Economical.writing Quotes

...there were certain chapters when I stopped writing, saw the domestic situation I was in and thought, "I don't want to face this world, let's get back to the hellish one I'm imagining.

Good writing, and this is especially important in a subject such as economics, must also involve the reader in the matter at hand. It is not enough to explain. The images that are in the mind of the writer must be made to reappear in the mind of the reader, and it is the absence of this ability that causes much economic writing to be condemned, quite properly, as abstract.

None of this excuses anyone from mastering the basic ideas and terminology of economics. The intelligent layman must expect also to encounter good economists who are difficult writers even though some of the best have been very good writers. He should know, moreover, that at least for a few great men ambiguity of expression has been a positive asset. But with these exceptions he may safely conclude that what is wholly mysterious in economics is not likely to be important.

(Read the screenplay for the movie, “Up!” and the movie “Gone Girl” - to see what economical writing looks like).

I feel, in a word, the need as [Wladyslaw] Heine would say, to “say something great” … I feel that within me there is maturing a completely new and original form which dispenses with the usual formulas and patterns and breaks them down … I feel with utter certainty that something is there, that something will be born.*

That economics has a considerable conceptual apparatus with an appropriate terminology can not be a serious ground for complaint. Economic phenomena, ideas, instruments of analysis exist. They require names. Education in economics is, in considerable measure, an introduction to this terminology and to the ideas that it denotes. Anyone who has difficulties with the ideas should complete his education or, following an exceedingly well-beaten path, leave the subject alone. It is sometimes said that the economist has a special obligation to make himself understood because his subject is of such great and popular importance. By this rule the nuclear physicist would have to speak in monosyllables.

Thus, it is suggested, a deeper understanding of the conditions affecting the speed and ultimate extent of an innovation's diffusion is to be obtained only by explicitly analyzing the specific choice of technique problem which its advent would have presented to objectively dissimilar members of the relevant (historical) population of potential adopters.

The guiding question in research (research, or invention, is not the main subject here, but no extra charge) is So What? Answer that question in every sentence, and you will become a great scholar, or a millionaire. Answer it once or twice in a ten-page paper or report, and you’ll write a pretty good one.

Therefore one ought to take care to write not merely so that the reader can understand but so that he cannot possibly misunderstand

The big secret is that good writing pays well and bad writing pays badly. Rotten writing causes more papers and reports to fail than do rotten statistics or rotten research. You have to be read to be listened to. Bad writing is not read, even by professors or bosses paid to read it. Can you imagine actually reading the worst report or term paper you’ve ever written? Your sainted mother herself wouldn’t.

happiness is not a six-pack and a sport utility vehicle but what he calls “flow.” It occurs “when a person’s skills are fully involved in overcoming a challenge that is just about manageable” (Csikszentmihalyi 1997, 30).