I would suggest that writing is an exercise in morality. The writer’s aim ought to be the pursuit of clarity. And the pursuit of clarity is the pursuit of honesty and truth. You and I must fight for the purity and elegance of the language, re-capture it from those who are constantly debasing it. Writing is an instrument for moving ideas from one mind to another. The test of good writing is: did you convey exactly what you intended to convey? Your writing becomes consequential only as it is understood by others.
Much academic prose illustrates how a writer can bury his thoughts under layers of phrases, and clauses, and hide behind a passive verb. Bad writing can serve as armor against the reader who wants to know what the writer thinks. We need to bring scholarship out from behind the walls; the ramparts of abstruse language, within which many scholars have enclosed it.
[Perry's writing style is akin to] "sumi-e, the Japanese paintings that portray a scene or suggest a world of feeling with a few skillful brush strokes".
Raymond A. Esthus (December 1981). "Beneath the Eagle's Wings: Americans in Occupied Japan by John Curtis Perry; Review by: Raymond A. Esthus". The American Historical Review86 (5): 1133–1134. DOI:10.2307/1858625.
.jpg)
