Do I Make Myself Clear?: Why Writing Well Matters

By Harold Evans

Categories: Reference

Do I Make Myself Clear?: Why Writing Well Matters (2017) is a guide by Harold Evans, who edited The Sunday Times (1967–81) and The Times of London. Evans shows how foggy prose in journalism, government and business hides meaning and erodes public trust. With marked-up examples and rewriting rules, he treats plain sentences as a civic skill that officials and executives owe their readers.

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• Fareed Zakaria: “This week's book of the week is Harold Evans' Do I Make Myself Clear? While writing well matters, Evans was recently voted the greatest newspaper editor in history, having headed the "London Times", the "Sunday Times", the "New York Daily News," in addition to "US News", "The Atlantic" and "Random House". Now, he has distilled a life's worth of lessons, rules and anecdotes into a spirited punchy book that is itself sparklingly well-written. Read this book and you will write and think more clearly.”