I certainly don't like the fact that I'm going to blow a third of my life unconscious. I only get one of these and to know that a third of it is off the table from day one does sting a little.
Only if you want to write prose for its own sake. Otherwise use language as is it is intended, to convey meaning. The best writing is invisible to the reader.
I wouldn't say the best writing is invisible. But writing is an instrument to convey meaning. A pretty tool which doesn't do its job is no tool at all; meanwhile, even an ugly tool can build something beautiful.
Beautiful writing is more memorable and more enjoyable to read and therefore you're more likely to read it, remember it, and be inspired by it. Hence invisible writing is not the aim, but I agree writing shouldn't get in the way of you understanding something.
I used to think this way about prose too, but a book called "First You Write a Sentence" by Moran changed my assumption on this one. As Moran points out, the "sound" of writing conveys meaning in itself. A little flourish, so long as it's not distracting, can improve the clarity of a sentence and make it more pleasant to read.
"This paper will challenge the distinction that is made in some quarters, but not in all, between use value and aesthetic value in literature and elsewhere, a view that restricts the realm of art and the aesthetic to a minor, often diversionary role in human activity. This view derives from the presumption that art is an autonomous activity set off from other activities and released from moral, utilitarian, religious, and other entanglements: it directs the mind to the idea of “art as such.” Such a divorce is, of course, an impossibility. No art and no theory of art ever conformed, or possibly could conform, to this standard. All art and art theory bleeds into the social realm, is contaminated with ideology, carries out moral agendas (however secretively), performs utilitarian functions of innumerable kinds, and hence can never be isolated from these enabling frameworks. Art and aesthetics can be aspectually isolated from morals and the rest at any point in time, and they have been so isolated from antiquity to the present. But there is no necessary reason to make this kind of separation. And there are further, possibly deeper reasons not to do so." - James I. Porter
The author of the essay addresses this point head on, and has a very different philosophy: "Those who read only to be informed and never to delight in the words on the page have every right to do so. But do not write for them."
I personally would have to strongly disagree that "the best writing is invisible to the reader." The best writing scintillates and sparkles, it begs to be read and re-read, to be read aloud and savored in the mouth like a sip of wine.
I can recommend Patrick Leigh Fermor as a travel writer. For those who don't know of him, he was the leader of the partisan group wo abducted the German General Kripke in Crete in 1943, filmed as I'll Meet by Moonlight. His books of his pre-war adventures hiking across Europe on foot are a joy to read.
In addition to the pleasure of reading these lovely prose passages, I learnt a new word: cunctation. Seems it’s a near synonym to procrastination, defined as the act of delaying or putting off doing something.
"Cunctator" or "the delayer" was of course, the sobriquet given to the famous dictator and consul Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, whose eponymous strategy helped to fend off Hannibal from Rome.
This is something that needs to be read when fully awake and, probably, with a dictionary nearby! I admit that I gave up with the opening spiel quite quickly -- I'll have another go later -- and skipped to "The Rules"; many of which I don't necessarily agree with, but perhaps I'm too mired in technical writing. (I have a feeling they'd give the Plain English Campaign people a heart attack!) There are some gems in there, though. This superluminary rant made my morning, for example:
18. All these vapidly doctrinaire injunctions—urging you to write
only plain declarative sentences stripped of modifiers and composed
solely of words familiar to the average ten-year-old and demanding
that you always prefer charcoal-gray to sumptuous purple—are
expressions of everything spiritually deadening about late modernity
and its banausic values. They reflect an epoch in which the
mysterious, the evocative, and the beautifully elliptical have been
systematically suppressed and nearly extinguished in the name of the
efficient, the practical, the mechanical, and the starkly
unambiguous—in short, in the name of everything that makes existence
uninviting and life boring. They are reflections of an age of
bloodless capitalist economism, the reign of brutally common sense,
the barbarian triumph of function over form, a spare, Spartan civic
architecture of featureless glass and steel and plastic, a
consumerist society that lives on the ceaseless production and
disposal of intrinsically graceless conveniences. Learn to detest
all of these things and you will be a better writer for having done
so.
Take his 19th rule to heart and read the above out aloud. You won't regret it.
To propose a list of rules for writers is probably a very presumptuous thing to do. The only authority it can possibly have is one’s own example, and so offering it to the world is something of a gamble. One has to assume that one’s own writing is impressive enough to most readers to provide one with the necessary credentials for the task. If one is wrong on this score, issuing those rules will invite only ridicule. I mean, for goodness’ sake, Steven Pinker (of all people) published a book on style. How can anyone take that seriously?
Few writers do such a fine of job of puffing themselves up while at the same time cutting others down.
> "There are few if any passages in the works of Sir Thomas Browne that I do not find thoroughly delightful"
The opening sentence is a perfect example of how to write English... if you want it to lack clarity. Double negatives like this leave the reader having to spend time working out the positive meaning of the sentence.
One seeks to find a clear and beautiful double-negative-free rendition of the same sentence, written by thy own fair hand. Alas, one seeks in vain, as the critic fails this test of courage.
To wish all Readers of your abilities, were unreasonably to multiply the number of Scholars beyond the temper of these times. But unto this ill-judging age, we charitably desire a portion of your equity, judgement, candour, and ingenuity; wherein you are so rich, as not to lose by diffusion. And being a flourishing branch of that Noble Family, unto which we owe so much observance, you are not new set, but long rooted in such perfections; whereof having had so lasting confirmation in your worthy conversation, constant amity, and expression; and knowing you such a serious Student in the highest arcana’s of [Writing]; with much excuse we bring these low delights, and poor maniples to your Treasure. - Sir Thomas Browne
The grandeur of early 17th century English prose really is something quite special. Charles Rosen gave a memorable account in his review of Burton:
>The first part of the seventeenth century was, for Samuel Johnson when he compiled his dictionary, the moment when the English language reached its ideal state. One would have thought that he would have preferred the clarity that was achieved a half century later in the prose of Dryden and Swift, but he was evidently conquered by the Baroque exuberance of the time of Burton. in the seventeenth century English prose came into its own, and reached the distinction previously held only by verse. With the exception of William Tyndale’s translation of the Old Testament (which seventy years later became the basis of the King James version), English prose in the sixteenth century has nothing to set by the side of the contemporary power, variety, and subtlety in France of Rabelais, Calvin, or Montaigne. English prose remained a somewhat awkward, provincial mode of expression. At the very end of the sixteenth century, however, prose suddenly took on a new vigor in the prose sections of the plays of Shakespeare, Middleton and Dekker, and in Richard Hooker’s Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity of 1594.
>Unfortunately, much of the magnificent eloquence of the early seventeenth century lacks a considerable readership today, even in academic circles, perhaps because it deals largely with religious matters in sermons, tracts, and prayers. The prose of Thomas Browne and John Donne still finds a few readers, and Lancelot Andrewes was taken up by T. S. Eliot. But Thomas Adams, so much admired by Coleridge and lamb that he was compared to Shakespeare, is almost forgotten, Richard Hooker is read only by specialists in the history of religion, Thomas Fuller recalled only for a few quaint details, and Jeremy Taylor, previously revered, is now neglected, as his suavity does not recommend itself to modern taste.
Instead of asking, is this true or not, it is often better to ask "What is this true of?" Hyaline seas are a great thing in literature, and a terrible idea in a public service leaflet about what to do if you hear the tsunami warning sirens.
I have read lots of student projects and dissertations where, although the student could explain themselves perfectly fine in spoken English, once they were in front of a keyboard and TeXworks they fell into a style of writing that was as tortured as the syntax for fancy LaTeX tables. Orwell's advice would have been very good advice for these students!
As to writing specifically for small children: J.R.R. Tolkien's childrens' story Roverandom contains a character called Psamathos Psammethicus, and Tolkien made quite clear in other writing of his that he doesn't think much of "writing down" even to children. A. A. Milne similarly has a scene in which Owl says "The atmospheric conditions have been very unfavourable lately." "The what?", Pooh asks. "It has been raining.", Owl explains. That's all at once an example of making fun of pretentious writing, giving an example of the kind of writer who should read some Orwell, and something that even very young children can handle just fine (along with words like Heffalump).
> The capacity to qualify a predicative phrase by the interpolation of a subordinate clause (for example) is one of those precious attainments that distinguish us from baboons.
may well be pretentious*, but it is also true.
* if only due to the self reference; I doubt the embedding should give any serious reader pause?
I find it amusing that they used the King James bible as one example. The beautiful writing was mostly lifted from the earlier Geneva translation. (I'm told that in turn most of that was lifted from William Tydale's translation, but he didn't complete a bible and I haven't had opportunity to study his version). The King James translators started with existing translations (mostly the Bishop's bible which I also haven't studied), and spent years debating how to and what to update.
I like that the author David Bentley Hart doesn't shy away from strong opinions.
14. Orwell’s final injunction is “Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.” Since, however, following his rules would produce barbarous prose roughly half the time, he ought instead to have written, “Ignore these rules, except for the one about hackneyed metaphors and the bit about jargon.”
17. In fact, if you own a copy of The Elements of Style, just destroy the damned thing. It is a pestilential presence in your library.
23. If you were told in school that Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea is a specimen of good writing, disabuse yourself of this folly. It is in fact an excruciating specimen of bad schoolboy prose, written by a man who by that point had, alas, been too often drunk, too often concussed, and too often praised.
That's like Lisp. Always use that single, specific symbol which names a function accessing the exact position in the nested list structure that you want to denote. Assume your reader has come with a full Lisp Machine manual and a copy of ANSI. A proper hacker never resents being introduced to a new identifier.
29 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 77.7 ms ] threadIt sounds like the man doesn't like naps. I am wary of such.
You can see this in fiction books (e.g. The Lord of the Rings) and some technical content (e.g. why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby).
The medium is the message.
https://classicalstudies.org/utility-aesthetic-and-aesthetic...
I personally would have to strongly disagree that "the best writing is invisible to the reader." The best writing scintillates and sparkles, it begs to be read and re-read, to be read aloud and savored in the mouth like a sip of wine.
Call me Scrooge.
To propose a list of rules for writers is probably a very presumptuous thing to do. The only authority it can possibly have is one’s own example, and so offering it to the world is something of a gamble. One has to assume that one’s own writing is impressive enough to most readers to provide one with the necessary credentials for the task. If one is wrong on this score, issuing those rules will invite only ridicule. I mean, for goodness’ sake, Steven Pinker (of all people) published a book on style. How can anyone take that seriously?
Few writers do such a fine of job of puffing themselves up while at the same time cutting others down.
But, he is a gifted thinker and, at times, pleasant writer. For example: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/08/a-perfect-game
The opening sentence is a perfect example of how to write English... if you want it to lack clarity. Double negatives like this leave the reader having to spend time working out the positive meaning of the sentence.
[Edited] source: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/index.shtml
It's not hard to address double negatives.
>The first part of the seventeenth century was, for Samuel Johnson when he compiled his dictionary, the moment when the English language reached its ideal state. One would have thought that he would have preferred the clarity that was achieved a half century later in the prose of Dryden and Swift, but he was evidently conquered by the Baroque exuberance of the time of Burton. in the seventeenth century English prose came into its own, and reached the distinction previously held only by verse. With the exception of William Tyndale’s translation of the Old Testament (which seventy years later became the basis of the King James version), English prose in the sixteenth century has nothing to set by the side of the contemporary power, variety, and subtlety in France of Rabelais, Calvin, or Montaigne. English prose remained a somewhat awkward, provincial mode of expression. At the very end of the sixteenth century, however, prose suddenly took on a new vigor in the prose sections of the plays of Shakespeare, Middleton and Dekker, and in Richard Hooker’s Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity of 1594.
>Unfortunately, much of the magnificent eloquence of the early seventeenth century lacks a considerable readership today, even in academic circles, perhaps because it deals largely with religious matters in sermons, tracts, and prayers. The prose of Thomas Browne and John Donne still finds a few readers, and Lancelot Andrewes was taken up by T. S. Eliot. But Thomas Adams, so much admired by Coleridge and lamb that he was compared to Shakespeare, is almost forgotten, Richard Hooker is read only by specialists in the history of religion, Thomas Fuller recalled only for a few quaint details, and Jeremy Taylor, previously revered, is now neglected, as his suavity does not recommend itself to modern taste.
I have read lots of student projects and dissertations where, although the student could explain themselves perfectly fine in spoken English, once they were in front of a keyboard and TeXworks they fell into a style of writing that was as tortured as the syntax for fancy LaTeX tables. Orwell's advice would have been very good advice for these students!
As to writing specifically for small children: J.R.R. Tolkien's childrens' story Roverandom contains a character called Psamathos Psammethicus, and Tolkien made quite clear in other writing of his that he doesn't think much of "writing down" even to children. A. A. Milne similarly has a scene in which Owl says "The atmospheric conditions have been very unfavourable lately." "The what?", Pooh asks. "It has been raining.", Owl explains. That's all at once an example of making fun of pretentious writing, giving an example of the kind of writer who should read some Orwell, and something that even very young children can handle just fine (along with words like Heffalump).
may well be pretentious*, but it is also true.
* if only due to the self reference; I doubt the embedding should give any serious reader pause?
[Edit: sic et non, for even baboons can follow this embedding pattern: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-64244-5 ]
14. Orwell’s final injunction is “Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.” Since, however, following his rules would produce barbarous prose roughly half the time, he ought instead to have written, “Ignore these rules, except for the one about hackneyed metaphors and the bit about jargon.”
17. In fact, if you own a copy of The Elements of Style, just destroy the damned thing. It is a pestilential presence in your library.
23. If you were told in school that Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea is a specimen of good writing, disabuse yourself of this folly. It is in fact an excruciating specimen of bad schoolboy prose, written by a man who by that point had, alas, been too often drunk, too often concussed, and too often praised.