For those seeking advice on how to improve their writing, there's no shortage of good books around. From Strunk and White's enduring Elements of Style to Arthur Plotnik's punchier Spunk and Bite, guides to style dependably advise, prescribe, and illustrate--often with a striking similarity underneath.
In certain ways, Sister Miriam Joseph's style guide is not much different, except that it occupies just three pages (the final three) in a book that elsewhere keeps company with Aristotle, Thomas More, Shakespeare, and Milton.
But first a bit of background.
In the fall of 1935, a new two-semester course called "The Trivium" entered the core curriculum at Saint Mary's College in South Bend, Indiana. This "new" course, in fact, was derived from the "three roads" that served as the foundation of a medieval liberal arts education: grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Because no existing textbook met the needs of the course, English instructor Sister Miriam Joseph Rauh, C.S.C., composed her own. In 1937, the first edition of The Trivium in College Composition and Reading was published.
While most textbooks are lucky to enjoy a shelf life of three or four years, The Trivium followed a different path. In 1947, when Columbia University Press published her celebrated dissertation, Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of Language, Sister Miriam Joseph's 10-year-old textbook (now revised) gained wider notice. And since then, The Trivium has been rediscovered by new generations of writers and teachers. The most recent version, edited by Marguerite McGlinn, was published by Paul Dry Books in 2002.
You'll have to explore on your own the chapters on syllogisms, the liberal arts, and the nature and function of language. But the following passages from the final section, headed "A Brief Guide to Composition," suggest the flavor of Sister Miriam Joseph's engaging text. It's true that in one form or another her advice on style can be found in countless other books on the subject. But nowhere else, I think, is that advice delivered so succinctly.
Clarity is the first requisite of style in expository writing. (Grammatical correctness is a prerequisite.) Help your reader to understand the abstract by providing concrete examples from which the reader can make the abstraction and so comprehend it thoroughly. The intellect is normally reached through the imagination, and therefore, even in workaday prose, figurative language is an effective means to promote both clarity and interest. The writer must achieve clarity and hold interest by avoiding monotony.
Variety is a cardinal principle of effective style. There should be variety in diction through the use of synonyms, in sentence length, in grammatical structure, and in rhythm. Variety in grammatical structure and rhythm are secured through omitting or adding conjunctions, through differences in word order, in sentence beginnings, in the use of simple, compound, and complex sentences, of prepositional and participial phrases, of clauses, of loose and periodic structure, of parallel structure. These structures may be clarified and emphasized by the effective repetition of words.
Condense your sentences. Pack much meaning into few words. Use words that are fresh, accurate, vivid, specific--like torrent, strode, sauntered. Vivid diction and images, effective combinations of words, especially of nouns and verbs, arresting phrases, metaphors, and allusions contribute to compression of style. Verbs, above all, are the key to a vigorous style.
To give your writing life and movement, use vivid verbs in the active voice. Put the verb idea into the verb rather than into an abstract noun with an empty verb like occur. Cut out deadwood--needless words that dilute your thought and make your style insipid, dull, wordy. Prefer the specific expression to the general, the positive to the negative, the definite to the indefinite.
To learn more about The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric, by Sister Miriam Joseph, visit the website of Paul Dry Books.
