Over four decades ago I struggled through my first year of graduate school in economics, a struggle made palatable by the extraordinary professor who taught my first economics course. Deirdre McCloskey was (and is) smart, fun, and eccentric, and she enthusiastically led us through our first pass at economics. Part of that passage included learning to write, for McCloskey held – a notion considered eccentric – that economists should write well. Although good writing remains suspect among economists, Deirdre McCloskey taught me long ago that good writing makes for good economics.
In class, McCloskey stressed the value of writing well, passing out class notes on writing. I kept the notes for many years and hopefully studied them as I attempted to become a passable writer. I finally discarded the notes when they and much else appeared in McCloskey’s 1985 article, “Economical Writing.” The article soon became a short book of the same title; a second edition followed thirteen years later. We now are rewarded with a third edition of Economical Writing, with a new subtitle: Thirty-Five Rules for Clear and Persuasive Prose (University of Chicago Press, 2019). McCloskey’s personality pervades her little book, which is fun to read and humbling to those of us who would write better.