The following was written for Elizabeth Fullon's Term III ENGL 101 class at Kadena.

How can you keep the attention of your readers? (Photo: istock.com)

Attention readers! That’s an easy way to get the readers’ attention. Of course, there are more academically accepted methods, and there are also some more obscure methods. However it is done, grabbing the reader’s attention when writing is typically the easy part. What’s the hard part? Is it the actual act of writing? The sentence structure? The language? All of these things are important, but they are easily done when compared to the most difficult aspect of writing: keeping your readers’ attention.

Since ink came in contact with parchment, writers have been baffled by the seemingly simple concept of maintaining their readers’ interest. Author William Zinsser describes some of the most prominent writing mistakes. An excerpt from his book, On Writing Well, describes how centuries of evolving language has gotten us away from the basics (6). Writers all too often are scared of oversimplifying their thoughts. As a result of this fear, their sentences become cluttered and lose all sense of style. No writer (that I know of) wants to show off fourth-grade English skills through writing. Conversely no one wants his/her writing to sound as if it’s being read from a medical dictionary either. So what’s the secret to good writing?

Nothing says racism like a bag of Fritos. Huh? Great writing in “Foul Shots” by Rogelio R. Gomez ensures any reader would be able to understand the first sentence of this paragraph. When Gomez describes the neighborhoods, he doesn’t give population density or gross capital income. He, with as few words as possible, shows the readers that he lived in a slum. When he describes the neighborhood of the opposing team he uses only two adjectives: rich and white. He could have described the difference in housing quality, number of bedrooms, or types of cars parked in the driveway. But he didn’t—he used rich and white and still managed to convey the intended message (46).

How can just two small words keep the readers’ attention? Zinsser believes it is simplicity. His approach to writing tears down each sentence to what it really is (6). Zinsser focuses on what each sentence is actually trying to say, much like Gomez does in his work. Gomez could have given the translation of the word “barrio;” instead, he uses the contrast between the two neighborhoods to illustrate to his intentions to the readers (47). If he were to give income and education statistics to describe the “barrio,” the readers would surely understand how poor the neighborhood was. However, the reader gets the same understanding from just two little words without having to work so hard. This all boils down to one concept: A simple paper produces interested readers.

Simplicity of description is not the only thing that detracts from the reading. Sometimes, the way in which things are described can distract the reader. “Wordy, run-on, winded, rambling.” These are all comments that most have seen on a writing assignment at some point in our education. English and Literature teachers are like king cobras striking at prey when it comes to wordy sentences—and for good reason! There is no better way to lose readers than to be too wordy. An outstanding story can easily be spoiled by useless redundancy and overboard vocabulary. Writer Elizabeth Wong apparently listened to her teacher and took it to heart in her essay entitled “A Cultural Divorce.”

Writers are redundant for no reason, which makes for a very boring paper. They write things like: “The beautifully gorgeous girl” or “it was grossly large.” Statements like these describe the same thing twice in the same way. “ZZZZZzzzzz…..,” says the reader of an essay that uses excessive adjectives that add no value to the written work. Wong uses descriptions that are far more relevant and far less wordy. For instance, when she describes her walk to school, she said the road was long and hilly (57). She didn’t say “the long, never-ending road stretched into eternity.” The lack of clutter in her work tells her readers exactly what was intended.

Stories must be full of life! They should be simply understood. Short and simple is not always enough to keep readers interested, though. Your teachers tell you this and so does Zinsser. Take this sentence for example: “My friends and I leaped, as if to soar, over the massive, wooden barrier.” If it were written “We jumped over the fence,” it would get the same point across to readers and leaves room for the more important details. Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Anna Quindlen shares her disgust for clutter writing in “I Am A Catholic.”

She describes how today’s writers over-word their writings, and she uses The Bible as a great example. She refers to the Inn where Jesus was born and how this simple term is translated into five words that say the same thing: “the place where travelers lodged.” (87) Writers who use this technique might as well break into a lullaby. It sounds like “political correctness” has invaded the writer’s every word. The end results are when simple words like “computer” become “binary processing device” and a “helmet” becomes “a personal cranial protective apparatus.” If readers wanted this type of mental torture, they would read an electronics manual or a law document, not a story.

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