Style

[stahyl]

Contents 1 Style vs. Grammar: 2 Why study style? 3 From Stephen Minot's [1]Three Genres: The Writing of Fiction/Nonfiction, Poetry, and Drama 4 From Dom Sagolla's Part One:Lead 5 From Joseph Williams's, Style: Toward Clarity and Grace

Style vs. Grammar:

• Style has an edge of distinctiveness, matches up with speech and language acts, and can include articulations that humans identify as extraordinary and distinguished.
• Grammar, on the other hand, is more basic than style. It is the standardized usage of language, usually as in written form.

Why study style?

Eastern Michigan University Professor Derek Mueller, written communication assistant, believes we study style because "style teaches a heightened awareness of prose patterns in both one's own work and in the work of others; a vocabulary for talking about writing; a cognizance of unsuccessful or negligent style and its consequences for meaningful, memorable, persuasive communication; and it teaches us to write more intelligently and with greater rhetorical agility."

In layman's terms, the study of style gives us the ability to point out and describe patterns in writing both in our own work and in the work of others. It teaches us a language for discussing writing and allows us the ability to identify successful and unsuccessful styles. It also teaches us how to write smarter and faster.

While grammar makes writing readable, style is what makes writing worth reading.

From Stephen Minot's [1]Three Genres: The Writing of Fiction/Nonfiction, Poetry, and Drama

While Minot's text is seen often in creative writing classrooms, his chapter entitled "Style and Tone" (170-181) can nevertheless benefit our ongoing discussion of style as a clarity/pleasure binary. Perhaps we can benefit from breaking down this dichotomy, illustrating where clarity and pleasure meet in creative and formal writing. As such, here is a brief listing of Minot's stylistic principles.

Style is defined as

The manner in which a work is written.

Minot's six central determiners of style:

• Diction

The choice of words. Minot writes, "Word choice is a major factor in characterization, and it can also reveal aspects of theme" (172). Diction in a creative context applies similarly to academic discourse. Students choose what they say based on topic (theme) and audience, without considering characterization. They are, however, inherent characters in their own writing. They implicitly represent themselves and their specific discursive field. "Just a few words that seem 'out of character' will spoil the sense of realism," and that applies to any writer of any discourse or genre (173). Precise and consistent diction distinguishes cohesive writing from weak writing, definitive voice from erratic voice.

• Syntax

Sentence structure (short, long; simple, complex). Grammatical rules bend more often in fiction than formal writing, but whatever our genre, we structure our sentences a myriad of ways for a myriad of reasons. We alter our sentences to break monotony, garner attention, illicit emotions, and ultimately captivate our audiences. Both formal essayists and fiction writers operate under the same motivations, even if the former has less expressive liberties than the latter.

• Density

The presence or absence of figurative and symbolic language. Density also involves a work's complexity and how a writer handles multiple focal points. Minot writes that a "lack of density makes fiction seem slight; excessive density can make it turgid or, worse, confusing" (173). Generally, formal writing slights figurative language and tends toward declarative statements and abstractions. The likes of William Strunk Jr. and Joseph M. Williams, however, advise writers to guard against abstractions, favoring specific, concrete language. Writers of either genre balance tediously between under- and overwriting, obscurity and clarity.

• Narrative Modes

The relative emphasis on dialogue, thoughts, action, and exposition. Minot suggests fiction writers limit their expository passages, fearing they will read like an essay (176). Though fiction "depends on action and dialogue" to hold a reader's attention, formal writing does, too. Essayists should actively search for concrete verbs to give their sentences life. And achieving fluidity from one point to the next is not far-removed from dialoguing, where one sentence is expounded/complemented by the next. While essay writing does at first seem like pure exposition, pure thought, it subtly incorporates all of Minot's narrative principles.

• Tense

Past or present. We almost always write academic essays in the present-tense. Minot writes, "Present-tense enthusiasts often claim that fiction is livelier and more immediate in that tense" even though the decision of past- or present- is often "negligible" (177). And while present-tense does imbue our essays with life, we must remember to consistently maintain that tense throughout.

• Person

First ("I"), third ("she/he"), and very occasionally "you" and "they." Fiction has the benefit of using every type of narration, whereas we limit ourselves to third-person in formal writing. Occasionally, we can slip in an "I," but often purposelessly. Third-person allows writers to write objectively and readers to read objectively, a distanced perspective necessary for most academic discourse.

From Dom Sagolla's Part One:Lead

Sagolla's text offers yet another perspective into what style truly is. While others may dictate a certain method or description, he says there is no one who is an authority on the subject:

"Who is anyone to teach you about style? Style is the sound your words make in the mind. It is the tone taken when you are read aloud by someone else. Style is the ineffable, immeasurable spark of life in the text. Style is a mystery." Page 1

In the part about leading, Dom Sagolla mentions leading by example. He says to take control of what you are going to say. He thinks starting with an action, something that catches people's attention will make people want to follow you, respond to you and have an interest in what you are going to say. The more interesting the better. What is put on Twitter can be anything from what the writer is thinking about to a quote that caught his/her attention. Dom Sagolla says there are three active principles to consider when it comes to leadership. They are:

Describe: mention what you are doing, thinking, etc. Own it. make it your own with the way you describe it. This is the place where you can express your personality. Your thoughts need to contain a thought, subject, or idea otherwise it will be hard to follow. When you are describing, you can be describing yourself or not.

Simplify: Since you are limited to a specific number of characters, say what you need to say using as little words as possible. Using simple words or statements can make an instant connection for someone. Making it simple also means saying what you need to say using one message instead of several. There are a couple of reasons for this. (1) the messages may not be in the correct order, (2) a message can be easily misunderstood, (3) there is difficulty when trying to refer back to a specific message, or wanting to quote from it. One thing we love to add, which takes up characters are commas and spaces. If you don't need to use it, then don't. There are ways you can judge simplicity. They include being able to read it fast, faster, and skimming it.

Avoid: Avoidance is about finding a balance on what is appropriate to share and what not to share. There are certain things you want to avoid such as giving out personal information. If you question yourself about posting a specific statement then you should avoid posting it. If someone is having a problem with what you post, it would be good to avoid that person out in public. Other alternative include writing but not posting, send that person a private email if it is possible, talk about the situation with a friend who it not involved in your dilemma. One major thing to avoid is lying. Even though it sounds simple, it could still happen. Avoid being envious of others who have more followers than you. Try to stay away from posting thoughts right away when they happen. Allow there to be some time passed. Be careful about who your audience is. Avoid saying too much information. This could also include too much intimacy. Examples of this include bathroom thoughts, times when the person is drunk, angry statements and late night rambling. This was problem in the beginning when Twitter first came out. Avoid getting hacked by constantly changing your password. Finally, avoid hitting the send button when you are having a bad day because you will regret it. This will help you avoid trouble.

From Joseph Williams's, Style: Toward Clarity and Grace

According to Joseph Williams, style includes learning how to improve the structure of prose and go beyond matters of sentence style to discuss larger matters of form and organization.

• "[T]he object of our attention is writing whose success we measure not primarily from the pleasure we derive from it, but by how well it does a job of work. If it gives us a tingle of pleasure, so much the better."
• "Once we have made clear to ourselves what ideas, points, and arguments might be available, we then have to reshape that first draft to provide what our readers need. We write a first draft for ourselves; the drafts thereafter increasingly for the reader. That is the central objective of this book: [Style:Toward Clarity and Grace] to show how a writer quickly and efficiently transforms a rough draft into a version crafted for the reader."
• There are also two more objectives of the book:

• Mature writers can write badly for different reasons-- confusion about a subject, insufficient time to revise, carelessness, entrenched bad habits, sheer incompetence. But to casual readers, these causes may result in what seems to be the same kind of tangled prose. Those who experience problems with their writing have to understand that they approach different causes of bad writing in different ways. That understanding is even more crucial to those who have to deal with the writing of others. Se we explain how bad writing results from different causes and how writers can diagnose different problems and overcome them.
• It is important for everyone-those who write professional prose and those who have to read it-to understand not only its social origins, but its social consequences. When a piece of writing confuses us, we often assume that we are not up to its demands. Difficult a passage may be, but its complexity is often more seeming than substantial. We have seen hundreds of students experience relief from doubts about their own incompetence when they realize that if they are unable to understand an article or monograph, it is not necessarily because they are incompetent, but because its author couldn't write clearly. That liberation is a valuable experience.

• [Take what we write in this book as] diagnostic principles of interpretation. We offer these principles as the basis for questions that allow a writer or editor to anticipate how readers are likely to respond to a piece of prose, a species of knowledge usually unavailable to writers when they unreflectively re-read their own writing. We are our worst editors because we know too much about our subject to experience vicariously how a reader largely innocent of our knowledge will read. And to a reader-editor who must deal with the problems of someone else's writing, these questions will suggest ways to interpret discomfort they often feel, to locate its source quickly, and to suggest ways to revise the prose that causes it.