One of the main problems of writing clearly and effectively is that there will always be a gap between what you want to say and what your readers may understand. The principles outlined below will help you overcome this. Remember that they are only guidelines, not inflexible rules, but they will give you a general idea about how most university texts should be written. In a nutshell, the principles of clear writing are the following.

1. Give your documents a clearly defined structure. The sections and subsections and their corresponding headings should guide readers towards meaning.
   
   
2. Write sentences of different types and lengths. This will give your texts variety. But beware of excessively long sentences!
   
   
3. Make the important characters of your text the subjects of your sentences.
   
   
4. Express actions not as abstract nouns (nominalizations) but as verbs.
   
   
5. Make sure that the main verb is towards the beginning of the sentence by avoiding long introductory phrases, keeping your subjects short and not separating the subject from the verb.
   
   
6. Begin sentences with information that you believe is familiar to readers and end sentences with what you believe is new or unfamiliar. Make sure that your most important characters occupy the subject position as often as possible.
   
   
7. Ensure that all the elements of a list are expressed in the same grammatical form.
   
   
8. Avoid long strings of prepositional phrases and sentences that only have weak verbs.
   
   
9. Once you have completed your text, revise it for concision (among other things).