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One of my vivid memories of life in the First Form was a pin board that displayed ‘Work we are proud of.’

As I recall, it was covered with rather indifferent prose written by people who, nevertheless, had neat (and prescribed) handwriting.  My own handwriting was somewhat unconventional – it still is – and so my own attempts at English Composition failed at the first hurdle – at least in the eyes of ‘the Duchess of Room One’.

After three or four weeks of failing to make the cut, I raised my hand at the beginning of the class.

‘Yes, Jack?’ The Duchess said.

‘Are you entirely happy with that heading?’ I asked.

The Duchess frowned and, for what seemed like a very long time, peered at the questioned caption.  Eventually she nodded and said: ‘Yes, I see what you mean.’  And while she wrote a new caption – in her own immaculate and prescribed handwriting – she asked: ‘And what is wrong with the current caption?’

‘A sentence is something we should never end a sentence with,’ I said.  (I was a smart arse even in those far off days.)

‘Correct.’

Of course, it was not correct then.  And it is not correct now.  If you want to end a sentence with a preposition, go ahead.  Be my guest.  Ninety-something percent of your readers won’t even notice.  But some will.  And therein lies the problem.

As with most grammar ‘rules’, the prohibition against ending a sentence with a preposition comes about because Dryden and several of his successors persuaded their publishers to publish lists of their personal preferences.  That said, even today there are some readers who are distracted by prepositions at the end of sentences.  It causes them to stumble.  It causes them to think about the construction rather than the message.

If you know that some in your audience are likely to be pedantic fuddy-duddies, perhaps you should rearrange your sentence.  Otherwise, a preposition is a perfectly good word to end a sentence with.  (Sorry, Your Grace.)

More than half of the documents we are commissioned to edit and enhance are directed at board directors and senior business executives: CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, CMOs.  These are people who make the decisions that ultimately enable their organisations to succeed or fail.  They are also people who have 101 other documents clamouring for their attention.

Many years ago, my then-boss briefed me to write a doco aimed at convincing the head of a brewery to consolidate twelve of the brewery’s most successful outlets under the same brand name.

‘Apart from what’s in the notes, what else do I need to know?’ I asked.

‘That the guy who is going to make the call is going to get another ten, maybe 20 props on the day ours arrives.  And he is going to have time to read perhaps two or three of them.  Having the best argument is important; but having the most readable argument is even more important.’

I was reminded of this conversation the other day when I received a ‘pack’ from the guys who insure our motor vehicles.  The first three pages covered … I know not what.  I started reading but then fell asleep.  It was not until page four that we go down to what was covered and what they intended to charge.  All of that could so easily have been on page one.  As it is, I still haven’t got around to reading the last couple of pages – which will, presumably, tell us what we need to do next.

Way, way back, I had the opportunity to work with a writer who was seriously under-rated.  It wasn’t that he wasn’t known.  He was a high-profile man-about-town: the star of many a party; the host of many a fine lunch.  He just wasn’t recognised for his writing.  And yet he wrote some of the most sublimely readable prose.

To be honest, when I first started working with him, I was a bit in awe of him.  If he said: ‘Are you sure this is the most elegant way of expressing this idea?’ I immediately assumed that it wasn’t.  And generally rewrote it.

But, as I got to know him better, I took his ‘challenges’ as invitations to a discussion.  One day (I seem to recall that it was after a couple of glasses of wine), I asked him if he had a guiding principle when it came to writing.

I remember him looking up at the ceiling; and then down at the table; and then back up at the ceiling; and, finally, his sparkling blue eyes engaged my neither-sparkling-nor-blue eyes.

‘Personally,’ he said, ‘I always try and make it as easy as possible for the reader to read.  If the reader doesn’t read it, what’s the point of writing it?’

It was a relatively short conversation, but it changed the whole way I went about my work.  Cheers, Mars.

Shortly before she died, a writer friend gave me a copy of R L Trask’s Mind the Gaffe: The Penguin Guide to Common Errors in English.

‘I think that you and Larry will get on very well,’ my friend said.

‘Oh?  Why is that?’

‘Well, even though he’s an academic, when it comes to written English he seems to have a strong dislike of both empty waffle and starchy pomposity.’

Mind the Gaffe is intended as a reference book.  The entries are arranged alphabetically, starting with a guide to when to use a and when to use an, and continuing on for another 293 pages until it arrives at a note on words ending in -yse (British English) and words ending in -yze (American English).

For the past twelve or so years, this handy blue-covered volume has sat on my desk, along with The Concise Oxford Dictionary and The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage.  And seldom does a week pass without me dipping into it for clarification of some point or other.  What is the difference between dissent and dissension?  When is it preferable to use lengthy rather than long?  And what is the currently preferred spelling of yogurt/yoghurt/yoghourt?  (According to Professor Trask, it’s yogurt.)

This summer, Mind the Gaffe has also been one of my most satisfying holiday reads.  Over a couple of days, I read it from cover to cover (accompanied by the occasional glass of chilled rosé).  I can thoroughly recommend it.

I have spent my working life in the communication business.

I have written for print media.  I have written for radio.  I have written for film and TV.  And, for a good part of the past 20 years, I have written (or edited) reports designed to inform or influence decision-makers.

In the early days, the people with whom I worked were often marketers or market researchers.  Latterly, I seem to have worked with more and more academics.

The marketers were often one step away from being snake oil salesmen.  As one of my former clients was wont to say: ‘It’s all about promise writ large.  Forget the sausage.  A sausage is just a sausage.  Sell the sizzle.’

And the market researchers were often unhelpfully cautious.  On the one hand this; on the other hand that.  ‘Oh, I would so like to meet a one-handed market researcher,’ a client once told me.

But the shortcomings of both the marketers and the market researchers pale in comparison with those of many academics.  The marketers may often have overstated their case.  And the market researchers may sometimes have been reluctant to get off the fence.  But at least they generally said what they said reasonably clearly.  Too many academics employ several thousand words – many of them long, esoteric words – to say, well, who knows what?

As one of my colleagues observed, the language of academia is often ‘polished wibble.  It looks impressive.  But it says very little.’

He also observed that many general readers think that if they can’t understand what an academic has written it must be because they are not brainy enough.  But that’s seldom true.  If the general reader can’t understand what the academic has written, it is probably because the academic has not written it very well.

More than 50 years ago, Rudolf Flesch devised a Reading Ease formula.  (You will find it included in many word processing programs.)  A score of 60 or more suggests writing that most general readers will easily understand.

But the majority of academic writing that has crossed my desk over the past couple of years has struggled to score 20.  One memorable piece scored a miserable 2.3.  That’s not effective communication.  That’s just wibble.