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Economical Writing
By Deirdre N. McCloskey, Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2000, 98 pp., $8.95 softcover.
Economical Writing is well worth reading. Economists can learn much from this short book (I certainly did), and they can read it in less than two hours.
McCloskey provides very useful advice, not only on style, grammar, and usage, but also on the writing process. As the preceding sentence shows, however, I do not agree with all of McCloskey's suggestions. She urges writers to think hard before using "very," and on page one and again on page eighty-seven, she criticizes the use of "not only . . . but also."
How should one begin a writing task? "Don't wait until the research is done to begin writing," McCloskey advises. "Be writing all the time, working on a page or two here, a section there." Perhaps in anticipation of McCloskey's advice, I composed the last paragraph of this review, not only before I finished reading the book, but even before I started reading it.
In writing an outline, use substantive points, rather than formal ones, McCloskey urges. For example, rather than writing, "Introduction," write, "Housework should be included in national income." McCloskey suggests keeping a dictionary wherever one writes. Moreover, "Only if your computer software has an exceptionally good dictionary, and you can access it more quickly than you can reach over and look up the word can you do...