It is a sentence already.
That’s advice from The Education of a Design Writer, a new book edited by Molly Heintz and Steven Heller, designers, writers, and longtime co-conspirators at SVA. Steve has been shaping how we think and write about design for decades, and in this new collection (in full disclosure, I have a short entry in the book), he reminds us that writing, like design, is an act of structure, discipline, and curiosity.
He writes in his Preface:
“Whether long or short form, writing is a discipline. Discipline demands structure. Design is a discipline too.”
I’ve always existed in that parallel, how both writing and design begin as messy acts of noticing, then find their form through attention.
And in the age of AI, this reminder feels especially necessary. Machines can now write with startling fluency, but what they produce isn’t writing in the way Steve means it. It lacks the structure that comes from doubt, the rhythm that comes from rewriting, the decisions that come from a depth of care. Writing is not word generation, however expert; it’s shaping perception. It is design, made visible with/though/by/in language.
Steve then includes a deceptively simple piece of advice, passed down from writer his former editor at The New York Times Book Review, Sam Tanenhaus:
“You can’t go wrong starting a sentence with ‘It is’ because it is a sentence already.”
The “no” quote
originally said
by Deena Chochinov,
who uses it in
management consulting.
The elegance of that advice, of starting with a simple framework, feels almost radical now. Amid all the noise, all the auto-completes and predictive texts, there’s something deeply human about starting with a simple framework.
Design writing, at its best, helps us see the world differently and more clearly. And sometimes, the clearest thing we can say is also the shortest.
A friend recently texted me: “No is a complete sentence.”
It is.
