Joseph M. Williams

Who was Joseph M. Williams?

Joseph M. Williams was a professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago.

Williams began as a researcher of English language. In Origins of the English Language: A Social & Linguistic History he traces the history of the English language from the evolution of man through to Modern English. His interest in studying close connection between grammar and rhetoric, reflected in another earlier book The New English: Structure, Form, Style, culminated in Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, his noteworthy textbook on writing style.

In Style, based on "The Little Red Schoolhouse" course he taught at Chicago for many years, Williams established and vehemently defended two basic principles that “it is good to write clearly, and anyone can.”. To meet these ends Williams laid out streamlined steps to help writers first make their sentences and paragraphs clear and then graceful. Writers can make sentences clearer by identifying an actor in the sentence subject and then expressing actions in specific verbs. Sentences are easier to understand when the beginning connects to prior sentences and the end presents new information.