The last place you’d expect to find writing advice is in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ journal Transactions on Professional Communications. Yet, there it was.
In the 1980 issue, Kurt Vonnegut dispatches advice on “how to put your style and personality into everything you write.” What’s even more interesting, is that he does it in an ad, part of a series from the International Paper Company called “The Power of the Printed Word.” It was a ploy, a decree, or call to arms urging all of us to “read better, write better, and communicate better.”
Below you will find that advice, as well as other snippets about writing from the prologues of his novels, interviews, and his memoir of essays, A Man Without a Country.
How to Write with Style: An ad
1. Find a subject you care about
Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way—although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.
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