“The whistle-blower’s college writing instructor would be very proud of him.”

From a New York Times opinion post, “The Whistle-Blower Knows How to Write,” by Jane Rosenzweig, director of the Writing Center at Harvard.

I can’t tell you what’s going to happen to his blockbuster complaint about the president’s behavior, but I can tell you that the whistle-blower’s college writing instructor would be very proud of him. . . .

The whistle-blower gets right to the point.

We know right away what his purpose is and why we should care. He wastes no time on background or pleasantries before stating that he is writing to report “an ‘urgent’ concern.”. . .

The whistle-blower uses subheadings to make sure we can connect the dots.

Most subheadings don’t do much to enhance a document. The whistle-blower’s subheadings do what the best subheadings do: They structure the complaint and provide a clear outline of what the document contains: . . .

The whistle-blower gets an A for his topic sentences.

Strong persuasive or expository writing features topic sentences that tell the reader what to focus on.. . .

The whistle-blower uses active verbs.

Among other revelations in the complaint, we learn that “the president also praised Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Mr. Yuriy Lutsenko” and that “senior White House officials had intervened to ‘lock down’ all records of the phone call.”. . .

Passive constructions leave us hanging about who did what, which can be useful if you’re trying to deflect responsibility for something. But if you want to keep your reader focused on who is accountable for what, tell them by making sure your sentences feature real people performing actions.

Every semester, I encounter students who tell me variously that they hate writing, that they’d rather not write, that for the careers they aspire to they won’t need to write. I explain that no matter what careers they choose, they will have to write — reports, strategic plans, proposals and, if nothing else, many, many emails.

But I also tell them that learning to write matters because some day they may have something to say that really matters to them and possibly to the world — and they will want to convey it when the moment arrives in writing that’s clear and concise.