Architects Writing

Architecture is not difficult to explain. If you can gesture with your hands or, even better, draw quick sketches to illustrate your points, it is quite easy to talk about. And yet, for some reason, when architects attempt to write the results are almost uniformly bad. George Orwell, in his essay Politics and the English Language gives several examples of different types of terrible writing. He also gives five simple rules that can prevent it. Terrible writing by architects has a distinct feel to it that is similar to one of the examples Orwell uses. I'm going to provide an example but I am struggling with whether or not to name the source. On the one hand, they wrote it and so deserve all the scorn that can be piled upon them. On the other, their terrible writing is no worse than ten other examples I could find in as many minutes. O well, I'll let them be nameless. Let them stand for all.

This is the text from the "About" section of a design firm's website:

We believe architecture is a discipline with blurring boundaries. No longer is it composed of a series of practices bundled together to create one outcome, rather one practice creating a series of outcomes. Architecture can be binding and invent new, unique and unprecedented relationships between contingent issues. The goal is to find emergent ideas in the blur to find a new focus for our office. We seek work demanding the understanding and exploration of the periphery.
Contingencies stretch beyond the design disciplines, reacting to the political, economic, and social forces of a project manifest solutions not always grounded in the physical but always reliant on the architectural. The designing of a framework, an infrastructure becomes a dynamically integrated rather than the statically present architecture. To work stretches between the speculative and constructed to understand how to stitch these two extremes together. Proposals of far-reaching territories refine themselves through the continuous interrogation of the conflicting and complimentary to find itself in the rational yet unexpected outcome.

You can read it as many times as you want; it isn't going to suddenly make sense. I'm going to tear it apart as if they asked me to edit it.

First sentence makes no sense independent of the second sentence. The second sentence gets off to a bad start and then gets worse. It is syntactically messed up and doesn't say anything conclusive. I'm left to infer what it might mean. To do that, I need to look at the third sentence. Holy shit. At this point (the fourth sentence) I would call them and ask them to tell me what the fuck this piece of shit is trying to say because I can't make any sense of this gibberish. I would make them define "contingent" and "contingencies" because I don't think they know what the words mean - or they are using them as they were used by someone I don't know and haven't read.

Three fucking degrees and I can't make sense of a single goddam sentence. Are they trying to make me feel stupid?

This is my favourite sentence: "To work stretches between the speculative and constructed to understand how to stitch these two extremes together." What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Would punctuation fix this? I don't understand!!!

If you are an architect or designer or anyone who has ever written anything as bad as this - here is how to do better.

1) Make certain you actually have something to say.
I think that's the real problem with the above. Not that they can't write, or they are addicted to jargon, just that they have nothing to say.

2) Make certain you know, very precisely, what you want to say.
This is typically the biggest problem people have when trying to write. If you find yourself using the thesaurus every third word, it is almost certainly your problem. Step back. Think. Write an outline in simple sentences anyone would understand. Then expand the outline to fill in any blanks.

3) Short sentences are better than long sentences.
Use short sentences whenever you can. This makes it easier for the reader. If you read other posts in this blog, you will see I am addicted to the m-dash and the semi-colon. And I start sentences with and all the time. That's because I don't polish any of this. If I did, those would be the first things to go. 
For example, let's pretend the first sentence of the second paragraph actually means something:
"Contingencies stretch beyond the design disciplines, reacting to the political, economic, and social forces of a project manifest solutions not always grounded in the physical but always reliant on the architectural."
This is at least two sentences. More likely it's three. Here's my shot at it (remember I don't know what they are trying to say):
Contingent events stretch design as a discipline. They react to political, economic, and social forces. The solutions design can offer may not be physical but will remain architectural.
So I used three sentences in my approximation of what that one sentence might mean.

4) Do not use words you haven't heard, or wouldn't use, in conversation unless it is absolutely necessary.
For example, the word plethora always makes me laugh. It's a useful word but I wouldn't use it unless I was making a joke. The exceptions to this rule are terms that have a very specific meaning and allow no easy substitute. For example, I would use interregnum even though I have never used it in a conversation.

5) Use real words.
This one seems obvious but people still get it wrong. Not all nouns can be used as verbs. Using "preference" as a verb is not correct. Using "interrogate" when you mean "question" is incorrect unless there are bright lights and electric current involved. "Interrogate" doesn't make you sound more serious or determined. It sounds weird.
You write so people will read and understand. Don't make it harder for readers to understand than it needs to be. Nothing will demonstrate your intelligence better than reducing a complicated idea to something easy to read and understand that does not sacrifice the complexity. So don't fake smart with made up words.

6) It's alright to use the same word over and over.
Most people avoid this at all costs. Let's use the same example as I used for #5. If "question" is the perfect word for what you are doing, don't keep reaching in to the thesaurus to find near synonyms. Use "question" as many times as you need to use it. Otherwise you risk using a word incorrectly because the thesaurus tells you it means the same thing: "I asked you an interrogate!"
Also, when you are describing the process of arriving at a conclusion, it is easier for the reader if you go from A to B and B to C and C to D etc than it is if you go from A to B and (synonym of B) to C and (synonym of C) to D.
Using the same word over and over doesn't make it seem like you have a small vocabulary. It shows a dedication to clarity. 

7) Don't fuck with the rules.
It is easier for the reader if you use punctuation, italics, and all other conventions conventionally. There is a reason we have conventions. If you absolutely have to mess with a convention, be clear and consistent about it. If you don't understand a convention, look it up and find an example that makes it completely clear to you. Then have someone proof read for you.

8) Style is for stylists.
I don't worry too much about style. My style, in anything other than a blog entry, is a brief as possible. I take more pride in chopping every unnecessary word from a piece than I do from filling it with poetry. The things I look for in my own writing are clarity and brevity. That's it. I admire writers who can fling words around with seeming abandon, who can create little stitches of poetry, and I like to read them. But they are professionals at the top of their game.