How to Write Clearly

Jack Jacobs’ narration is the secret weapon of this audiobook. His voice isn’t just clear—it’s wry, unpretentious, and effortlessly authoritative, like a professor who’s seen you slacking in the back of the lecture hall and *knows* it. I’ve listened to dry grammar guides before, but Jacobs turns Albrighton’s dry wit into something almost cinematic. The pacing is relentless: no meandering anecdotes, no filler. Instead, you get rapid-fire examples pulled from marketing copy, academic papers, and even social media—each one dismantled with surgical precision. My favorite section? The chapter on ‘weasel words’ (you know, those vague terms like ‘leveraging synergies’ that make you sound like a corporate deepfake). Jacobs delivers the takedown with such deadpan timing I had to replay it twice just to savor the burn. If there’s a critique, it’s that the audiobook could benefit from a PDF companion with the before-and-after examples—trying to toggle between the text and my phone mid-listen derailed my focus. That said, the book’s philosophy is so compelling that I ended up rewriting three work emails on the spot, and none of them sounded like I’d accidentally swallowed a thesaurus. A masterclass in how to wield words without tripping over them.