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Back in my student days, it seemed that almost every one of my contemporaries owned a copy of Desiderata.  It was usually displayed in poster form – alongside the mandatory posters of Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, and Che Guevara.

More often than not, the poem was credited to Anonymous and was described as having been found in an old church – sometimes named as Old St Paul’s – in 1692.  In fact the poem was written much later.  In 1927.  By a chap named Max Ehrmann.  But why let a few facts get in the way of a good story?

With a particularly acrimonious election campaign now underway, I recently found myself recalling snatches of Desiderata.  In particular, I found myself recalling the part that advises:

‘Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.’

Also, the further suggestion:

‘Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.’

What is it about politics that makes so many people – politicians, journalists, and entrenched supporters of one side or the other (but, regrettably, mainly from the left) – feel that they need to shout?  What is it that makes them feel that they need to be loud and aggressive?

Trust me: if you have something worth saying, you may speak your truth quietly and clearly and I will be only too happy to listen.  But if you persist in shouting, I will simply attend to more measured voices.

Many years ago, when I worked in advertising, it used to be said that there were three legs to the successful copywriting stool.

The first was: Who are you writing for?  The second was: What is the single most important thing you have to tell this person?  And the third was: Why should they believe you?

Get one of those things wrong (we were told) and the stool would fall over.

I remember the ad agencies – especially the bigger ones – spending a lot of time and effort defining the target audience.  Who was this person?  How old were they?  Where did they live?  Where had they gone to school?  Where did they shop?  What did they buy?  What did they believe?

And then later, when I started writing for magazines, I remember the editor of a sailing magazine telling me that the magazine’s typical reader was ‘a sea dreamer’: someone who loved the idea of offshore cruising – even though they would probably never get to sail out of sight of land.

The editor of a business magazine told me that his magazine’s typical reader was a mid-level manager looking for a fast track to the top.  ‘They don’t want to be told that it’s a long road to a C-level job.  They want a story with a moral, and a few buzzwords that they can trot out tomorrow.’

And so, for 20 years or so, I tried to write what I thought the reader wanted to read.  Sometimes, the feedback suggested that I got it spot on.  At other times, the lack of feedback suggested that perhaps I didn’t.

And then I read William Zinsser’s classic guide to writing nonfiction, On Writing Well.

In Chapter 5, The Audience, Mr Zinsser convinced me that, even with the best will in the world, you can’t really second guess the reader – or even the editor.  And, in his opinion, the best strategy is always to write for yourself.  If your reader likes what you have to say – and how you say it – you’ve achieved your objective.  And, as Mr Zinsser so cheerfully puts it: ‘If you lose the dullards back in the dust, you don’t want them anyway.’

If you’re still reading at this point, then you know that Mr Zinsser was not altogether wrong.  And if you’ve already stopped reading … well, what can I say?

‘Many races are won on the start line.  To finish well, it’s usually vital to start well.’

That was the opinion of one of the most successful sailing coaches I ever had the opportunity to work with.  But it’s also good advice for writers.  Capture your reader’s attention early; and keep them engaged right to the end.

From where I sit, too many writers of business documents begin by ‘warming their engines’.  Rather that coming right out and saying: ‘Here’s what we can do for you,’ they waffle on for two or three pages – sometimes more – about ‘the changing dynamics of the market space’ or some such high-sounding twaddle.

Recently, a client sent me a draft of her company’s response to an RFP.  ‘What do you think?’ she asked.

I phoned her with my own question: ‘Why did you wait until page nine to offer a solution?’

For a moment or two, she said nothing.  I could picture her frowning at the other end of the phone.  And then she said: ‘Well, you know, I thought that we should establish our credentials.  I thought that we should demonstrate that we understand the sector, where it is at, how it got there, where it might be headed.’

‘And do you think your prospective client would have sent you the RFP if they thought that you did not understand the sector?’

‘Umm … no.  I guess not,’ she said.

Between the two of us, we cut and pasted and polished the draft, offering up the solution in the very first paragraph.  We also crafted a final paragraph designed to leave the prospect in no doubt about what they needed to do next.  Of course, that perfectly-crafted final paragraph would have been a total waste of time and effort if we failed to hook the readers in the first paragraph and then keep them reading right to the end.

In the words of the distinguished author, editor, and publisher Sol Stein: ‘A terrific ending will never be experienced by a reader put off by a poor beginning.’

When I was just starting out in the writing business, I had an editor who insisted that good writing was largely a matter of thinking carefully about what you wanted to say; saying it as simply as possible; and then making sure that you had, indeed, said what you intended to say.

It was good advice.  But I soon discovered that the hardest part is usually the first part: deciding what you want to say.

Among my more-experienced colleagues, there seemed to be two main approaches to this potential difficulty.

The first was what I came to think of as ‘the Ernie approach.’  Ernie was one of the most-respected senior writers on the team.  His approach was to spend great chunks of time pacing the corridors with his eyes on some far distant horizon before suddenly ducking back into his cubbyhole and banging out a thousand or so words of near-perfect prose.

The second approach was what I came to think of as ‘the David approach’.  David didn’t bother with any of the corridor pacing.  He just sat down at his typewriter and started pounding away.  Once he had covered ten or 15 pages, he put them in a stack, face down, on his desk, and wandered off to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee.

Fortified with a shot of caffeine, he would then take up a blue pencil and quickly read through what he had written, circling a sentence here and a sentence there, highlighting a word here and a word there.  And then, when he had worked his way through all ten or 15 pages, he would put a fresh sheet of paper into his typewriter and start saying what he really wanted to say.  As he said, the first part of the process was just to clarify his thoughts and canvass some possibilities.

Over the years, I’ve used both the Ernie approach and the David approach.  They both work.  But, increasingly, I find myself leaning towards the David approach.  Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised.  As another editor said: Most writers become writers in order to discover what they think.  Or was that Joan Didion who said that?

Anyone old enough to remember radio in the 1950s and 60s (and, yes, there are some of us), will probably remember the iconic police drama Dragnet.  And they will probably also remember Sergeant Joe Friday’s catchphrase: ‘All we want are the facts, ma’am.’  Tell us what happened – and then we will worry about why it might have happened.

Sixty years on, advances in news gathering and dissemination should have made getting the facts really simple.  Certainly simpler than it was back in the days of reporters with steno pads and bulky tape recorders and film cameras the size of suitcases.  But it hasn’t.

Spinmeisters now intervene at every opportunity in an attempt to ensure that we only get the facts that cast their paymasters in a favourable light.  The less favourable facts they endeavour to block or twist or bury.  Call it PR, call it reputation management, call it message enhancement; but make no mistake, these activities are not aimed at a full disclosure of the facts.

And yet, in some ways, the spinmeisters are not the biggest part of the problem.  Even more concerning is the role of the mainstream media in the 21st century.

There was a time – maybe back in Dragnet days – when mainstream media reported the facts and offered opinions.  But there was always a clear line between the two.  This is what we understand to be the facts; and this is our opinion.  But today that line has all but disappeared.

Today, all too often, opinions are presented as facts.  And even before the facts are in, there are tens or hundreds of ‘commentators’ offering their interpretations, adding ‘speculative facts’, and suggesting conclusions that any right-thinking person would be unwise to ignore.

This year is an election year.  We are told that the outcome will be a near run thing.  And, indeed, it might be.  But how are voters supposed to decide without facts?  It’s not an old-fashioned beauty contest.  This is not a question of which group of would-be parliamentary representatives looks best in bathing costumes.

We need to know what is being offered.  We need to know the facts, ma’am.  You can offer your opinions.  But, please, make sure that we have the unbiased facts by which we can evaluate your opinions.

If you have ever started out to write a clear and concise instruction, proposal, or explanation, only to find that making it clear and concise was far from easy, you are not alone.

Bertrand Russell (a man who managed to express quite a few difficult thoughts and ideas clearly and concisely) once observed: ‘Everything is vague to a degree you do not realise until you have tried to make it precise.’

Or as a former colleague of mine was wont to say: ‘You don’t realise how little you know until you try to convey the little that you think you know to someone else.’

When I first started to earn a living as a writer, computers were machines the size of small houses, housed in special air-conditioned rooms, and tended by men in white coats.  They were almost exclusively the domain of engineers and money men.  We lowly writers composed our sentences on manual typewriters.  Or, in the case of one of my colleagues, with a Black Beauty pencil on lined yellow ‘legal’ pads.

Typically, a first draft (often based on handwritten notes) would lead to a second draft, and a third, and sometimes a fourth.  In the end, you had something that said what you needed to say and a waste basket full of not-quite-so-successful attempts.

Today, however, there’s a tendency to bang out something as quickly as possible and press the send button.  Time is money.  We expect everything to happen at the speed of light.

But if what you bang out is neither clear nor concise, the fact that you conveyed it at the speed of light counts for nothing.  Sometimes it counts for less than nothing.  If it doesn’t inform your reader, there’s a very good chance that it will misinform or confuse her.

Electronic wizardry has simplified and sped up much of the mechanical part of the writing process.  But clear thinking and concise composition still requires time.  In the interests of clarity and concision, make sure that you allow yourself enough time to think carefully about what you want to say, to say it, and then to make sure that you really have said it.

The news media has always valued attention-grabbing headlines.  Why would they not?  They grab the reader’s/viewer’s/ listener’s attention.

‘Superstar in daring rescue.’  (Even if the ‘superstar’ is someone you’ve never ever heard of.)

‘Princess to marry Dustman.’  (‘Princess’ turns out to be James ‘Dustman’ Miller’s pet name for 18-year-old Chardonnay Longbottom.)

‘World set to end in four weeks.’  (Or is it in 4 million years?  Those Mayan prophesies are so hard to figure out.)

But in this Internet age, things seem to be going from a bit of a stretch to totally ridiculous.  And so, under the headline ‘Politician eats two dogs for lunch’, we might well read:

‘When list MP Joe Rumble made a whistle-stop appearance at Wheeler’s Whopper Dog House, he may have ordered the Double-Dog Special.  A single mother-of-three, who asked to be known only as Lynndee, says that she thought that’s what she heard him ask for.

‘Wheeler’s general manager, Hank Harkness, said that the Double-Dog Special – two hotdogs with sweet mustard pickle and a side of twice-cooked fries – was one of his restaurant’s most popular lunchtime dishes.  However, he was unable to confirm that this was what the politician had ordered.’

As a growing number of media players scrap over a diminishing pool of advertising and subscription revenue – and more and more writers are being paid on a ‘per click’ basis – the competition for shrill headlines is becoming ever more … well … competitive.  The fact that the story that follows often fizzles out within a paragraph or three seems not to matter.  That initial click’s the thing.  And the more clicks, the more chances the writer has of eating that day.

And it doesn’t stop there.  If the original non-story gets a bit of traction, it’s usually not too long before other publications/blogs/TV channels begin reporting on the report.  Often, they don’t even bother to go back to the original source.  Often they can’t afford to.  Instead, they slap up a bold headline saying ‘Politician eats dogs’, followed by a paragraph that begins: ‘Dogs are on the menu for far-right politician Joe Rumble, according to reports.’  (‘According to reports’ sort of gets them off the hook.  Hey, don’t shoot us.  We’re only the messengers.)

Oh dear.  I really do hope that someone works out a way to pay for proper journalism before we are all driven off the cliff of despair.