How to Write Clear Prose (the Hemingway Way, Without the Robot Edits)

Clear prose is not a matter of taste. It is a matter of four specific, mechanical moves that any writer can apply in any editing pass. The moves are old — Strunk and White laid them out in 1959 — and they are still the moves. The hard part is doing them consistently, which is why a self-check at the end of the editing pass is more useful than another rule to remember.

The four moves that do most of the work

Every other writing rule is a special case of one of these four. Master them, and most of the rest follows.

1. Cut the adverbs

An adverb modifies a verb (or an adjective, or another adverb). Most adverbs in business and marketing prose hedge ("kind of", "essentially", "basically") or intensify ("really", "very", "extremely") without adding information. The verb is already doing the work; the adverb is a crutch.

The test: can you delete the adverb and the sentence still says the same thing? If yes, delete it.

She ran quickly to the door.        -> She ran to the door.
He spoke very quietly.            -> He spoke quietly. Or: He whispered.
The product works really well.    -> The product works well. Or: The product works.

There are exceptions. "Only", "almost", "just" change the meaning of the sentence, not just the intensity — keep those. "He ran only to the door" is not the same as "He ran to the door". Most other adverbs can go.

2. Switch to active voice

Passive voice ("the cake was eaten by the children") buries the actor and weakens the verb. Active voice ("the children ate the cake") makes the actor do the verb, and the sentence gets shorter and stronger as a side effect.

Passive is not always wrong. There are cases where the actor is unknown ("the window was broken"), unimportant ("the form was submitted"), or obvious ("the president was elected"). Use it there. For everything else, active.

The decision was made by the team.   -> The team made the decision.
A mistake was made.                  -> We made a mistake.
The report was written by Alice.     -> Alice wrote the report.

3. Shorten the long sentences

A 30-word sentence is hard to read on the first pass. A 15-word sentence is not. The split is usually straightforward: find the conjunction, break the sentence in two.

The new feature, which we shipped last week and which our users have been asking for since the beginning of the year, makes the export flow three times faster than the old implementation.
->
We shipped the new feature last week. Users have been asking for it since the beginning of the year. The new flow is three times faster than the old one.

The rule of thumb: if a sentence is over 22 words, look for a way to split it. You can almost always split. The cost is the extra period, which is small. The benefit is the reader can hold each sentence in their head.

4. Replace 3-syllable words with 1-syllable ones

Long words slow the reader down. "Utilize" is a longer way to say "use". "Facilitate" is a longer way to say "help". "Commence" is a longer way to say "start". The short word is almost always clearer, and the short word is almost always available.

utilize      -> use
facilitate   -> help
commence     -> start
demonstrate  -> show
subsequent   -> later
additional   -> more
methodology  -> method
approximately -> about

There are exceptions. A 3-syllable technical term ("photosynthesis", "metropolitan") is usually the right word, and a made-up short word ("toolify", "helpable") is worse than the long one. The rule is for everyday prose, not technical writing.

The 5-minute self-check at the end of the draft

The four moves above are easy to remember and easy to forget in the middle of a draft. The reliable way to do them is to run a mechanical check at the end, when the writing is otherwise done. The Writing Style Analyzer highlights all four issues inline in the text — adverbs in blue, passive voice in amber, complex words in purple, hard sentences in red. The fix becomes a search-and-replace job instead of a re-read.

The check is mechanical, not artistic. You are not asking "is this good?" — you are asking "how many adverbs?" and "how many passive constructions?" and "what is the longest sentence?". The numbers answer themselves. Most first drafts have 30-50% more issues than the writer thinks.

When to ignore the rules

The four moves above are 80% of the job. The other 20% is knowing when to break them.

• Adverbs in dialogue. "He said quickly" is fine when the speed is the point. Adverbs in dialogue describe how a thing is said, which is information the reader wants.
• Passive voice in technical writing. "The function is called with two arguments" is clearer than "you call the function with two arguments" because the focus is on the function, not the caller. Technical writing has a higher tolerance for passive for the same reason.
• Long sentences for emphasis. A long sentence after a series of short ones has rhythm. The reader notices the change. Use the long sentence deliberately, the way a speaker pauses.
• Complex words when the short one is wrong. "Sad" is not the same as "melancholy". "Angry" is not the same as "livid". "Use" is not the same as "utilize" (use = pick up and apply, utilize = put to a new use). Short words are usually better, but not always.

The rules are defaults. The exceptions are the writing.

The pre-publish pass: 5 minutes that earn the click

1. Paste the finished draft into the Writing Style Analyzer. Note the totals (adverbs, passive voice, complex words, hard sentences).
2. Read the highlighted text once. For each highlight, ask: is this a real issue or is it a false positive I want to keep?
3. Fix the adverbs first. They are the easiest to cut and the highest leverage.
4. Fix the passive voice. The sentence usually gets shorter, which fixes a hard sentence at the same time.
5. Split the hard sentences. Break them in two at the conjunction.
6. Replace the complex words that have a short synonym. Skip the ones that do not.
7. Re-score. The number should be lower. If it is, the draft is ready. If not, run another pass.

That is the whole editing pass. Five minutes, four rules, one tool. Most of the writing is done by the time the draft is finished; the editing pass is where the prose actually becomes clear.