【明報專訊】Vicky's letter has a good structure: introduction, an outline of the question or situation, then her own opinion and conclusion. Her letter is clear, short and easy to read. Writing a short, simple letter that says exactly what you want to say is actually harder than writing a long complicated (and possibly boring) letter. Write simply! Writing is a way of communicating, and if your writing is too complicated to be understood, then it has failed as communication.
To write clearly and simply, you need to know exactly what you want to say. Vicky discusses "extra-terrestrials" (E.T., living things from outside the Earth) and "unidentified flying objects" (U.F.O., things in the sky that we can see, but can't explain). A UFO isn't always a spaceship; it could be anything that we can't identify (a secret government airplane, for example). It seems that Vicky's real interest is in alien life, not just things we can't identify, especially because she talks about food, air and temperature in paragraph three. Have a specific subject! Don't try to write about everything and all possibilities. Instead, write about what you're really interested in, and write about it in detail and with evidence. Don't spread yourself too thinly!
by Simon Overton
