#Elements of Style

[gtunesmiff]

Vonnegut’s 8 rules for writing with style:

1. Find a subject you care about

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about.  It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style. I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way - although 1 would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.

2. Do not ramble, though

I won't ramble on about that.

3. Keep it simple

As for your use of language: Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound.  ‘To be or not to be?’ asks Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story ‘Eveline’ is just this one: ‘She was tired.’ At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do. Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and earth.’

4. Have the guts to cut

It may be that you, too, are capable of making necklaces for Cleopatra, so to speak. But your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.

5. Sound like yourself

The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child.  English was the novelist Joseph Conrad’s third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench. All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens not to be standard English, and it shows itself when you write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue. I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.

6. Say what you mean to say

I used to be exasperated by such teachers, but am no more. I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say. My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that I would become understandable — and therefore understood. And there went my dream of doing with words what Pablo Picasso did with paint or what any number of jazz idols did with music. If I broke all the rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean, and strung them together higgledly-piggledy, I would simply not be understood. So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style writing if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood. Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.

7. Pity the readers

Readers have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately. They have to read, an art so difficult that most people don’t really master it even after having studied it all through grade school and high school — twelve long years. So this discussion must finally acknowledge that our stylistic options as writers are neither numerous nor glamorous, since our readers are bound to be such imperfect artists.  Our audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient teachers, ever willing to simplify and clarify, whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales.

8. For really detailed advice… go read The Elements of Style

For a discussion of literary style in a narrower sense, a more technical sense, I commend to your attention The Elements of Style, by Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White. E. B.

~ from How to write with style: 8 non-obvious insights from the master of personality || Nathan Baugh

[jdsquared]

Bava Batra 13b

[thepedanticbohemian]

read Strunk and White's Elements of Style. You'll thank yourself later.

[tccbookdesign]

This one comes up ALOT when I am critiquing chapters and pitch documents. Take note. We all do it.

And I mean, of course, there are exceptions to the rule but COME ON learn it first am I right? (Yes, I am also talking to myself here dw).

How you going with your writing lately? Need a professional glance over? Say hello@thecreativeconsultant.au and let's chat :)

[ziggy-starbutts]

While I disagree with the rule “Every time a camera angle changes”, the reformatting shown under is certainly more appealing.

Why?

It gives your words more room to breathe. By dividing up the actions you’re allowing the natural rhythm of the scene to develop.

Building tension.

Then finally a release.

Yes, there are rules to formatting. People who prefer larger blocks of text aren’t necessarily wrong. Formatting is as much a creative choice as it is practical.

The first paragraph feels like someone who’s frantic. Jumping to a decision that he’ll regret later.

The second paragraph feels like someone coming to a deliberate conclusion. Then taking action.

What’s critical is an understanding of how to build contrast in the prose. Like music, or dance, the moments of change are the ones that will stick with the readers. So make sure your emphasis is in the place it needs to be.

I know what my personal preference is. I love it when my prose isn’t afraid to lean into the lyrical side of linguistics. The gaps between are the inhale to each exhale of text. They’re the negative space in a drawing. But those are my words and my choices.

Remember, the human condition is temporary. It’s always changing. Language is an imperfect vehicle for the divinity of existence.

Whatever your formatting choices, don’t forget to get real freaky with it.

Whole-heartedly BEGGING writers to unlearn everything schools taught you about how long a paragraph is. If theres a new subject, INCLUDING ACTIONS, theres a new paragraph. A paragraph can be a single word too btw stop making things unreadable

[blottyink]

[kagenoneko]

A good take on why Strunk and White is not the book to turn for this kind of information.

[calicojack1718]

Autism Appreciation Month: The Way of the Mask, Navigating the Neuroconvergent World

Being autistic in the neuronomral world is dangerous. If an autistic person wants to have a job or relationships with neuronormal people, we need to mask our autism. It is a sad reality.

Mia Culpa Blogging and blogs are a fragile thing, especially when the blogger is a full-time citizen and only a part-time blogger as I am. When last we left it, I had returned from China with the four months of salary that #COVID-19 and ridiculous Chinese bureaucracy had forced me to leave there in 2020, but also, with a cold. The week after returning, I managed to get to work everyday, but was…

[malfiora]

Every writer should read Elements of Style and then carry on

Or as Strunk and White said in Elements of Style (to the best of my memory), "Feel free to ignore everything in this book rather than write something inelegant."

[hinamie]

oversaturate

[ashoss]

this idea wont leave my brain please help me !! YIPPEE HADES BATKIDS !!!

without the bg and text under the cut :))

asdhj probably gonna post like,, two at a time because thats ,, a lot,,,, of drawing ,,,,,,, so heres tim and jason! i think i got the hang of it more with jason lol

ALSO ALSO!!!

thank you to those who helped me with the titles for the batkids!! they were all really good :D (all on insta lol)

timothy: the tenured - thomson_at

[sucka99]

[bigmouthlass]

If the 50 cent word won't get your point across, it won't do. Oversimplifying that obstructs meaning is not a good thing.

I like Strunk's advice better-- omit unneccesary words.

I fundamentally disagree with Thomas Jefferson and Mark Twain. "Never use two words when one will do," "don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do," I'm going to turn a single sentence into an essay and it's going to cost five hundred dollars per word because those are the right words to get across what I mean without ambiguity and misunderstanding, thankyouverymuch

[toyastales]

Zebra Schist outcrop, Kangaroo Island, South Australia.

[dymitre]

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE 💧🔥

[velvet-ii]

some arcane portrait studies :3 this show is ruining my life