9.7 Make it simple
"Keep it simple?" you may be asking, since you may consider the point to be more to make your writing appear sophisticated. But that is just one of the many ironies of prose--the simpler it seems, the more we as readers believe the writer's mastery of the material.
This is not the simplicity of "simplistic"; it is the simplicity with which a baseball shortstop catches a 'routine' grounder or the simplicity with which a dancer seems to float. The simplicity that the writer seeks is that of the professional: it comes with knowledge, experience, hard work, and revision. It is sometimes called 'elegance' in design.
The British historian F. W. Maitland has said:
Simplicity is the result of technical competence. It is the ending point, not the starting point.
That's exactly right. You may have spent most of your writing experience in school trying to make things seem more complicated, more ornate. Now the aim is different and the demand is immediate.
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