Cracking the code

With a mathematics degree and a dread of writing and public speaking, UCLA alumnus Philip Yaffe would not have expected to be the Daily Bruin editor-in-chief, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, a journalism teacher with the Peace Corps and, most recently, the author of the writing and speech book “In the “˜I’ of the Storm: the Simple Secrets of Writing and Speaking (Almost) like a Professional.”

His book, first released in October 2006, centers on the fundamental principles behind writing and speech ““ lessons he began developing during his time at UCLA.

Yaffe, however, held a long dislike toward writing before college, gravitating instead toward math and physics, but he found writing a necessity in high school.

“I got into an accelerated class in high school and had to write, so I sat down with a grammar book and learned it all,” he said. “I basically taught myself good writing to survive in high school.”

After one of his favorite teachers recommended taking a journalism course at Long Beach City College, Yaffe’s skills improved. But it wasn’t until he transferred to UCLA that he grew more confident not only with his writing skills but also with his public speaking abilities.

“Until I got to UCLA, you put me together with three people around a table and two of them would talk and I wouldn’t say a word because I was terrified of speaking,” Yaffe said. “But slowly, and particularly after I developed my writing skills, I began realizing I can transfer these to speaking, and I lost my fear of speaking.”

He says that found himself an editor and later editor-in-chief for the Daily Bruin largely by accident and did not at first plan to carry on with journalism and writing. Even though Yaffe also became a writing tutor in college, his focus still remained with his major, mathematics.

“I tutored in writing to make some extra cash. It was never a passion though, just what I had to do,” he said.

Despite his disinterest in the subject, tutoring was when Yaffe began to explore many of the ideas for his future book. He vividly recalls when a student came in for tutoring with a professor’s note that said she would fail the class unless her writing dramatically improved.

Yaffe found, however, that there were no problems with her ideas, only her writing technique.

“There was just one fundamental idea she had not absorbed. After grasping the fundamentals, her grades skyrocketed. She went from an F to a B.”

The three main writing fundamentals he stresses to students are clarity, conciseness and density. He also emphasizes lessons he picked up from his experience in journalism such as simplistic sentences and prioritizing information.

After college, Yaffe joined the Peace Corps in Tanzania, but found himself again drawn by chance into the journalism and writing realm.

“I was posted in an area a mile from the only school of journalism,” Yaffe said. “So I became a journalism teacher there, but by accident.”

This experience, however, altered Yaffe’s view of writing and journalism.

“My experience in the Peace Corps changed my passion. … Spending time in another country changes your outlook,” he said. “I didn’t see myself as a mathematician anymore after I came back. I thought, “˜Let’s just see where journalism leads.'”

And the path eventually brought Yaffe to the Wall Street Journal, where he worked as a reporter and feature writer until the financial and industrial public relations agency Burson-Marsteller employed him and transferred him to Brussels, Belgium.

Even though Yaffe has found a career in writing and speaking, he found that his mathematical background is still an asset when teaching writing principles.

“As the basis of my book, I have developed functional definitions, like simple mathematical formulas,” he said.

An example of this comes when he explains how to achieve clarity when writing.

To do this, Yaffe provides a three-step definition: to emphasize what is of key importance, de-emphasize what is of secondary importance, and eliminate everything of no importance. He expresses this as an equation: CL=EDE.

Yaffe also links the fundamentals of writing to speaking, an idea he says separates his book from other similar texts.

“If you look carefully, the same principles that govern good writing govern good speaking,” he said. “But when I checked a lot of books before I wrote my own, I found none that made the connection.”

Carlos Lechado, a friend of Yaffe’s and a native Spanish speaker, finds that Yaffe’s principles don’t only apply to English speakers.

“What he teaches me about writing skills is not just English. In fact, it is useful for any other language,” Lechado said. “It is not about exactly writing. It is about thinking. If you think well, you write well, you speak well.”

Yaffe said that Lechado partly inspired his book. The two meet two or three times a week to talk about anything, including language and politics.

“He took a very scientific approach. It was very American in the best sense of the word. Very, very practical,” Lechado explained. “He asked me and other colleagues to test his method, and when he saw that it worked, he was very pleased. We encouraged him to follow and improve his methods.”

Yaffe is currently at work on a second edition of “In the “˜I’ of the Storm,” which features the same guidelines but gears the subject matter more to a college writer.

“The fundamentals will still be the same, but there will be a bit more explanation on what “˜university writing’ is all about and what the professors are likely to be looking for,” he said.

Yaffe said, however, that any writer covering any topic will learn from the book’s simple guidelines and tools.

“With the book, you can actually know what you’re doing and test your text when you’re done to see whether or not it passes the test. For many people, that’s a revelation.”

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