speaker to focus on what really matters.
Classical writing can get boring
All this said, classical prose can, in some cases, seem dull. A good example is the book The Double Helix by James D. Watson. I picked up this book after seeing suggestions for a book written in classical style. I could hardly hold on to it because the writing is so direct that it felt like I was reading an instruction manual rather than a memoir. True — this style is clean and simple, but it should be tempered with a bit of a human touch depending on the context.
Parts that left a mark on me
Our answer is that writing is an intellectual activity, not a bundle of skills. Writing proceeds from thinking. To achieve good prose styles, writers must work through intellectual issues, not merely acquire mechanical techniques. (Page 1)
La Rochefoucauld’s sentence was, of course difficult to write, but it looks easy. The writer hides all the effort. Johnson’s sentence was clearly difficult to write, and its writer wants to display it as if it were a trophy won through his personal effort. (Page 15)
The classic writer wants to be distinguished from others because she assumes that truth, though potentially available to all, is not the common property of common people, and that it is not to be perceived or expressed through common means unrefined. The classic writer sees common sense as only an approximation which, left untested and unrefined, can turn out to be false. The plain writer wants to be common because she assumes that truth is the common property of common people, directly perceived and expressed through common means. For the plain writer, common sense is truth. Unlike plain style, classic style is aristocratic, which is not to say artificially restricted, since anyone can become an aristocrat by learning classic style. Anyone who wants to can attain classic style, but classic style views itself as an intellectual achievement, not a natural endowment. (Page 16)
How did the book change the way I think?
In any kind of presentation, the optimum outcome is simply the truth. The presenter’s duty is to point to that hard-won truth without talking about how he got there, not to waste the audience’s time or disrupt their attention. The best way for the presenter to achieve this is to ask two questions: (1) Can the audience visualize it? and (2) Can they falsify it on their own?
Coffee chat
Summarize Clear and Simple as the Truth in one paragraph.
In the book Clear and Simple as the Truth, the authors discuss an attitude toward writing. They argue that good writing, contrary to common belief, is not the result of improving mechanical skills like grammar or vocabulary, but an intellectual activity. In other words, the best writer is the best thinker, not the best technician of the language they are writing in.
What are the main principles of “classic prose” according to Clear and Simple as the Truth?
There are four main principles:
Truth: Classical style treats truth as something that is already out there — the classical writer does not try to make a case for it; she just presents it.
Presentation: Classical prose serves as a “window” to show the truth — it does not draw attention to the writing.
Scene: One of the fundamental assumptions the classical writer makes is that the reader is her peer — she creates a symmetry between herself and the reader. As a result, classical prose is always conversational.
Thought and Language: Classical prose is not a way to think something out, nor an art that exists for its own sake — it is an instrument to share what the writer has carefully thought out.
How does Thomas & Turner define the relationship between writer and reader in Clear and Simple as the Truth?
Classical prose assumes a symmetry between the reader and the writer — that is, they are equals. This allows the classical writer to arrange his prose as a conversation rather than as an instrumental writer.
Why do Thomas & Turner claim that style is not about grammar but about thought in Clear and Simple as the Truth?
The authors begin with a question: Why, even with so many writing programs in today’s world, does the quality of writing not get better? This shows that there is no direct correlation between writing good prose and having stronger writing skills, like grammar or a good vocabulary. The argument in this book is that writing is not a skill but an intellectual activity — it’s better to learn how to think than to focus on grammar to get better at writing. As a solution, the book introduces an attitude for writing good prose — that is, the classic style.
Explain in simple terms what “classic style” means in Clear and Simple as the Truth.
Classical style is an attitude toward writing. The key elements of this style are: it presents truth as it is, without making arguments or assumptions; it serves as a window to point to that truth without drawing attention to the writing; the classical tone is conversational; and it assumes that the reader is competent — that is, the writer and the reader are peers, able to discover the truth through their own effort if they choose.
Compare and contrast classic style and practical style as described in Clear and Simple as the Truth.
Classical style assumes that the truth is already out there. The role of the classical writer is simply to point to the truth, without drawing attention to her writing.
On the other hand, practical style writing is a tool for accomplishing a task. It also assumes that truth exists, but the role of the practical writer is to show the usefulness of that truth.
Give a practical exercise from Clear and Simple as the Truth to improve writing clarity.
The third section in the book Clear and Simple as the Truth is dedicated to 24 exercises to help you get familiar with classical writing. All of these are equally valuable for anyone just starting to learn to write classical prose, though exercise two is my favorite: “Hiding the Labor.” This exercise is unique and interesting because, for most of us, it is not our default mode of writing. We tend to want to show the amount of work we did to develop a well-refined thesis, although oftentimes it is just a form of noise added to the text.
Imagine you’re out on your surfboard past the breaking waves, and your friend is a few yards away on hers. You’ve spent years noticing how the waves change with the tides, and you’ve even checked today’s surf report. So you say, “The tide is going out. The waves are breaking farther south and getting bigger.”
Even though the effect of the tide on the waves is obvious the moment you point it out, most people just see it without thinking about it. Your understanding didn’t happen instantly—it comes from all the observation and study you’ve done over time.
The exercise is: while talking to someone in person, bring up something you can directly see and have noticed before, but don’t let your speech give away that you already knew it. Make it feel fresh, as if you’re discovering it in the moment.
How can the concepts in Clear and Simple as the Truth apply to writing a blog post or essay today?
In a world filled with life coaches, classic prose offers a way to become a thoughtful explainer.
Being a life coach isn’t necessarily a bad thing — but it does limit a writer’s ability to write about many things (that is, if life coaches take their roles seriously). After all, we can’t be good at everything — at least not good enough to tell others how to do it. But we can share what we’ve learned about many things.
Classic prose allows the writer to do exactly this — to share the truth, without taking a stance.