And that phrase civic clarity became a kind of a mantra for me.

And any chance I've gotten over the last three decades to hold up and honor an expression

of civic clarity, not just by journalists, but by people in government, people in the business

world, health officials, public health officials, that's what I've tried to do. And I'm on a sort of a

small crusade now to try to do this at a time when I believe we may need civic clarity more

deeply than we have in my lifetime.

Thank you. deeply than we have in my lifetime. Grammar Girl here, I'm in Jan Fogarty, and over the last few weeks, I've been thinking a lot

about an interview I did back in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic with rock star

writing instructor Roy Peter Clark and this concept of civic clarity.

He had so much good practical advice that I want to share it with you again,

and I've re-edited it to focus even more on the ways his advice can make you a better writer.

Here's the interview.

Thank you. his advice can make you a better writer. Here's the interview. Roy Peter Clark, thank you so much for being here with me today.

It is a pleasure to be here on the other end of this amazing continent.

You are working from home now.

So how are things now that you've been, you know, doing this for six weeks or longer?

Yeah, it's closing in on, from our point of view, it's closing in on three months.

So it's been going, I would say we feel lucky in my family.

I wrote an essay this morning in which I talk about the loss of

precious ceremonies and rituals. And most poignantly, the loss of memorials and ceremonies

for the dead. Yeah. Which the New York Times signified brilliantly on the front page of last Sunday's paper

in which they listed 1,000 of the dead as a signifier of the 100,000, that number that we were about to cross.

...