March 1959 — Vol. 40, No. 2 —
About Style in Writing
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Some people think that style is like the
geometer's "straight line", which is not anything anyone has
ever seen. In fact it is not a line at all, but simply the
straightness of a line.
Others believe that style can be seen and developed. They
say it is a pattern in words expressing some idea of the writer's
mind within a beautiful fabric.
We all know that some writers have the ability to beautify
the commonplace and to illumine the dingy and the sordid.
Cardinal Newman summed up this talent in his essay on style:
"The Art of Letters is the method by which a writer brings
out in words, worthy of his subject, and sufficient for his
readers, the thoughts which impress him."
It is a counsel of despair to maintain that we are incapable
of adding dignity, distinction and a certain allure to what
we write. Writing is not a hallowed mystery, remote and secret.
The ability to express ourselves is not a frill for the edges
of life, but an indispensable tool of our self—understanding,
our understanding of others, and our rational contact with
the world around us.
It is a great tragedy that many men and women with valuable
thoughts, yes, even with sublime ideas, have failed to develop
skill in communicating them to others.
Someone brought "style" out of the clouds of uncertainty
by listing its elements under five headings: economy, simplicity,
sequence, climax and variety. A letter or a book checked by
these points is fairly likely to be a good piece of communication,
and these are virtues that can be developed.
An obvious striving after style, whether of the rough, tough
sort or the polished, brittle kind, is ridiculous. Writing
should be simple and natural, not insipid but sinewy, not
brief for the sake of brevity, but compressed for the sake
of intelligibility, not dainty but definite and brisk. The
writer must sit firmly in the saddle, guiding his mount.
The need for style
It is not enough, if a writer wishes to stir people's minds,
to put down facts as he would note on a blueprint the particulars
about an engineering project. An executive may know his business
inside out, but he needs also to be able to convey his ideas
about it to his people in such a way as to win the response
he desires.
A certain unaffected neatness and grace of diction are required
of any writer merely as a matter of courtesy. But a genuine
style is the living body of thought, not a costume put on
for a special occasion. One doesn't need the verbal music
of Shakespeare, but one must be able to make a pattern out
of a muddle and build up a certain unity of matter and manner.
A genuine style is the expression of the writer's mind.
Great writers do not aim at style for its own sake. They are
inspired by their subject, and this inspiration shows itself
in their words. They do not leave us in doubt about their
topic: Macbeth is about ambition, Othello is about jealousy,
Timon of Athens is about money, and King Lear is about renunciation.
The style fits the subject, and it is only by being wilfully
blind that one can fail to understand what Shakespeare is
saying.
What is the nature of your subject? What impression do you
wish to convey about it? Is your writing designed to entertain,
inform, teach, sell or condole? Is it designed to be appreciated
universally, by a certain class, by your superiors or subordinates,
by your family?
The personality of the writer's style will reflect itself
through the way in which he handles his subject with the purpose
he has in mind. The resulting letter or article or book will
show the writer's personal sense of the facts he sets down.
Perhaps you like Gertrude Stein's style: many people do.
She wrote in "What is Poetry?": "One of the things that is
a very interesting thing to know is how you are feeling inside
you to the words that are coming out to be outside of you."
An individual style is impossible to the writer who takes
his material from books straight to his fingertips without
undergoing examination in his head. Such a product has no
more individuality than a plaster cast of a cast, and not
nearly the same perfection.
Brightening the subject
Style should be used to brighten the intelligibility of
a subject which is obscure. It joins the instructive with
the agreeable. It avoids monotony. It uses ornament where
ornament will be effective, and is redundant if repetition
will make a point.
If one is to say something significant he must rise above
the sheer enumeration of first order facts. Writing is wearisome
without contrast and without development of a thought. A white
canvas cannot produce an effect of sunshine; the painter must
darken it in some places before he can make it look luminous
in others. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great portrait painter
of the eighteenth century, said, when someone asked him how
he could bear to paint the ugly cocked hats, bonnets and wigs
of his time: "They all have light and shadow."
What is the application of this principle of art to writing
a letter? It lies in this: we need to set off our facts by
feelings and our feelings by facts; we need to introduce an
occasional irrelevancy, perhaps, to lighten the letter, to
add artistic piquancy.
When we follow this course we make our writing easy to read.
The force of all verbal forms and arrangements is great in
proportion as the mental effort they demand from the reader
is small.
Some people confuse economy of language with abruptness,
and simplicity of expression with the fatuous. We need to
use the fewest number of words and the simplest form of composition
to secure the full effect we desire, but this purpose also
requires that we use enough words and give sufficiently detailed
explanations to enable our readers to grasp our ideas. It
is the needlessness of words and superfluous complexity that
ruin style.
The audience must be considered. Some ideas cannot be conveyed
in a way that would be intelligible to all persons who can
read, but the writing should be simple enough for the rank
of intelligence expected of the probable readers. Many authors
believe that if they express themselves in such a way as to
be simple enough for ordinary minds they are also appealing
to a more astute or specialized reader because he will recognize
the reason for simplicity and will admire the clarity of expression.
Simplicity, paradoxically, is the outward sign of depth
of thought. The writer who presents his ideas in the form
of parable and symbol, using commonplace words, is avoiding
more showy qualities in an effort to make his meanings clear.
He has made a disciplined selection and ordering of his material
in advance of composition.
The nature of the subject—matter must be given more
than a passing glance. We speak of various types of style,
like narrative style, historical style, or an argumentative
style. In all these, the style is the expression of a kind
of thought, level with the subject and adequate to it. When
a writer's power is fully developed in keeping with his expanded
intellect, he may write in all styles, changing with the character
of his subject, detecting the fitness of certain verbal arrangements
for certain kinds of thought, achieving harmony between matter
and expression.
No one expects to write rainbows into a business letter,
but if the manager of a complaints department is writing to
a distressed woman about her dissatisfaction with goods or
services, he will not fob her off with the foggy—formal
diction of a rubber—stamp letter, nor will he use the
icy—sharp sentences of an interoffice memo.
Style is not artificial
Having a style of writing is not to write stylishly, to
try to please by novelty. The use of unusual phrases and little
known words displays only a childish liking for tinsel.
It is not worth while to reach the picturesque or the poignant
at the cost of being unnatural. If the language used is discordant
to the position of the writer or to his topic, readers will
laugh or fall asleep.
Imitation of another writer's style is dangerous. It is
like wearing a mask. It gives rise to a feeling of insincerity.
It does not show a fine sense of style but the vulgar instinct
to display.
Many essayists have written about style, and most of them
agree in placing sincerity first in importance. "If you wish
me to weep, you yourself must feel grief," said Horace is
his Art of Poetry.
There are certain elements of composition which need to
be mastered as a dancer learns her steps, but the style of
the writer, like the grace of the dancer, springs from a deeper
source. Style must be genuine: the expression of the author's
mind.
Out of sincerity, out of being brave enough to express himself
in his own way, following the moods of his mind: out of these
come simplicity, sequence, and variety, and style becomes
the dress of the writer's thoughts.
Nothing is so forcible as truth plainly told. On the other
hand, we might write a poem made up of lines that sound prettily
on the tongue, but so insipid as not to linger a moment in
memory.
About developing style
Good prose is suitable to its environment of place, time
and occasion; it is suited to the nature of its writer, the
sort of topic, and the character of the person to whom it
is addressed. The style in which it is written is not designed
to make us see the writer, but his subject and thoughts.
Prose does not wish to compete with poetry. Prose will not
turn away from rhythm if rhythm is necessary to its purpose,
but it will seek rather a modulated utterance, a medium between
prose and poetry. It will seek to be lucid and easy, but when
opportunity offers it will also be graceful, witty, pathetic
or imaginative. It may attain these qualities by being casual,
colloquial and personal; by avoiding blaring trumpets and
the mouthings of actors striving to make points.
The elements of prose style can be developed, as everyone
can testify of his own experience. We can learn to use proper
words in proper places. We can learn to use right phrases
in the right way.
Let us repeat, in different words, a definition of style,
so as to assure ourselves that style may be developed. Style
is exactness, saying what one believes and means. Surely this
can be learned. Style is related to fitting what is written
to the apprehension and need of the reader. Undoubtedly, this
can be developed. Style is the expression of the writer's
personality. Who will deny that this can be improved?
A. J. Cronin, author of Keys of the Kingdom, The Citadel,
and many other works, had no knowledge of style or form, no
idea of technique, when he started his first novel. He found
it difficult to express himself. He struggled for hours over
a paragraph. "A sudden desolation struck me like an avalanche,"
he writes of this period. "I decided to abandon the whole
thing." Cronin threw away his manuscript, and then, shamed
by a Scottish crofter, he dug his papers out of the ash can,
dried them in the oven, and went doggedly to work. In three
months of what he calls "ferocious effort" he finished his
novel Hatter's Castle, of which millions of copies
were sold.
Some things, like the dates in history, can be learned by
repeating them, but style is not like that. It has to be appraised
with sensibility and then practised.
This is a painstaking quest. Our pens will sometimes be
at fault for a while, no matter how accomplished we are. We
will pause, rewrite, and amend before we are satisfied that
our language has done justice to what we have in our minds
to express. Genius takes pains, improves by practice, suffers
failures, succeeds often on a second or third try. Plato,
it is said, wrote the introduction to his Republic seven
times over in different ways.
Waiting upon inspiration is a snare. The crests of great
composition rise only upon the back of constant work and effort.
This work consists not alone in pounding typewriter keys
or scratching with a pen. It entails reading and re—reading
what one has written - reading it aloud to get the ear—feeling
of it. It means a continuing course of self—criticism:
have I said what I am trying to say? have I used words that
really express it? are my images, parables or metaphors the
best possible? have I said anything that is unavoidably ugly
or too long?
The writer will, in his re—reading, harden his heart
to his felicitous phrases and his smoothly—flowing paragraphs.
He will be alert to censure spiritless sentences, condemn
what is rugged and misshapen, draw a line through what is
incorrect factually, lop off redundant words and phrases while
preserving the virtues of repetition, remove distracting ornament,
rearrange what is expressed ambiguously, and throw light upon
the parts that are difficult to understand. One needs the
sort of hard—hearted determination voiced by Ovid when
he said "When I re—read I blush, for even I perceive
enough that ought to be erased, though it was I who wrote
the stuff."
Words and sentences
The person seeking to develop style in writing doubtless
knows enough about the elements of grammar so that he need
not become wrapped up in the grammatical niceties of his manuscript.
He will not become so immersed in words that he is like the
laboratory worker who comes to love the guinea pigs for themselves,
not for the knowledge they give.
If a writer pauses to wrestle with the choosing of a handful
of words he dams up the flow of his ideas. When he lets himself
go he will find his mind calling upon his total life experience,
spindrifting back into past ages for an illuminating incident,
calling upon everyday events for a parallel, and rocketing
into space where all art lines converge to provide an angle.
No person more than a writer needs so much to see things as
a little child, exciting because looked at as new, wonderful
because of what imagination can do with them.
Diction is the choice of words, and its problems are not
the exclusive preserve of inexperienced writers. These problems
are quite normal, and their solution is part of the process
of all careful writing. The expert writer, however confidently
he may dash off sentences and paragraphs, is always acutely
conscious of selecting and rejecting words a hundred times
in the course of writing a letter or a report. He will have
at his hand for reference such a book as A Dictionary
of English Synonyms, by Richard Soule (McClelland and
Stewart, Limited, Toronto).
No hard and fast rule demands that we use short words exclusively.
One good reason for short words is their greater impact. "Stop"
is much more emphatic than "desist." But there are times when
the short word does not convey the strength of a longer word:
for example, "nasty" is not so effective as "disgusting."
The emphasis of a sentence lies not in its length but in
its shortness. There is a narcotic effect in long—spun
sentences. They demand an effort of memory, because we have
to hold on to the statement in the first phrase until we reach
the point in the final phrase.
However, we must not conclude that simple sentences are
always best. The reader's pleasure must be catered to, and
he will not be pleased by a style which always leaps and never
flows. A judicious mixture is called for, so that the drowsy
monotony of long sentences is broken by the occasional use
of a short, sharp sentence which revives drooping attention.
True and false brevity
True brevity of expression consists in saying only what
is worth saying, and in avoiding tedious detail about things.
We are indulging in the meanest sort of style when we spin
out thoughts to the greatest possible length. Brevity does
not mean saying less than the occasion demands, but not saying
more.
The limit to be placed on a piece of writing is not necessarily
an arbitrary restriction of the number of words. The answers
to these questions are the real determinants of length: is
it all necessary to my purpose? does it sustain interest throughout?
A style that takes note of these criteria has common sense
as well as art on its side.
About writing letters
Business mail is often depressing, needlessly so. People
do not write as they think, but as they think business expects
them to write.
Because preceding Monthly Letters have gone into
some detail about letter writing, it is not necessary to do
more here than to point out the opportunity that correspondents
have to develop more effectiveness in their work - and to
make their work more pleasurable, too.
Good style in business letters follows in general the suggestions
for effective style in other sorts of writing. A beneficial
approach would be this: banish the fear of appearing too simple.
It is merely a stodgy fear of being different that holds many
men back from following their quite sensible impulse to write
clearly, colourfully and even dramatically when the occasion
warrants it.
The letter which gives us greatest pleasure in the reading
is one that seems to be part of a talk between intimates.
The writer is not trying to dazzle us, but is paying us such
attention that we know the occasion of the letter is important
to him and to us. He has thought through the subject before
starting to dictate, so that he does not waste our time with
non—essentials, but he is colloquial enough to be friendly.
He has seasoned his message with the salt of his personality.
If the writer of a letter has knowledge, intelligence and
discernment he can make the most commonplace things interesting.
He does not use a pompous introduction, but hastens on to
the event. He visualizes situations so that they interest
the reader. He uses active verbs to attain a lively style:
instead of "it is believed" he says "I believe"; instead of
"it appears to be desirable" he says "we want". He closes
vigorously, not with an artificial paragraph of friendly expression,
as it were tagged on like an afterthought.
Summing up
What is style? A practical look at the problem gives us
every reason to believe that if we have achieved individual
expression, brevity, directness, lucidity, some adventurousness
of idea and phrase, we need not pine timidly over some mystery
called "style": we have it; But it is proper always to be
striving to reach an ideal, little by little.
To write well is no gift of the angels, nor is it the outcome
of striving audaciously to be different. The first thing demanded
of the literary craftsman is that he be clear: then follow
eloquence and harmony.
It is well, in these days, to recall the old civilities,
and apply them to our writing. The traditional values still
are worth clinging to in a society that has been made uneasy
about the civilization it has created. Business men may find
constructive assurance when their correspondence shows that
there is Still a part of society unstained by deviltry, unravaged
by destruction, and bearing gifts of real friendship.
But style is only for those who believe in what they write.
It cannot enable shadows to become other than shapeless conceptions.
Madame de Sévigné, a master of style in her
own world of the seventeenth century and still a model worthy
of study, wrote to her daughter: "Never forsake what is natural.
You have moulded yourself in that vein, and this produces
a perfect style."
Shun artifices and tricks and fashions: Gain the tone of
ease, plainness and self—respect. Speak frankly what
you have thought out in your own brain and have felt within
you. This, and this alone, creates a perfect style, as she
says who wrote the most exquisite letters the world has known.
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
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