Joseph M. Williams

Joseph M. Williams (18 August 1933, Cleveland, Ohio – 22 February 2008, South Haven, Michigan) was a professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago where he promoted clarity in writing for many years. He authored several books on language and writing.

Williams began as a researcher of English language. In Origins of the English Language: A Social & Linguistic History he traces the history of the English language from the evolution of man through to Modern English. His interest in studying close connection between grammar and rhetoric, reflected in another earlier book The New English: Structure, Form, Style, culminated in Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, his noteworthy textbook on writing style.

In Style, based on "The Little Red Schoolhouse" course he taught at Chicago for many years, Williams established and vehemently defended two basic principles that “it is good to write clearly, and anyone can.” (Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (9th Edition) 4). To meet these ends Williams laid out streamlined steps to help writers first make their sentences and paragraphs clear and then graceful. Writers can make sentences clearer by identifying an actor in the sentence subject and then expressing actions in specific verbs. Sentences are easier to understand when the beginning connects to prior sentences and the end presents new information. Graceful sentences and paragraphs are concise, shapely (uninterrupted and coordinated), and elegant (balanced in syntax, meaning, sound and rhythm). Paragraphs are cohesive when sentences have a sense of flow, and coherent when paragraphs are felt as the whole. In later editions, he discussed ethics of writing understood as a social act between writer and reader and offered steps to produce coherent documents.

Noting the kinship between Style and The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White, some praised Williams for practicality of his advice [1].

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