What's the Secret of Style?
Writing near the end of the 19th century, Matthew Arnold made it all sound pretty simple. "Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style."At about the same time, English novelist Charlotte Yonge put her own spin on the secret: "Good grammar and attention to punctuation, with a little common sense and avoiding of repetitions, ambiguities, or abrupt turns, are the secret of style."
And according to this blurb for a course called "Write for College," a new secret has recently been discovered:
Have you ever written a run-on sentence? Does your teacher tell you to make your sentences less choppy and more varied? The secret of style is knowing how to use free modifiers, and we'll teach you all ten of them! From these simple building blocks you'll soon be creating interesting and powerful sentences, all with total control.
In another course description, yet another secret is revealed: "So what's the secret of style? Repetition. Style, your style, will be born when you rehearse, refine, revisit, and repeat your own writing cycles."
Feeling a bit overwhelmed by all these revelations, we might pause to consider just what we mean by style in the first place.
For instance, is style a quality of the writer or of the writing itself? Over two centuries ago, Count Buffon famously observed that "Writing well consists of thinking, feeling and expressing well, of clarity of mind, soul and taste. The style is the man himself." But another Frenchman, filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, countered that "style is just the outside of content, and content the inside of style."
So then, is style a kind of spice that's added to a composition--or is it an essential ingredient? Is style a skill that can be learned, or a gift that only some authors are blessed with? And can a style ever be good or bad, correct or incorrect--or is it purely a matter of personal taste?
I can't promise any definitive answers, but to find out some of the various ways in which professional writers have responded to these questions over the years, visit What Is Style? And rest assured, more secrets will be revealed.
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Comments
This: “style is just the outside of content, and content the inside of style” gives me a headache as does the writing of Joyce, Austen and sometimes Kerouac.
I like this rule: “if it sounds like writing, re-write it” – attributed to Elmore Leonard.