Writing With Style

Learning to put words on paper is a remarkable achievement. Let us not minimize how extraordinary it is that squiggly black marks on a page enable meaning to be conveyed between two minds. (“Squiggly” is a technical term.) Writing as a Civilizational Advance is worthy of Great Praise and perhaps an Epic Poem or Two. Writing as practiced by the bulk of humanity? Using another technical term: Ugh.

Consider my first sentence. Presumably something like “The ball is red.” Efficient, to be sure. But, you might not want to read 500 pages written like that. So, once the idea of writing is mastered, a growing child is taught style. As it turns out, the untutored write remarkably poorly. Nouns, verbs, conjunctions, gerunds, tenses, vocabulary, all must become part of the writer’s toolkit. The process of stocking said toolkit is painful. You remember those days. You are not fond of them.

Then, a remarkable thing happens. Stocked with these things, the child, now a teenager, begins to deploy them indiscriminately. Long, impressive sounding words are thrown forth as if from a trebuchet. Yeah, like that. “Trebuchet” looks impressive, right? Sentences end up wandering off into the void that has no name but the darkness induces a somnolescence in the grader who will hopefully fail to be aware that the string of words misses a verb or said object has no connecting tissue. The mind lulls. What was I saying?

Eventually, along comes those hideous “grammar books.” They contain The Rules. You resented those rules. They cramped your style. And, as we know, your style was the Most Impressive Style Ever. The fact that you used words improperly, your sentences lack cohesion, your paragraphs did not cohere, your essay was merely a stream of consciousness which ended merely because you hit the minimum number of words for the assignment, well, none of that mattered because it was Your Style. Your benighted teacher gave you a low grade because your foolish teacher just didn’t like the way you wrote. Writing is a matter of personal taste. You like run-on rambling streams of consciousness! Well, as long as you are the author. Obviously when other people try it out, you cannot understand what they are saying.

If you are lucky, at some point your teacher handed you a copy of Strunk and White. Or Orwell. They had style rules. Simple and direct ones. Use short words. Use active voice. Delete unnecessary words. If you did this, your prose became good. Efficient. All that use of flowery ornamentation to mask the substance (of lack thereof) in your sentences was eschewed. Instead, a reader could understand what you wrote. Win.

I have heard tell that students used to learn how to write well in high school. That era predates me. Now, most students do not write well. They need Strunk and White. They need those rules. But, before we start complaining about the young’ins, let us note that their Elders are even worse. Pick up an academic journal sometime and admire the utterly abysmal nature of the prose therein. Current professors are among the worst writers ever.

But, imagine you are someone who has mastered those rules. You are someone who understands why active voice and short words are good. You know how to convey meaning in an efficient manner. What do you do now? You have a choice. You can continue to write efficiently, conveying meaning directly. This is not a bad option; the world needs more people who can do this. But, you could also buy a copy of Farnsworth’s Classical English Style and be amazed at the possibilities.

This book should come with a warning label: Not for those who have not learned to write efficiently. In the wrong hands, it would inevitably lead to even more of the overwritten prose beloved by the “Look at all the Big Words I am using” crowd. But, in the right hands, it will teach someone how to write like Lincoln or Churchill.

Great English Style is born of learning how and when to break the rules. The tension of this fracture of the rules is capable of lifting prose into a work of art. You can’t break the rules at random to pull off this feat. You must break them just so. Farnsworth’s book is a compendium of Just Sos. (That looks weird. But, so does “Just Soes.” What is the plural of “Just So”?)

Consider the short versus long word debate. Short words tend to have Saxon origins. Usually one syllable and brutally direct with harsh consonants. Longer words tend to be Latinate. Mellifluous and multisyllabic. If you have to pick one and always use it, go with Saxon. Your prose will improve.

But, what happens when you mix Latinate and Saxon words? Here is where Farnsworth comes in. Imagine a sentence that begins with Latinate words but has a Saxon finish. The idea begins in the ethereal realms, your mind dwells in those lofty plains, then it crashes to earth. Example? Lincoln: “I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.” The contrast of sharpness of the end after the lightness of the beginning gives it force.

Go the other way now. Start short and end in a beautiful panorama of vibrant vocabulary. It releases the tension built by the first part of the sentence, lifting it up. It is particularly effective at describing the good in short direct words, and then the villains in haughty terms. Lincoln again: “Did we brave all to falter now—now, when that same enemy is wavering, disserved, and belligerent?”

Once you start seeing the patterns, you can deploy them to great effect. Lincoln: “To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty is the work now before all those who would prevent that consummation. That is what we have to do.” Or Churchill, who loved to mock his opponents with Latinate flourishes “He did not run away, he executed a strategic movement to the rear,” or “At 4 o’clock this morning, Hitler attacked and invaded Russia. All his usual formalities of perfidy were observed with scrupulous technique.” Brilliant.

To take another example from Farnsworth, consider sentences. Style guides like moderate sentence length, straightforward structure, and active voice. The result? A sentence designed to be as efficient at conveying meaning as possible. It creates an easy-to-read sentence which the reader can follow without too much effort.

If you want to see a really good example of this, start a blog and get the Yoast add-on that evaluates your prose for Search Engine Optimization (SEO for the obsessed blogger). It is cute. You get a green light when the search engines will like your post, a yellow light when it gets a bit frustrated, and a red light when your prose is too awful for the search engine to want to bother figuring out what it is that you are trying to communicate. It really likes simple structure, few subordinate clauses, short paragraphs and a relatively conventional vocabulary. The idea here is that people reading things online (and many people only read things on-line) have short attention spans and thus need prose that is simple, direct, easy on the eye, and not too difficult to follow. Long wandering sentences with ornate style are verboten.

Now contrast that to Great Prose. Farnsworth has a fascinating graph comparing the sentence length deployed by Oliver Wendell Holmes and William Rehnquist. The average sentence length is the same. The variance? Rehnquist’s are all roughly the same length. Holmes has both much longer and much shorter sentences. That contrast, a very long sentence followed by a short sentence or the other way around, has a remarkable effect on the prose. You notice it. It is a way of drawing attention to what is being said.

Similarly, while active voice makes a sentence forceful and direct, at times, you want attention drawn to something other than the actor. Jefferson knew this when writing the Declaration of Independence. “All men are created equal” and so on draws attention to people. That is the point. “God created all men equal” would draw attention away from those declaring independence, muting the forcefulness of the declaration.

A post like this could go on and on. The book is 145 pages of examples of all sorts of rhetorical devices. Things I never knew had a name—Anacoluthon being one which is much overused in this here space. Or this supremely excellent piece of advice: when you use hyperbole, exaggerate boldly.

I picked up this book because I saw multiple mentions of it when it first came out as being a most amazing book of style. The reviewers were right. I have never enjoyed reading a book on writing more. Indeed, it makes me want to go read other books of style, which is both high praise and I am afraid will inevitably lead to some rather disappointing reading in my future. Your future is brighter. You can click on the picture of the book cover above and buy a copy of Farnsworth’s book. If you care about writing, you will love it.