sloppy writing, sloppy thinking

The man who wasted no words
To Goh Keng Swee, 'sloppy writing showed sloppy thinking'

By Sue-Ann Chia, Thurs 20 May 2010 (with thanks to Straits Times, www.straitstimes.com)


THE meeting was boring, but Dr Goh Keng Swee was scribbling furiously.

Peering to look at what he was writing, Mr Ngiam Tong Dow was taken aback.

On the paper was a word, and Dr Goh had written five antonyms and five
synonyms for the word.
'I was amazed - he was practising his vocabulary,' recalled Mr Ngiam, 72. He
chuckled at the memory of his former boss doodling with words.

The incident took place in the 1960s. Mr Ngiam was then in the Finance
Ministry, and Dr Goh was his minister. The doodling showed the latter's
interest in the English language.

Dr Goh indulged in the same habit even during Cabinet meetings, recalled
other retired civil servants.

Former Cabinet minister S. Dhanabalan said in an earlier interview that it
showed how Dr Goh's mind was 'always ranging over many eclectic things' at
the same time.

While it testified to his multi-tasking skills, it also reflected his
obsession with clear and concise writing.

'To him, sloppy writing showed sloppy thinking,' said Mr Ngiam. 'He was a
craftsman. Every word resonated.'

So strongly did Dr Goh believe in good writing, he set out to improve writing
skills within the civil service by giving selected officers a copy of a slim
book - The Complete Plain Words, by Sir Ernest Gowers, a British civil
servant.

Published in 1954, the book had been written at the request of the British
government to improve writing within the British civil service.

Retired Cabinet secretary Lau Wah Ming told The Straits Times that Dr Goh
started giving copies of this book to civil servants in the mid-1970s,
although the drive to write good English had started earlier.

Many still retain their copies, now yellow with age.

It was no secret that those on whom Dr Goh conferred his gift were those he
thought promising, but whose minutes or papers were, to borrow the words of
Mr Lee Kuan Yew, 'deficient in clarity'.

In the later 1970s, Dr Goh went one step further in his quest for better
writing in the civil service.

He persuaded Mrs Joanna Hennings, the wife of the then British High
Commissioner to Singapore, to conduct writing courses for civil servants.

'Arriving at the Education Ministry in 1979, Dr Goh discovered that... staff
papers were often long-winded, unclear, and contained�grammatical errors,'
said Mr Lau.

Actual staff papers were used as case studies, much to the consternation of
their writers.

Dr Goh's legendary insistence on writing well had a lasting impact on SGX
chairman J.Y. Pillay, now 76.

He remembered Dr Goh as someone who never waffled, and recounted an occasion
when Dr Goh despaired at the sentence: 'This is sufficient.'

'Why can't we use the word 'enough', instead?' Dr Goh had asked.

Of Sir Ernest's book, Mr Pillay said: 'I devoured it. It had very useful
tips, such as on the drafting of precise, clean and succinct Cabinet papers.'

Ms Low Sin Leng, 57, was another recipient of The Complete Plain Words.

She, together with Mr Lau, was a member of the so-called 'Daring Dozen'
systems engineers from the Defence Ministry who had been handpicked by Dr Goh
to revamp the education system from 1979 onwards.

'One thing I learnt was not to misuse the phrase 'due to',' said Ms Low, now
the executive chairman of Sembcorp Industrial Parks.

In the earlier years, Dr Goh also wanted all memos to Cabinet to be no more
than 21/2 typewritten pages, with double spacing.

In the 1980s, Cabinet memos became longer as issues became more complex, but
they had to be accompanied by one-page executive summaries.

The requirement 'forced you to be clear about your objective, focus on key
findings or arguments, and be precise in what decision or action you are
seeking', Ms Low noted.

Mr Pillay believes that Dr Goh's clear writing creed is relevant to young
Singaporeans today: 'When you come out of university, you are conditioned to
put down a lot of words in writing, not just to convey an argument, but maybe
also because you want to show off.

'But when you enter the labour force, people are not interested to see how
brilliant you are, but what recommendations you have and how you propose
them.'

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Gowers' Plain English online!
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/gowerse/index.htm