Clear and Simple as the Truth
Writing is an intellectual activity, not a bundle of skills. Writing proceeds from thinking.
When style is considered the opposite of substance, it seems optional and incidental, even when it is admired. Style, conceived this way, is something fancy that distracts us from what is essential; it is the varnish that makes the truth at least a little harder to see. Any concept of style that treats it as optional is inadequate
The styles we acquire unconsciously remain invisible to us.
The styles we acquired unconsciously do not always serve our needs.
Even the best-educated members of our society commonly lack a routine style for presenting the result of their own engagement with a problem to people outside their own profession.
Classic style is focused and assured. Its virtues are clarity and simplicity; in a sense, so are its vices. It declines to acknowledge ambiguities, unessential qualifications, doubts, or other styles. It declines to acknowledge that it is a style. It makes its hard choices silently and out of the reader’s sight. Once made, those hard choices are not acknowledged to be choices at all; they are presented as if they were inevitable because classic style is, above all, a style of presentation with claims to transparency.
The style rests on the assumptions that it is possible to think disinterestedly, to know the results of disinterested thought, and to present them without fundamental distortion. In this view, thought precedes writing. All of these assumptions may be wrong, but they help to define a style whose usefulness is manifest.
[Classic style] displays truth according to an order that has nothing to do with the process by which the writer came to know it.
No personal history, personal experience, or personal psychology enters into the expression.
Consider the gradient between plain style and classic style. "The truth is pure and simple” is plain style. “The truth is rarely pure, and never simple" is classic style. The plain version contains many elements of classic style without being classic; the classic version contains all of the plain version without being plain.
The classic version introduces a refinement, a qualification, a meditation on the plain version that makes it classic.
The classic writer wants to be distinguished from others because she assumes that truth, though potentially available to all, is not the common property of common people.
Unlike plain style, classic style is aristocratic, which is not to say artificially restricted, since anyone can become an aristocrat by learning classic style.
Elementary does not always mean easy. It often means fundamental.
The domain of style is what can be chosen. A fundamental stand is a choice open to the writer.
The elements come under five topical headings: truth, presentation, scene, cast, thought and language.
Classic style treats external objects, contingent facts, and even opinions as if they too are beyond doubt or discussion.
The writer does not typically attempt to persuade by argument. The writer merely puts the reader in a position to see whatever is being presented and suggests that the reader will be able to verify it because the style treats whatever conventions or even prejudices it operates from as if these were, like natural reason, shared by everyone.
There is probably nothing more fundamental to the attitude that defines classic style than the enabling convention that truth can be known.
The concept of truth that grounds classic style does not depend on what might be called "point of view" or "angle of vision."
The classic attitude, especially in its origins, acknowledges human inadequacies: we are victims of our ambitions; fully accurate self-knowledge is unavailable; self-interest leads to self-deception; we are inconsistent, unreliable, impure. Yet the classic attitude is never despairing:
We recognize truth when we see it, even though the encounter with truth is brief and difficult to sustain.
The aphoristic quality of classic prose concerns observation ("No one is ever so happy or unhappy as he thinks"), not morality ("Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones"), or behavior ("Look before you leap"), although it tacitly conveys its expectations about both.
When the classic writer’s motive is persuasion, he is reluctant to admit it overtly, and even when he admits it, he does so conditionally, noting that persuasion can never take priority over the abiding motive of presenting truth.
The subject is conceived of as a "thing" distinct from the writing, something that exists in the world and is independent of any presentation.
The language of classic prose never draw attention to itself.
Classic prose never has to be puzzled out.
Classic style is perfect performance, with no hesitation, revision, or backtracking. Its essential fiction is that this perfection happens at the first try.
Its corollary fiction is that the performance cannot be prepared because it has no parts that could be worked on separately or in stages. It is seamless.
It is helpful to remember that these are fictions.
The classic writer spends no time justifying her project.
Does not compare its worth to the worth of other projects.
There is no hierarchy of importance of subjects in classic writing. Everything is in close focus.
It is possible to skim certain styles.
Browsing is different from skimming. In browsing, we look from thing to thing, deciding what to choose. Classic style allows browsing but not skimming.
Classic style contains crucial nuances, which can be lost in skimming. Clarity Everywhere Is Not Accuracy Everywhere. What is subordinate to the main issue can never be allowed to obscure that issue or distract attention from accuracy becomes pedantry if it is indulged for its own sake.
The Model Is One Person Speaking to Another.
The ideal speech of classic style appears to be spontaneous and motivated by the need to inform a listener about something.
Something occurs to him and he says it. He takes another moment’s brief but perfect thought and says the next thing. As a consequence, the rhythm of the writing is a series of movements, each one brief and crisp, with an obvious beginning and end.
The pretense is that this global organization is the natural product of the writer’s orderly mind.
[The classic writer] banishes from his vocabulary phrases like “as we shall see,” “three paragraphs ago,” “before I move to my next point I must introduce a new term,” “the third part of our four-part argument is,” and all other “metadiscourse” that proclaims itself as writing rather than speech.
The prototypical scene in classic writing is an individual speaking intimately to another individual. What the classic writer has to say is directed entirely to that one individual. But it can be overheard.
The classic writer does not appear to have written things in a way she would not had she known others were listening.
She takes the pose of authenticity.
The language is clear and direct and memorable. It is written so as to be understood the first time it is heard.
Classic writers are independent, not concerned to protect members of a bureaucracy. They are not controlled by policy, interests, or an organization, or at least they give no appearance of being controlled in such a fashion.
[The classic writer] does not make distinctions between members of the audience,
Energetic but Not Anxious
The elitism of classic style is not the result of natural endowment. It is the result of effort and discipline ending in achievement. No one willing to make the effort is excluded from joining this elite.
Classic Style Is for Everybody
[Classic style] writers are not arguing, they are presenting.
In classic prose, the relationship between writer and reader is never asymmetrical in this way because classic style appeals to a standard of perception and of judgment assumed to be general, rather than special.
People believe a conclusion more readily if they think they have helped to reach it or have reached it themselves.
The classic writer is not like a television cook showing you how to mix mustard and balsamic vinegar. She is like a chef whose work is presented to you at table but whose labor you are never allowed to see, a labor the chef certainly does not expect you to share.
In the classic stand on the elements of style, writing is neither a way of thinking something out nor an art that exists for its own sake. Writing is an instrument for presenting what the writer has already thought.
Abstractions Can Be Clear and Exact
A writing instructor or consultant who advises us to write concretely and avoid abstractions offers shallow and impractical advice because the distinction is simpleminded.
When a classic stylist presents an abstraction—cultural reality, heroism, historical causation, the nature of representation, taste—it is first conceived as independent of the writer, exhaustively definite at all levels of detail, visible to anyone competent who is standing in a position to see it, immediately recognizable, and capable of being expressed in direct and simple language.
When a classic writer deals in abstractions, it takes an effort to remind ourselves that she is not talking about a stone, a leaf, a statue.
In the classic view, thinking is not writing; even more important, writing is not thinking.
The classic writer does not write as he is thinking something out and does not think by writing something out.
Classic style avoids colloquialisms, neologisms, periphrases, and slang
New thoughts do not require new language.
There is a phenomenon in English known as the stress position: whatever you put at the end of the sentence will be taken, absent direction to the contrary, to be the most important part of the sentence.
The end of the sentence seems to be the reason the sentence is written; everything leads to it; and the sentence stops confidently when it reaches that end because the image schema of both thought and expression is complete.
A common perceptual image schema is focusing-and-then-inspecting. First we locate the object or domain of interest, and then we inspect its details.
A classic sentence is often a nuanced version of a sentence that otherwise might have been plain.
Plain style values simplicity but shuns nuance. Classic style values both simplicity and nuance.
“Seeing is believing” is plain. “Seeing is believing only if you don’t see too clearly” is classic.Classic Style Is Not PracticalIn the model scene behind practical style, the reader has a problem to solve, a decision to make, a ruling to hand down, an inquiry to conduct, a machine to design or repair—in short, a job to do. The writer’s job is to serve the reader’s immediate need by delivering timely materials. [The writing is] instrumental to some other end.[Plain] writing is an instrument for delivering information with maximum efficiency and in such a way as to place the smallest possible burden upon the reader,In classic style, by contrast, neither writer nor reader has a job, the writing and reading do not serve a practical goal, and the writer has all the time in the world to present her subject as something interesting for its own sake.Brevity comes from the elegance of her mind, never from pressures of time or employment.The writer wants to present something not to a client, but to an indefinite audience, treated as if it were a single individual.Practical style values clarity because it places a premium on being easy to parse.Most writing in schools and colleges is a perversion of practical style:Practical style rests on a set of answers to basic questions; other styles rest on different answers to those same questions.The [practical style] reader reads not for personal reasons but to accomplish a job.The writer is not an individual writing to another individual but a job description writing to another job description.optimistic, pragmatic, and utilitarian.There is a surface mark of practical style that derives from its fundamental stand and distinguishes it sharply from classic style. The style permits skimming, highly useful in certain practical situations: It will be a great help if you can rely upon the memos to present their main points in the expected places;[With] a classic sentence, you will recognize that the sentence was true to its direction, but that does not make the sentence predictable.In contemplative style, the distinction between presentation and interpretation is always observed:Contemplative style presents an interpretation of something.In contemplative style, writing is itself the engine of discovery: the writing is a record of the process of the writer’s thinking,Contemplation is a superior achievement by a superior individual who talks about the difficulties of contemplation, contemplative style splits into two modes that are not incompatible and that can be used alternately.But sometimes, the contemplative writer fails in his achievement, and feels compelled to settle for what is merely his best effort.Classic Style Is Not Romantic StyleRomantic style, is always and inescapably about the writer. Romantic prose is a mirror, not a window. The romantic writer therefore cannot be an observer who sees something separate from himself;If contemplative style views writing as an engine of discovery, romantic style looks upon it as an act of creation that both comes from the self and reveals the self.In romantic style, creation replaces discovery and always depends on the writer for its existence. In the theology of this style, the only things anyone can know are personal and in principle private. In the romantic perspective, writing is not a craft that can be learned, because it is an activity co-extensive with the writer’s person;In romantic style, clarity can be achieved only at the price of falsification.The classic writer can be told that he is wrong, because the truth he presents is available to everyone, and can be tested by anyone. Of the styles we have discussed, classic and romantic are furthest apart.Classic Style Is Not Prophetic Style Despite a shared affinity for unqualified assertion, classic style has little in common with prophetic or oracular style because prophetic style cannot place the reader where the writer is.Classic Style Is Not Oratorical Styleits effects are meant for the ear.its units are periods and are defined by sound.Its prototypical occasion is the assembly of a group of people faced by a public problem—This scene creates a cast. Leadership is necessary, and the assembly’s job is to respond to a candidate who puts himself forward.The successful orator molds the audience into one body with one voice and one governing view.Since oratory is designed to unite many listeners, whose attention may flag, it cannot be either very flexible or very subtle. Nuance is always risky, a few points with the help of a lot of music.A characteristic strength of classic style to persuade by default. The classic writer offers no explicit argument at all. He offers simply a presentation. If the reader fails to recognize that the ostensible presentation is a device of persuasion, then he is persuaded without ever realizing that an argument has occurred. It is always easier to persuade an audience unaware of the rhetorician’s agenda.The theology behind classic style does not admit that there is anything that counts as truth that cannot be presented briefly and memorably.the classic writer is above mere personal interest; he has no motive but truth, or at least, his highest and governing motive is truth.Etiquette books on conventions of usage and other surface features that proceed from the tacit assumption that someone who masters all these points of etiquette will be able to write “English.”Writers in professional or business worlds who want something from readers normally use practical style.The most persuasive of all rhetorical stances is to write as if one is not trying to persuade at all but simply presenting truth. The most seductive of all rhetorical stances is to write as if of course the reader is interested in what is being presented, as if the issue could never possibly arise. In general, the best rhetorical stance, if one can get away with it, is to speak as if no rhetorical purposes are involved.Classic style is a style of distinction and was used by its seventeenth-century French masters usually for aristocratic concerns, it might mistakenly be thought of as somehow reserved for aristocratic subjects. Quite the contrary.Classic prose is a window to its subject.When a classic writer presents his own experience, it is neither private nor merely personal.We cannot see heroism, cultural moments, or severity in the same way we can see a hand, but classic writers assume that we see them in the same way.the perception of truth is independent of social status, education, wealth, or any other qualification. It is not exclusive.The writer knows when he has finished revising.Thorstein Veblen suggested in a classic work of sociology that spelling is meant to indicate a form of social distinction based on the leisure to learn an arbitrary and inefficient system.In writing, you lose the effects of the charm you may have in person. You lose the effects of gesture, proximity, warmth, intonation. In person, you can command and hold attention by being attractive, but all of that is gone in writing.A style, after all, is defined by a coherent and consistent stand on the elements of style, expressed as a short series of questions about truth, presentation, writer, reader, thought, language, and their relationships.The conventional advice to think of “style” as a final touch leads to disaster because style is not a surface decoration that can be added during revision.Forget entirely the idea that “working on your writing” begins after you have something down on paper.Résumés often appear simultaneously pushy and defensive, with ungenerous margins, scarce white space, compressed fonts, hyperbolic and aggressive vocabulary.A classic résumé, by contrast, is one whose writer, stylistically, is self-possessed, unconcerned, merely presenting. Stylistically, the writer has no anxiety. The writer does not want anything from the reader.