26 THE SEN SE OF STYLE

storied emigrations (expressed in pleasingly parallel syntax), whose

descendants doubtless include many of her readers. Those readers are
implicitly invited to apply their respect for their ancestors' courage and Chapter 2
sacrifice to the forgotten pilgrims of the Great Migration.
when the land turned to dust, not "the Dust Bowl"; when there was
nothing to eat, not "the Potato Famine"; the landless, not "the peas-
ants." Wilkerson will not allow us to snooze through a recitation of
A WINDOW ONTO
familiar verbiage. Fresh wording and concrete images force us to keep
updating the virtual reality display in our minds.
THEWORLD
1hey left. Among the many dumb rules of paragraphing foisted on CLASSIC STYLE ASAN ANTIDOTE FOR ACADEMESE,
students in composition courses is the one that says that a paragrapb BUREAUCRATESE, CORPORATESE, LEGALESE,
may not consist of a single sentence. Wilkerson ends a richly descrip- OFF/CIALESE, ANO OTHER KINDS OF STUFFY PROSE
tive introductory chapter with a paragraph composed of exactly two
syllables. Toe abrupt ending and the expanse of blankness at the bot-
tom of the page mirror the finality of the decision to move and the

W
riting is an unnatural act} As Charles Darwin observed,
uncertainty of the life that lay ahead. Good writing finishes strong. "Man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the
babble of our young children, whereas no child has an
The authors of the four passages share a number of practices: an insist- instinctive tendency to bake, brew, or write." Toe spoken word is older
ence on fresh wording and concrete imagery over familiar verbiage than our species, and the instinct for language allows children to engage
and abstract summary; an attentíon to the readers' vantage point and in articulate conversation years before they entera schoolhouse. But the
the target of their gaze; the judicious placement of an uncommon word written word is a recent invention that has left no trace in our genome
or idiom against a backdrop of simple nouns and verbs; the use of par- and must be laboriously acquired throughout childhood and beyond.
allel syntax; the occasional planned surprise; the presentation of a tell- Speech and writing differ in their mechanics, of course, and that is
ing detail that obviates an explicit pronouncement; the use of meter one reason children must struggle with writing: it takes practice to
and sound that resonate with the meaning and mood. reproduce the sounds oflanguage with a pencil or a keyboard. But they
Toe authors also share an attitude: they do not hide the passion and differ in another way, which makes the acquisition of writing a lifelong
relish that drive them to tell us about their subjects. They write as if challenge even after the mechanics have been mastered. Speaking and
they have something important to say. But no, that doesn't capture it. Writing involve very different kinds of human relationship, and only
They write as if they have something important to show. And that, we th
t e one associated with speech comes naturally to us. Spoken conver-
s shall see, is a key ingredient in the sense of style. sation is instinctive because social interaction is instinctive: we speak
b to those with whom we are on speaking terms. When we engage our
convers t· 1 . .
a 10na partners, we have an mkhng of what they know and
rr
What they might be interested in learning, and as we chat with them,
a we rn0 . . .
nitor their eyes, the1r face, and their posture. If they need
(e
 28 THE SENSE OF STYLE A WINDOW ONTO THE WORLD 29

clarification, or cannot swallow an assertion, or have something to can see something that the reader has not yet noticed, and he orients the
add, they can break into the conversation or follow up in turn. reader's gaze so that she can see it for herself. Toe purpose of writing is
We enjoy non e of this give-and-take when we cast our bread upon the resentation, and its motive is disinterested truth. lt succeeds when it
waters by sending a written missive out into the world. Toe recipients are ~gns ]anguage with the truth, the proofof success being clarity and sim-
m
invisible and inscrutable, and we have to get through to them without pllcity. Toe truth can be known, and is not the same as the language that
ce
knowing much about them or seeing their reactions. At the time that we reveals it; prose is a window onto the world. Toe writer knows the truth
lc.í
write, the reader exists only in our imaginations. Writing is above all an before putting it into words; he is not using the occasion of writing to sort
s' act of pretense. We have to visualize ourselves in sorne kind ofconversa- out what he thinks. Nor does the writer of classic prose have to argue for
t tion, or correspondence, or oration, or soliloquy, and put words into the the truth; he just needs to present it. That is because the reader is compe-
mouth of the little avatar who represents us in this simulated world. tent and can recognize the truth when she sees it, as long as she is given
Toe key to good style, far more than obeying any list of command- an unobstructed view. Toe writer and the reader are equals, and the pro-
ments, is to have a clear conception of the make-believe world in which cess of directing the reader's gaze takes the forro of a conversation.
you're pretending to communicate. There are many possibilities. A per- A writer of classic prose must simulate two experíences: showing
son thumb-typing a text message can get away with acting as if he is the reader something in the world, and engaging her in conversation.
taking part in a real conversation... A college student who writes a term Toe nature ofeach experience shapes the way that classic prose is writ-
paper is pretending that he knows more about his subject than the ten. Toe metaphor of showing implies that there is something to see.
reader and that his goal is to supply the reader with information she Toe things in the world the writer is pointing to, then, are concrete:
needs, whereas in reality his reader typically knows more about the sub- people (or other anímate beings) who move around in the world and
ject than he does and has no need for the information, the actual goal of interact with objects.2 Toe metaphor of conversation implies that the
the exercise being to give the student practice for the real thing. An activ- reader is cooperative. Toe writer can count on her to read between the
ist composing a manifesto, ora minister drafting a sermon, must write as lines, catch his drift, and connect the dots, without his having to spell
if they are standing in front of a crowd and whipping up their emotions. out every step in his train of thought. 3
Which simulation should a writer immerse himself in when compos- Classic prose, Thomas and Turner explain, is just one kind of style,
ing a piece for a more generic readership, such as an essay, an article, a whose invention they credit to seventeenth-century French writers
review, an editorial, a newsletter, or a blog post? Toe literary scholars such as Descartes and La Rochefoucauld. Toe differences between clas-
Francis-Noel Thomas and Mark Turner have singled out one model of sic style and other styles can be appreciated by comparing their stances
prose asan aspiration for such writers today. They call it classic style, and on thecommunication scenario: how the writer imagines himselfto be
explain it in a wonderful little book called Clear and Simple as the Truth. related to the reader, and what the writer is trying to accomplish.
Toe guiding metaphor of classic style is seeing the world. Toe writer Classic style is not a contemplative or romantic style, in which a
Writer tries to share his idiosyncratic, emotional, and mostly ineffable
reactions to something. Nor is it a prophetic, oracular, or oratorical
• To avoid the awkwardness of strings of he or she, 1 have borrowed a convention
from linguistics and will consistently refer to a generic writer of one sex and a style, where the writer has the gift of being a ble to see things that no
generic reader of the other. Toe male gender won the coin toss, and will represent one else can, and uses the music oflanguage to unite an audience.
the writer in this chapter; the roles will alternate in subsequent enes. Less obviously, classic style differs from practica! style, like the
30 THE SENSE OF STVLE A WINDOW ONTO THE WORLD 31

language of memos, manuals, term papers, and research reports. <Tra- The different prose styles are not sharply demarcated, and many
ditional stylebooks such as Strunk and \,Vhite are mainly guides to idnds of writing blend the different styles or alternate between them.
practica! style.) In practica) style, the writer and reader have defined (ACademic writing, for example, tends to mix practica! and self-
roles (supervisor and employee, teacher and student, technician and conscious styles.) Classic style is an ideal. Not ali prose should be clas-
customer), and the writer's goal is to satisfy the reader's need. Writing ·c and not ali writers can carry off the pretense. But knowing the
SI ,
in practica! style may conform to a fixed template (a five-paragraph hallmarks of classic style will make anyone a better writer, and it is the
essay, a report in a scientific journal), and it is brief because the reader strongest cure I know for the disease that enfeebles academic, bureau-
needs the information in a timely manner. \Nriting in classíc style, in cratic, corporate, legal, and official prose.
contrast, takes whatever form and whatever length the writer needs to
presentan interesting truth. Toe classíc writer's brevity "comes from the At first glance classic style sounds na'ive and philistine, suited only to
elegance of his mind, never from pressures of time or employment."~ a world of concrete goings-on. Not so. Classic style is not the same as
Classic style also differs subtly from plain sty!e, where everything is the common but unhelpful advice to "avoid abstraction." Sometimes
in full view and the reader needs no help in seeing anything. In classic we do have to write about abstract ideas. What classic style does is
style the writer has worked hard to find something worth showing and explain them as ifthey were objects and forces that would be recogniz-
the perfect vantage point from which to see it. Toe reader may have to able to anyone standing in a position to see them. Let's see how classic
work hard to discern it, but her efforts will be rewarded. Classic style, style is used by the physicist Brian Greene to explain one of the most
Thomas and Turner explain, is aristocratic. not egalitarian: "Truth is exotic ideas the human mind has ever entertained, the theory of mul-
available to ali who are willing to work to achieve ít, but truth is cer- tiple universes. 7
tainly not commonly possessed by ali and is no one's birthright."; The Greene begins with the observation by astronomers in the 1920s
early bird gets the worm, for example, is plain. 11,e early bird gets tlie worm, that galaxies were moving away from each other:
but the seco11d mouse gets the cheese is classic.
Classic style OYerlaps with plain and practica! styles. And ali three lf space is now expanding, then at ever earlier times the universe
differ from self-conscious, relativistic, ironic, or postmodern styles, in must have been ever smaller. At sorne moment in the distant past,
which "the writer's chief, if unstated, concern is to escape beíng con· everything we now see- the ingredients responsible for every
victed of philosophical naiveté about hís own enterprise." As Thomas planet, every star, every galaxy, even space itself- must have been
and Turner note, "When we open a cookbook, we completely put compressed to an infinitesimal speck that then swelled outward,
aside- and expect the author to put aside-the kind oi question that evolving ínto the universe as we know it.
leads to the heart of certain philosophic and religious traditions. Is it The big-bang theory was born .... Yet scientists were aware
possible to talk about cooking? Do eggs really exist? ls food something that the big-bang theorr suffered from a significan! shortcoming.
about which knowledge is possible? Can anyone else eYer tell us any· Ofali things, it leaves out the bang. Einstein's equations do a won-
thing true about cooking? ... Classic style similarly puts aside as inap· derful job of descríbing how the universe evolved from a split sec
propriate philosophical questions about its enterprise. Jf it took those ond after the bang, but the equations break down (similar to the
questions up, it could never get around to treating its subject, and itS error message returned by a calculator when you tr}' to divide 1 by O)
purpose is exclusively to treat its subject."6 when applied to the extreme envlronment of the universe's earliest
 32 THE SENSE OF STYLE A WINDOW ONTO THE WORLD 33

moment. Toe big bang thus provides no insight into what might When the astronomers deduced how much dark energy would
have powered the bang itself. have to permeate ever)' nook and eran ny ofspace to accou nt for the
observed cosmic speedup, the}' found a number that no one has
Greene does not tut tut over the fact that this reasoning dependson been able to explain ... :
complex mathematics. Instead he shows us, with images and everyday
examples, what the math reveals. We accept the theory of the big bang ·ºººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººº
by watching a movie of expanding space running backwards. We ºººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººº
00000000000000000000000000000013s.
appreciate the abstruse concept of equations breaking clown through
an example, division by zero, which we can understand for ourselves
in either of two ways. We can think it through: What could dividinga By displaying this nurnber in ali its multi-zeroed glory, Greene
number into zero parts actually mean? Or we can punch the numbers impresses upon us the fact that it is very small yet oddly precise. He
into our calculators and see the error message ourselves. then points out that it is hard to explain that value because it seems to
Greene then tells us that astronomers recently made a surprising be fine-tuned to allO\\' life on earth to come into being:
discovery, which he illustrates with an analogy:
In universes with larger amounts ofdark energy, whenever rnatter
Justas the pull of earth's gravity slows the ascent of a ball tossed tries to clump into galaxies. the repulsive push of the dark energy
upward, the gravitational pull of each galaX)' on every other must is so strong that the clump gets blown apart, thwarting galactic
be slowing the expansion of space .... (But) far from slowing formation. In uni,·erses whose dark-energy value is much smaller,
down, the expansion of space went into overdrive about 7 billion the repulsive push changes to an attractive pull, causing those
years ago and has been speeding up ever since. That's like gently universes to collapse back on themselves so quickly that again gal-
t tossing a ball upward, having it slow down initially, but then axies wouldn't form. And without galaxies, there are no stars, no
e rocket upward ever more quickly. planets, and so in those universes there's no chance for our form
of life to exist.
,C
But soon they found an explanation, which he illustrates with a looser
simile: To the rescue comes an idea which (Greene showed us earlier)
e_xplained the bang in the big bang. According to the theory of infla-
We're ali used to gravity being a force that does only one thing: tionary cosmology, empty space can spawn other big bangs, creating a
pull objects toward each other. But in Einstein's ... theory of rela- vast number of other universes: a multiverse. This makes the precise
,t
tivity, gravity can also ... push things apart. ... 1f space con· value of dark energy in our universe less surprising:
tains ... an invisible energy, sort of like an invisible mist that's
uniformly spread through space, then the gravity exerted by the We find ourselves in this universe and not another for much
the same reason we find ourselves on earth and not on Neptune-
y energy mist would be repulsive.
.,
·1
we find ourse¡ves w here cond1t1ons
•. . for our form of life.
are npe
Toe dark energy hypothesis, however, led to yet another mystery:
34 THE SENSE OF STYLE A WINDOW ONTO THE WORLD 35

Of course! As long as there are many planets, one of them is likely to . s breaking down~; gravity tugs at a tossed ball in exactly the
"equauon . .. . .
beata hospitable distance from the sun, and no one thinks it's sensible it sJo,vs cosmic expansion; the 1mprobab1hty of finding a prec1sely
to ask why we find ourselves on that planet rather than on Neptune. So way ¡fied ítem in a small pool of possibilities applies to both the sizes of
it would be if there are many universes. spec . a store and the values of phvsical constants in a multiverse.
shoes in •
But scientists still faced a problem, which Greene illustrates with an les are not so much metaphors or analogies as they are actual
1heexamp
analogy:
;nstanCe' of the phenomena he is explaining, and they are instances
J

that readers can see with their own eyes. This is classic style.
Just as it takes a well-stocked shoe store to guarantee you'll find lt may not be a coincidence that Greene, like many scientists since
your size, only a well-stocked multiverse can guarantee that our Galileo, is a lucid expositor ofdifficult ideas, because the ideal of classic
universe, with its peculiar amount of dark energy, will be repre- rose is congenial to the worldview of the scientist. Contrar)' to the
sented. On its own, inflationary cosmology falls short of the mark. :ommon misunderstanding in which Einstein proved that everything
While its never ending series ofbig bangs would yield an immense ¡5 relative and Heisenberg proved that observers always affect what
collection of universes, many would have similar features, like a they observe, most scientists believe that there are objective truths
shoe store with stacks and stacks of sizes 5 and 13, but nothing in about the "'orld and that they can be discovered by a disinterested
the size you seek. observer.
By the same token, the guiding image of classic prose could not be
Toe piece that completes the puzzle is string theory, according to further from the worldvie,v of relativist academic ideologies such as
which "the tally of possible universes stands al the almost incompre- postmodernism, poststructuralism, and literary Marxism. And not
hensible 10500, a number so large it defies analogy." coincidentally, it was scholars with these worldviews who consistently
won the annual Bad \Vriting Contest, a publicity stunt held by the phi-
By combining intlationary cosmology and string theory, . . . the losopher Denis Dutton during the late 1990s.$ First place in 1997 went
stock room of universes overflows: in the hands of inflation, string to the eminent critic Fredric Jameson for the opening sentence of his
theory's enormously diverse collection of possible universes book on film criticism:
become actual universes, brought to life by one big bang after
another. Our universe is then virtually guaranteed to be among The visual is essentially pornographic, which is to sa}' that it has
them. And because of the special features necessary for our form its end in rapt, mindless fascination; thinking about its attributes
of life, that's the universe we in habit. becomes an adjunct to that, if it is unwilling to betray its object;
while the most austere films necessarily draw their energy from
In just three thousand words, Greene has caused us to understand the attempt to repress their own excess (rather than from the
a mind-boggling idea, with no apolog}' that the physics and math more thankless effort to discipline the viewer).
behind the theory might be hard for him to explain or for readers to
understand. He narrates a series of events with the confidence that :ne assertion that "the visual is essentially pornographic" is not, to put
anyone looking at them will know what they imply, because the exam· '.1mildly, a fact about the \\'orld that anyone can see. Toe phrase "which
ples he has chosen are exact. Division by zero is a perfect example of is to say" promises an explanation, but it is just as baffiing: can't
36 THE SENSE Of STYLE A WINDOW ONTO THE WORLD 37

something have "its end in rapt, mindless fascination" without being /1...t. F ~ lik.o __,.
i..c TUUC& ~ Tht
pornographic? Toe puzzled reader is put on notice that her ability to boai, lbr tlxK ruolvt,o,,.

understand the world counts for nothing; her role is to behold the enig-
matic pronouncements of the great scholar. Classic writing, with its
assumption of equality between writer and reader, makes the reader
feel like a genius. Bad writing makes the reader feel like a dunce.
Toe winning entry for 1998, by another eminent critic, Judith But-
ler, is also a defiant repudiation of classic style:
DoontJl>ury C: 1972 G. B. Trudeau Rep,1n,ed wi1h perm,s\Jo n of Unive ,..,1Ucltek AII righ1s rese<Wd

Toe move from a structuralist account in which capital is under- Just as deceptive is the plain language of Greene's explanation of
stood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways the multiverse. It takes cognitive toil and literary dexterity to pare an
to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to argument to its essentials, narrate it in an orderly sequence, and illus-
repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question trate it with analogies that are both familiar and accurate. As Dolly Par-
of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift tan said, "You wouldn't believe how much it costs to look this cheap."
from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities Toe confident presentation of an idea in classic style should not be
as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contin- confused with an arrogant insistence that it is correct. Elsewhere in his
gent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of essay, Greene does not hide the fact that many of his fellow physicists
hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of think that string theory and the multiverse are extravagant and
the rearticulation of power. unproven. He only wants readers to understand them. Thomas and
Turner explain that the reader of classic prose "may conclude that a text
A reader of this intimidating passage can marvel at Butler's ability to jug- is masterful, classic, and completely wrong."9
gle abstract propositions about still more abstract propositions, with no And for ali its directness, classic style remains a pretense, an impos-
real-world referent in sight. We have a move from an account ofan under- ture, a stance. Even scientists, with their commitment to seeing the
standing to a view with a rearticulation of a question, which reminds me World as it is, are a bit postmodern. They recognize that it's hard to
of the Hollywood party in Annie Hall where a movie producer is over- know the truth, that the world doesn't just revea} itself to us, that we
heard saying, "Right now it's only a notion, b~t I think I can get money to understand the world through our theories and constructs, which are
make it into a concept, and Iater turn it into an idea." What the reader not pictures but abstract propositions, and that our ways of under-
cannot do is understand it-to see with her own eyes what Butler is see- standing the world must constantly be scrutinized for hidden biases.
ing. Insofar as the passage has a meaning at ali, it seems to be that sorne lt's just that good writers don't flaunt this anxiety in every passage they
scholars have come to realize that power can change over time. Write; they artfully conceal it for clarity's sake.
Toe abstruseness of the contest winners' writing is deceptive. Most Remembering that classic style is a pretense also makes sense of the
academics can effortlessly dispense this kind of sludge, and many stu- seemingly outlandish requirement that a writer know the truth before
dents, like Zonker Harris in this Doonesbury cartoon, acquire the skill PUtting it into words and not use the writing process to organize and
without having to be taught: clarify his thoughts. Of course no writer works that way, but that is
38 THE SENSE OF STYLE A WINOOW ONTO THE WORLD 39

irrelevant. Toe goal of dassic style is to make it seem as if the writer's ·ch simulates a conversation. You would never announce to a com-
thoughts were fully formed before he dothed them in words. As with whi. "I'm going to say three things to you. Toe first thing I'm going to
pamon,
the celebrity chef in the immaculate television kitchen who pulls a per. is that a woodpecker has just landed on that tree." You'd just say it.
fect soufflé out of the oven in the show's final minute, the messy work saY1he problem with thoughtless signposting is that the reader has to
has been done beforehand and behind the scenes. ut rnore work into understanding the signposts than she saves in see-
~ what they point to, like complicated directions for a shortcut which
Toe rest of this chapter is organized as follows. Toe first subsection intro- ing
take longer to figure out than the time the shortcut wou ld save. I' ts
duces the concept of "metadiscourse," followed by one of its principal better ¡f the route is clearly enough laid out that every turn is obvious
manifestations, the use of signposting. Toe second subsection reviews when you get to it. Good writing takes advantage ofa reader's expecta-
three issues: the problem of focusing on a description of professional tions of where to go next. It accompanies the reader on a journey, or
activity rather than an exposition ofsubject matter, the overuse ofapolo- arranges the material in a logical sequence (general to specific, big to
getic language, and the disadvantages of excessive hedging. Following small, early to late), or tells a story with a narrative are.
this, the third subsection explains the issue of prespecified verbal for- Jt's not that authors should avoid signposting altogether. Even
mulas. Toe fourth subsection covers issues having to do with excessive casual chitchat has sorne signposting. Let me tell you a story. To make
abstraction, including overuse of nominalizations and passives. Finally, a long story short. In other words. As I was saying. Mark my words. Did
I will review the main points of the preceding discussion. you hear the one about the minister, the priest, and the rabbi? Like ali
Did you get all that? writing decisions, the amount of signposting requires judgment and
I didn't think so. That tedious paragraph was filled with meta- compromise: too much, and the reader bogs down in reading the sign-
discourse-verbiage about verbiage, such as subsection, review, and dis- posts; too little, and she has no idea where she is being led.
cussion. Inexperienced writers often think they're doing the reader a Toe art of classic prose is to signpost sparingly, as we do in conver-
favor by guiding her through the rest of the text with a detailed pre- sation, and with a mínimum of metadiscourse. One way to introduce
view. In reality, previews that read like a scrunched-up table of con- a topic without metadiscourse is to open with a question:
tents are there to help the writer, not the reader. At this point in the
presentation, the terms mean nothing to the reader, and the list is too This chaptcr discusses the factors that What makes a name rise and fall in
long and arbitrary to stay in memory for long. cause namcs to rise and fa U in popularity?
popularity.
Toe previous paragraph reviewed the concept of metadiscourse.
This paragraph introduces one of its primary manifestations, the phe-
Another is to use the guiding metaphor behind classic style, vision. Toe
nomenon of signposting.
content in a passage of writing is treated like a happening in the world
Clumsy writers do a lot of that, too. They unthinkingly follow the
that can be seen with one's eyeballs:
advice to say what you're going to say, say it, and then say what you've said,
Toe advice comes from classical rhetoric, and it makes sense for long ora·
Thc preceding paragraph As we have seen, parents sometimes
tions: ifa listener's mind momentarily wanders, the passage she has missed dernonstratcd that parents give a boy's name to a girl, but never
is gone forever. It's not as necessary in writing, where a reader can back· 50
rnctimes give a boy's name to viceversa.
track and look up what she's missed. And it can be intrusive in classic style. ª gírl, but never vice versa.
40 THE SENSE OF STYLE A WINDOW ONTO THE WORLD 41

And since seeing implies seers, we no longer have to refer to paragraphs . up wíth the trends and gossíp. Most of a researcher's waking
keeping
"demonstrating" sorne things and sections "summariz.ing" other things, ent in the second world, and 1t's easy for him to confuse the
hours are Sp . . .
as if blocks of printing had a mind of their own. The active parties are -n..e result is the typ1cal opemng of an academ1c paper:
tWO- 111
the writer and the reader, who are taking in the spectade together, and
the writer can refer to them with the good old pronoun we. That sup. In recent years, an increasing number of psychologists and
plies him with still other metaphors that can replace metadiscourse linguists have turned their attention to the problem of child
such as moving together or cooperating on a project: ' language acquisítion. In this article, recent research on this
process will be reviewed.
Toe prevíous section analyzed the Now that we have explored the
source of word sounds. This section source of word sounds. we arrive at No offense, but very few people are ínterested in how professors spend
raises the quesllon of word thc puzzle of word meanings. their time. Classic style ignores the hired help and looks directly at
meanings.
what they are being paid to study:
Toe first topíc to be discussed is Let's begin with proper names.
proper names. Ali children acquire the abilit}' to speak a language without
explicit lessons. How do they accomplish this feat?
As for the advice to say what you said, the key is the expression "in
other words." There's no sense in copying a sentence from every para- To be fair, sometimes the topic of conversation really is the activity of
graph and pasting them together at the end. That just forces the reader researchers, such asan overview intended to introduce graduate students
to figure out the point of those sen ten ces ali over aga in, and it is tanta- or other ínsiders to the scholarly literature in their chosen profession. But
mount to a confession that the author isn't presenting ideas (which can researchers are apt to lose sight of whom they are writing for, and narcis•
always be clothed in different language) but just shuffling words around sistically describe the obsessions of their guild rather than what the audi-
the page. A summary should repeat enough of the key words to allow ence really wants to know. Professional narcissism is by no mea ns confined
the reader to connect it back to the earlier passages that spelled out the to academia. Journalists assigned toan issue often cover the coverage, cre-
points in detail. But those words should be fitted into new sentences ati ng the notorious medía echo chamber. Museum signs explain how the
that work together as a coherent passage of prose in its own right. The shard in the showcase fits into a classification of pottery styles rather
summary should be self-contained, almost as if the material being than who made it or what it was used for. Music and movie guides are
summarized had never existed. dominated by data on how much money a work grossed the weekend
it was released, or how many weeks it spent in the theaters or on the
Metadiscourse is not the only form ofself-consciousness that bogs down charts. Governments and corporations organize their Web sites around
professional prose. Another is a confusion of the writer's subject matter their bureaucratic structure rather than the kinds of information a user
with his line of work. Writers live in two universes. One is the world of seeks.
the thing they study: the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, the development of Self-conscious writers are also apt to whinge about how what they're
language in children, the Taiping Rebellion in China. The other is the about to do is so terribly difficult and complicated and controversial:
world of their profession: getting articles published, going to conferences,
 A WINDOW ONTO THE WORLD 43
42 THE SENSE OF STYLE

What are intractable conflicts? "Jntractability" is a controversia) 1he authors seem to be saying, "I couldn't think of a more dignified way
concept. which means dilferent things to different people. ofputting this. but please don't think l'm a flibbertigibbet who talks this
way; J really am a serious scholar." Toe problem goes beyond prissiness.
Resilience to stress is a complex multidimensional construct. In the !ast example, taken from a letter of recommendation, are we sup-
Although there is no one universally accepted definition of posed to think that the student is a quick study, or that she is a "quick
resilience, it is generally understood as the ability to bounce back study"-someone who is alleged or rumored by others to be a quick
from hardship and trauma. study, but really isn't? Toe use of shudder quotes is taken to an extreme
Toe problem of language acquisition is extremely complex. It is in the agonizingly self-conscious, defiantly un-classic style of postmod-
difficult to give precise definitions of the concept of "language" ernism, which rejects the possibility that any word can ever refer to any-
and the concept of"acquisition" and the concept of "children." thing, or even that there is an objectively existing world for words to refer
There is much uncertainty about the interpretation of to. Hence the 2004 headline in the satirical newspaper The Onion on the
experimental data anda great deal of controversy surrounding passing of postmodernism's leading light: JACQUES DERRIDA "D1Es."
the theories. More research needs to be done. Quotation marks have a number of legitimate uses, such as repro•
ducing someone else's words (She said, "Fiddlesticks!"), mentioning a
Toe last of these quotations is a pastiche, but the other two are real, and word as a word rather than using it to convey its meaning (The New
al l are typical of the inward-looking style that makes academ ic writing York Times uses "millenniums," not "millennia"), and signaling that
so tedious. In classic style, the writer credits the reader with enough the writer does not accept the meaning of a word as it is being used by
intelligence to realize that many concepts aren't easy to define and that others in this context (They exewted their sister to preserve the family's
many controversies aren't easy to resolve. She is there to see what the "honor"). Squeamishness about one's own choice of words is not among
writer will do about it. them. Classic style is confident about its own voice. If you're not com-
Another bad habit of self-conscious writing is the prissy use ofquo- fortable using an expression without apologetic quotation marks, you
tation marks-sometimes called shudder quotes or scare quotes-to probably shouldn't be using it at all.
distance the writer from a common idiom: And then there's compulsive hedging. Many writers cushion their
prose with wads of fluff that imply that they are not willing to stand
By combining forces. you could make the "whole more than the sum behind what they are saying, including almost, apparently, comparatively.
of its parts." fairly, in part, nearly. partially, predominantly, presumably. rather. rel-
But this is not the "take home message." atively. seemingly, so to speak, somewhat, sort of. to a certain degree, to
They may be able to "think outside the box" even when everybody sorne extent, and the ubiquitous J would argue (does this mean that you
else has a fixed approach. but they do not always note when Would argue for your position if things were different, but are not will-
"enough is enough." ing to argue for it now?). Consider the "virtually" in the letter of rec-
It began as a movement led by a few "young turks" against an "old ornmendation excerpted above. Did the writer really mean to say that
there are sorne areas the student was interested in where she didn't
guard" who dominated the profession.
She is a "quick study" and has been able to educate herself in virtuallY bother to educate herself, or perhaps that she tried to educate herself in
th0se areas but lacked the competence to do so? And then there's the
any area that interests her.
"
44 THE SENSE OF STYLE A WINDOW ONTO THE WORLD 4S

scientist who showed me a picture of her four-year-old daughter and misinterpret a statistical tendency as an absolute law, a responsible
said, beaming, ''We virtually adore her." writer will a nticípate the oversight and qualify the generalization
Writers acquire the hedge habit to conform to the bureaucratic accordingly. Pronouncements like "Democracies don't fight wars,"
imperative that's abbreviated as CYA, which I'll spell out as Cover Your "Menare better than women at geometry problems," and "Eating broc-
Anatomy. They hope it will get them off the hook, or at least allow thern coli prevents cancer'' do not do justice to the reality that these phenom-
to plead guilt}' to a lesser charge, should a critic ever try to prove thern ena consist at most ofsmall differences in the means of two overlapping
wrong. lt's the same reason that lawsuit-wary journalists drizzle the bell curves. Since there are serious consequences to misinterpreting
words allegedly and reportedly throughout their copy, as in The al/eged rhese statements as absolute laws, a responsible writer should inserta
victim was fo11nd lying in a pool ofblood with a knife i11 his back. qualifier like 011 average or ali tliings being equal, together with a slightly
There is an alternative slogan to Cover Your Anatomy: So Sue Me. A or somewhat, Bes! of ali is to convey the magnitude of the effect and the
classic writer counts on the common sense and ordinary charity of his degree of certainty explicitly, in unhedged statements such as "During
readers, just as in everyday conversation we know when a speaker the twentieth century, democracies were half as likely to go to war with
means "in general" or "ali else being equal." If someone tells you that each other as autocracies were." lt's not that good writers never hedge
Liz wants to move out ofSeattle beca use it's a rainy city, you don't inter- their claims. lt's that their hedging is a choice, nota tic.
pret him as claiming that it rains there twenty four hours a day seven Paradoxically, intensifiers like very, highly, and extreme/y also work
days a week just because he didn't qualify his statement with relatively like hedges. They not only fuzz upa writer's prose but can undermine
rainy or somewl1at rainy. As Thomas and Turner explain, "Accuracy his intent. lf l'm wondering who pilfered the petty cash, it's more reas-
becomes pedantry if it is indulged for its own sake. A dassic writer will suring to hear Not Jones; he's an honest man than Not Jones; he's a very
phrase a subordinate point precisely but without the promise that it is honest man. Toe reason is that unmodified adjectives and nouns tend
technically accurate. The convention between writer and reader is that to be interpreted categorically: honest means "completely honest," or at
the writer is not to be challenged on these points because they are mere least "completely honest in the way that matters here" (just as fack
scaffolding."10 Any adversary who is unscrupulous enough to give the dmnk the bottle of beer implies that he chugged clown ali of it, not just
least charitable reading toan unhedged statement will find an opening a sip or th'O). As soon as you add an intensifier, you're turning an
to attack the writer in a thicket of hedged ones anyway all-or none dichotomy into a graduated scale. True, you're trying to
Sometimes a writer has no choice but to hedge a statement. Better place your subject high on the scale-say, an 8.7 out of 10 but it would
still, the writer can qualify the statement, that is, spell out the circum· have been better if the reader were not considering his relative degree
stances in which it <loes not hold, rather than leaving himselfan escape of honesty in the first place. That's the basis for the common advice
hatch or being coy as to whether he really means it. A statement in a (usuatly misattributed to Mark Twain) to "substitute damn every time
legal document will be interpreted adversarially, without the presump- you're inclined to write l'ery; your editor will delete it and the writing
tion of cooperation that governs an ordinaq' conversation, so every Will be justas it should be"- though today the substitution would have
10 be of a word stronger than damn. 11
exception must be spelled out. A scholar who is proposing a hypothesis
must go on the record with it in as precise a form as possible at least
once so that critics can see exactly what he is clairr.ing and give it their Classic prose is a pleasant illusion, like losing yourself in a play. The
best shot. And if there is a reasonable chance that readers wiil Writer must work to keep up the impression that his prose is a window
1 46 THE SENSE OF STYLE A WINDOW ONTO THE WORLD 47

onto the scene rather than just a mess of words. Like an actor with a Trying 1o direct team º" ners 1s li ke To suggest that directing team owners
wooden delivery, a writer who relies on canned verbal formulas wiU herd1ng cats. is lil..e herding ca1s is 10 give cats abad
name. 1•
break the spell. This is the kind of writer who gets the ball rolling in his
search for the holy grail, but finds that it's neither a magic bullet nora Hobbes stnpped the human Hobbes srnpped the human
slam dunk, so he rolls with the punches and lets the chips fall where they personaht1· for .in~ capacit~ for lo1·c personalih for am· capacity for lo\'e
or 1enderness ore, en simple fello,,· or tenderness or even simple fellow-
may while seeing the glass as half-full, \,•hich is easier said than done.
feeling. kal'lng inste,1d onlr fear. He feeling, lea\'ing instead only fear.
Avoid clichés like the plague-it's a no-brainerY When a reader is thre1,· oul the b,1b,· "ith the The bath 11as dq, and the baby had
forced to work through one stale idiom after another, she stops convert- bathwater. ,·anished.1
ing the language into mental images and slips back into just mouthing
the words.13 Even worse, since a el iché-monger has tu rned off his own
visual brain as he plonks down one dead idiom after another, he will And if you must use a cliché, wh)• not word it in a way that makes
inevitably mix his metaphors, and a reader who does keep her visual physical sense? \'\' hen you think about it, the fate of an overlooked ítem
brain going will be distracted by the ludicrous imagery. T11e price of is to fall thro11gh or into the cracks, not between them, and the proto-
chicken wings, the company's bread and b11tter, IMd risen. leica had typical unrealizable desire is to eat yo11r cake a11d have it, not to have
been coasting on its la11rels. Microsoft began 11 low-octane swan song. Jeff your cake and eat it (it's easy to do them in that order). And you'll often
is 11 ren11issa11ce man, dnlling dow11 to tlie core ,ssues and pushing the be surprised, and your writing will be livelier, if you take a few seconds
envelope. U11/ess yo11 bite the b111/et, you'/1 shoot yourself in tite foot. No to look up the original wording of a cliché. To gild the lily is not just
one has yet í11vented a co11dom that will k11ock people's socks off How tired but visually less apt than either of the original metaphors that it
low can the temn sink? Sky's the l1111it! scrambles together (from Shakespeare's King John), to paint tite lily and
Even when a shopworn image is the best way to convey an idea, a to gild refined gold, the latter of which neatly echoes the visual redun
classic writer can keep his reader engaged by remembering what the dancy in the overlap in sound between gild and gold. For that matter,
idiom literally refers to and playing with the 1mage to keep it in her you could avoid cliché altogether by adapting one of the other images
mind's eye: in the ful) sentence: "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a
perfume on the violet, to smooth the ice, or add another hue unto the
rainbow, or with taper-light to seek the beauteous eye of heaven to
\\' hen A menea ns are told .ibout E,er tned to explam to .1 ~el\' Yorker garnish, is wasteful and ridiculous excess."
fore1gn poliucs, 1heir eyes gl:ize the finer points oiSlo,·akian coalirion Thoughtless clichés can even be dangerous. I sometimes wonder
O\'er. pohtics? 1 h.1,·e. He .ilmost needed an
h_ow much irrationality in the world has been excused by the nonsen-
adrenaline sho1 to come oul ofthe
coma.
sical saying "Consistency is the hobgoblin oflittle minds," a corruption
of Ralph Waldo Ernerson's remark about "a foolish consistency." Recently
Electronic pubhcalion 1s scholarship \\' irh ele~tronic publtc,1tion, }OU can
on steroids. see ,·our sluffpublished iust 15
ª White House official referred to the American Israel Política) Affairs
seconds atter you 1, rile it ll's
Committee as "the 800 pound gorilla in the room," confusing the ele-
scholarsh1p on me1h,unphetamines. Phant i11 the room (something that everyone pretends to ignore) with
Publication for speed freaks. " an 800-po1111d gorilla (something that is powerful enough to do
1 46 THE SENSE OF STYLE A WINDOW ONTO THE WORLD 47

onto the scene rather than just a mess of words. Like an actor with a Trying 1o direct team º" ners 1s li ke To suggest that directing team owners
wooden delivery, a writer who relies on canned verbal formulas wiU herd1ng cats. is lil..e herding ca1s is 10 give cats abad
name. 1•
break the spell. This is the kind of writer who gets the ball rolling in his
search for the holy grail, but finds that it's neither a magic bullet nora Hobbes stnpped the human Hobbes srnpped the human
slam dunk, so he rolls with the punches and lets the chips fall where they personaht1· for .in~ capacit~ for lo1·c personalih for am· capacity for lo\'e
or 1enderness ore, en simple fello,,· or tenderness or even simple fellow-
may while seeing the glass as half-full, \,•hich is easier said than done.
feeling. kal'lng inste,1d onlr fear. He feeling, lea\'ing instead only fear.
Avoid clichés like the plague-it's a no-brainerY When a reader is thre1,· oul the b,1b,· "ith the The bath 11as dq, and the baby had
forced to work through one stale idiom after another, she stops convert- bathwater. ,·anished.1
ing the language into mental images and slips back into just mouthing
the words.13 Even worse, since a el iché-monger has tu rned off his own
visual brain as he plonks down one dead idiom after another, he will And if you must use a cliché, wh)• not word it in a way that makes
inevitably mix his metaphors, and a reader who does keep her visual physical sense? \'\' hen you think about it, the fate of an overlooked ítem
brain going will be distracted by the ludicrous imagery. T11e price of is to fall thro11gh or into the cracks, not between them, and the proto-
chicken wings, the company's bread and b11tter, IMd risen. leica had typical unrealizable desire is to eat yo11r cake a11d have it, not to have
been coasting on its la11rels. Microsoft began 11 low-octane swan song. Jeff your cake and eat it (it's easy to do them in that order). And you'll often
is 11 ren11issa11ce man, dnlling dow11 to tlie core ,ssues and pushing the be surprised, and your writing will be livelier, if you take a few seconds
envelope. U11/ess yo11 bite the b111/et, you'/1 shoot yourself in tite foot. No to look up the original wording of a cliché. To gild the lily is not just
one has yet í11vented a co11dom that will k11ock people's socks off How tired but visually less apt than either of the original metaphors that it
low can the temn sink? Sky's the l1111it! scrambles together (from Shakespeare's King John), to paint tite lily and
Even when a shopworn image is the best way to convey an idea, a to gild refined gold, the latter of which neatly echoes the visual redun
classic writer can keep his reader engaged by remembering what the dancy in the overlap in sound between gild and gold. For that matter,
idiom literally refers to and playing with the 1mage to keep it in her you could avoid cliché altogether by adapting one of the other images
mind's eye: in the ful) sentence: "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a
perfume on the violet, to smooth the ice, or add another hue unto the
rainbow, or with taper-light to seek the beauteous eye of heaven to
\\' hen A menea ns are told .ibout E,er tned to explam to .1 ~el\' Yorker garnish, is wasteful and ridiculous excess."
fore1gn poliucs, 1heir eyes gl:ize the finer points oiSlo,·akian coalirion Thoughtless clichés can even be dangerous. I sometimes wonder
O\'er. pohtics? 1 h.1,·e. He .ilmost needed an
h_ow much irrationality in the world has been excused by the nonsen-
adrenaline sho1 to come oul ofthe
coma.
sical saying "Consistency is the hobgoblin oflittle minds," a corruption
of Ralph Waldo Ernerson's remark about "a foolish consistency." Recently
Electronic pubhcalion 1s scholarship \\' irh ele~tronic publtc,1tion, }OU can
on steroids. see ,·our sluffpublished iust 15
ª White House official referred to the American Israel Política) Affairs
seconds atter you 1, rile it ll's
Committee as "the 800 pound gorilla in the room," confusing the ele-
scholarsh1p on me1h,unphetamines. Phant i11 the room (something that everyone pretends to ignore) with
Publication for speed freaks. " an 800-po1111d gorilla (something that is powerful enough to do
48 THESENSEOFSTYLE A WINOOW ONTO THE WORLD 49

whatever it wants, from the joke "Where does an 800-pound gorilta

~it?"). Given the controversy over whether the Israel lobby is merely
real characters doing things, rather than by naming an abstract concept
sulates those events in a single word. Look at the stuffy pas-
u ndernot iced in American foreign policy or nefa riously al l-controlling, that encap . d
the left which are filled with abstract nouns (underlmed), an
the meaning of the first cliché is a commonplace; the meaning of the sages on •
them with the more direct versions on the right:
second, incendiary. compare
Though no writer can avoid idioms altogether-they're part of the lhe researchers found tha1 groups Toe rcsearchers found that in
groups with li11le akoholism,
English lexicon, just like individual words-good writers reach for that are typicall)' associated with
,., alcoholism le,·els actually have such as )e,,·s, people actuallr drink
fresh si miles and metaphors that keep the reader's sensory cortexes lit 10
moderate amounts of alcohol moderate amounts of alcohol, but
up. Shakespeare ad, ises against •'adding another hue unto the rain- fcw of them drink too much a nd
. 1 ke vel still ha\'e low levels of
bow"; Dickens describes a man "with such long legs that he looked like !!!.L-·• . .- become alcoholícs.
high intili assoc,ated w1th
the afternoon shadow of somebody else"; Nabokov has Lolita plopping alcoholism, such as Jews.
into a seat, "her legs splayed, starfish-style." A But you don't have to be a 1doubt that tq·ing to amend the
1have serious doubts that trrmg to
great fiction writer to engage a reader's mental imagery. A psychologist amend the Constitution would ,,ork Constilution would actual!}' succeed,
explains a computer simulation in which activation builds up in a neu- on an actual level. On the but it may be l'aluable to aspire to it.
ron until it fires "like popcorn in a pan."1Y An editor looking to sign up aspirational le,·el, howe\"er, a
constitut1onal amend ment strat,:g\'
new talent ,,·rices about attending a funeral at which "the concentration
may be more valuable.
of authors was so dense, I felt like an Alaskan grizzly at the foot of a
waterfall, poised to pull out salmon by the paw ful."1º Even the bassist lndi\"iduals w11h mental health issues People who are mentally ill can
can become d angerous. lt is become dangerous. We need to
of the fictional rock band Spinal Tap deserves our admiration, if not for
importan! to approach this subject ,onsult mental health professionals.
his literary acumen then for his attention to imagery. when he told an from a vari~ty of strategi~s. but ,,·e also mar hal'e to inform the
interviewer: ''We're very lucky in the band in that we have two distinct including mental health assistance policc.
visionaries, David and Nigel; they're like poets, like Shelley and but also from a la,, enforcement
Byron.... lt's like fire and ice, basically. I feel my role in the band is to eerspect in•'
be somewhere m the middle of that, kind of like lukewarm water." What are the erospects for Should we trr to change society by
reconciling a prejudice reduction rtducing prejudicc that is, by
In classic prose the writer is directing the gaze of the reader to something model of change, des1gned to get getti ng people to hke one another~
people to like one another mo re. Or should we encourage
in the world she can see for herself. Ali eyes are on an agent: a protagonist,
with a collectil"e action model oí disadl'antaged groups to struggle
a mover and shaker, a driving force. The agent pushes or prods some- change, designtd to ignite struggles for equalit)' through collecti\·e
thing, and it moves or changes. Or something interesting comes into 10 achie\"e intergroup cquality? action? Or can "·e do both?
view, and the reader examines it part by part. Classic style minimizes
abstractions, which cannot be seen with the naked eye. This doesn't Cou!d you recognize a "leve!" ora "perspective" if rou met one on the
mean that it avoids abstract s11bject matter (remember Brian Greene's Slreet? Could you poínt it out to someone else? What about an approach,
explanation of the multiverse), only that it shows the events making up an assumption, a concept, a condition, a context, a framework, an issue,
that subject matter transparently, by narrating an unfolding plot with ª lllodel, a process, a range, a role, a strategy, a tendency, ora variable?
50 THE SENSE OF STYLE A WINDOW ONTO THE WORLD 51

These are metaconcepts: concepts about concepts. They serve as a kind 'lhe !ast example ~hows that verbs can ~ drained of life wh_en t_hey are
of packing material in which academics, bureaucrats, and corporate 6irned into adject1ves, too, as when contnbute becomes contnbut,ve to or
mouthpieces ciad their subject matter. Only when the packaging is ire becomes on the aspirational leve/. As this cartoon by Tom Toles sug-
hacked away does the object come into view. Toe phrase on the aspir- ;!'ts, zombie nouns and adjectives are one of the signatures ofacademese:
ational level adds nothing to aspire, nor is a prejudice reduction model
any more sophisticated than reducing prejudice. Recall that the win-
ning sentence in the 1998 Bad Writing Contest consisted almost / ~ T E ll'IP1.'1'1ENW1CW~
STIV\TE'-11,51> ~~TIC.S DiSlf.AATED
entirely of metaconcepts. lt) ~MIZI Á(Q(.ISl1tON OF A~!HE:5$
Together with verbal coffins like model and leve/ in which writers ANO VfU,ll.\TION óF <Pl'\M1411/CA1'10Hl ~I.LS
JIVRSUt.NT 7b S~bl1€0 ~u¡e,,.¡ ""'2>
entomb their actors and actions, the English language provides them A~Si.SSt-.UtT OF LANC">VA61N"I.. OEVE~eM:
with a dangerous weapon called nominalization: making something
into a noun. Toe nominalization rule takes a perfectly spry verb
and embalms it into a lifeless noun by adding a suffix like - anee,
- ment, - ation, or -ing. Instead of affirming an idea, you effect its affi,.,,
mation; rather than postponing something, you implement a post-
ponement. Toe writing scholar Heleo Sword calls them zombie nouns
because they lumber across the scene without a conscious agent
directing their motion. 21 They can turn prose into a night of the liv-
ing dead:

Prevention of neurogenesis When we prevented neurogenes1s, the

diminished social avoidance. mice no longer avoided other mice.
Any interrogatory verbalízations? But it's not just academics who loose
these zombies on the world. In response to a hurricane which threat-
Participants read assertions whose We presented participants with a
ened the Republican National Convention in 2012, Florida governor
veracity was either affirmed or denied sentence, followed by the word TRUE
by the subsequent presentation of an or FALSE.
Rick Scott told the press, "There is not any anticipation there will be a
assessment word. cancellation," that is, he didn't anticípate that he would have to cancel
the convention. And in 2014 Secretary of State John Kerry announced,
Comprehension checks were used as \Ve excluded people who failed to
exclusion criteria. understand the instructions. ~The president is desirous of trying to see how we can make our efforts
•n °rder to find a way to facilitate," to wit, the president wanted to help.
lt may be that somt> missing genes are Perhaps sorne missing genes
Once again the professional habit has not gone unnoticed by satirists,
more contributive to the spatial contribute to the spatial deficit.
deficit. SUch as in the MacNelly cartoon on the next page, which appeared
When Alexander Haig, the notoriously creative suffixer who served as
secretary ofstate in the Reagan administration, resigned from his post:
 A WINOOW ONTO THE WORLD 53
S2 THE SENSE OF STYLE

you may attempt to defend your enervating use of the passive

voice by pointing out that the onl}' alternative is excessive reliance

,~
/~
,a:'
,..
'
l decisioned the. necessifadion ,¡
the resptory~ion/option duet>
tnt ~ i t y ci fue mndflcwing or
Eorogn p;ücyaway from our or~nat~
0 00
the first person personal pronoun or upon the pontifical We.
Itis safer, you conclude, to choose self-effacement at this critical
moment in your career. I reply: even in critica! moments I see no

. ~
care(ul~ms tpwards consisténsivity,
pur~y. ste.adfa5tnitude and.
harm ¡0 saying I if I mean f.?~

, Often the pronouns I, me, and yo11 are not just harmless but down-
alx,ve all chrity.
right helpful. They simulate a conversation, as classic style recom-
mends, and they are gifts to the memory-challenged reader. It takes a
good deal of mental effort to keep track ofa cast of characters identified
as hes, siles, and theys. But unless one is in the throes of a meditative
trance or an ecstatic rapture, one never loses track of oneself or of the
person one is addressing (/, we, yo11). That's why guidelines on how
to avoid legalese and other turbid professional styles cal! for using
When a grammatical construction is associated with politicians first- and second-person pronouns, inverting passives into actives, and
you can be sure that it provides a way to evade responsibility. Zombie letting verbs be verbs rather than zombie nouns. Here are sorne exam-
nouns, unlike the verbs whose bodies they snatched, can shamble ples of discouraged and recommended wordings from the Pennsylva-
around without subjects. That is what they have in common with the nia Plain Language Consumer Contract Act:
passive constructions that also bog clown these examples, like wa$
lfthe Buyer defoults and the Seller lf the Buyer is behind in making
affirmed and were used. And in a third evasive maneuver, many stu-
commences collecuon through an pa~ ments, the Seller mar:
dents and politicians stay away from the pronouns J, me, and you. Toe attoroey, the Bul'er \\'ill b.- liabl~ l. Hire an attorney to collect the
social psychologist Gordon Allport called out these tactics in an "Epis· for attorney's fe;s. money.
tle to Thesis Writers": 2. Charge the nuyer for the
attorney's fees.
Your anxiety and feeling of insecurity \,•ill tempt you toan exces· lf the outstanding balance is lf 1 pay the whole amount before
sive use of the passive voice: prepaid in ful!, the unearned the due date, you will refund the
finance charge will be reíunded. unearned portion of the ti nance
On the basis of the analysis which was made of the data charge.
which were collected, it is suggested that the null hrpothesis
The Buyer is obligated to make ali 1\fil! make ali payments as they
can be re.iected. P3 Ymen1s hereunder. becomedue.
Please, sir; I didn't do it! It was done! Try to conquer your coward· Mcrnbership fees paid prior to the 1f I pay membersh ip fees befo re
ope .
ice, and start your concluding chapter \,'ith che creative assertion: . niog of the club ,,·ill be placed the club opens, the club will put
1n trust.
Lo! I found ... the money in a trust account.=1
54 THE SENSE OF STVLE A WINOOW ONTO THE WORLD SS

A concrete and conversational style does more than make profes. . , ood advice only when a writer or an editor understands why it's
sional verbiage easier toread; it can be a matter oflife and death. Take it~ ggoffered. No English construction could have survived in the lan-
be1n
this warning sticker on a portable generator: age for a .millennium and a half unless it had continued to serve
~rne purpose, and that includes passives and nominalizations. They
Mild Exposure to CO can result in accumulated damage over time. rnay be overused, and often they are badly used, but that does not mean
Extreme Exposure to CO may rapidly be fatal without producing they shouJd not be used at ali. Nominalizations, as we will see in chap-
significant warning symptoms. ter 5, can be useful in connecting a sentence to those that carne before,
Infants, children, older adults, and people with health conditions keeping the passage coherent. The passive voice, too, has severa! uses
are more easily affected by Carbon Monoxide and their symptoms in English. One of them (1'11 take up the others in chapters 4 and 5) is
are more severe. indispensable to classic style: the passive allows the writer to direct the
reader's gaze, like a cinematographer choosing the best camera angle.
It's in the third person, and filled with zombie nouns like Extreme Often a writer needs to steer the reader's attention away from the
Exposure and passives like are more easily affected. People can read it agent of an action. The passive allows him to do so because the agent
and not get the feeling that anything terrible will happen. Perhaps as a can be left unmentioned, which is impossible in the active voice. You
result, every year more than a hundred Americans inadvertently tum can say Pooh ate the honey (active voice, actor mentioned), The honey
their homes into gas chambers and execute themselves and their fam- was eaten by Pooh (passive voice, actor mentioned), or The honey was
ilies by running generators and combustion heaters indoors. Much eaten (passive voice, actor unmentioned)-but not Ate the honey (active
better is this sticker found on a recent model: voice, actor unmentioned). Sometimes the omission is ethically ques-
tionable, as when the sidestepping politician admits only that "mis-
Using a generator indoors CAN KILL YOU IN MINUTES. takes were made," omitting the phrase with by that would identify who
Generator exhaust contains carbon monoxide. This is a poison made those mistakes. But sometimes the ability to omitan agent comes
you cannot see or smell. in handy because the mínor characters in the story are a distraction.
NEVER use inside a home or garage, EVEN IF doors and win- As the linguist Geoffrey Pullum has noted, there is nothing wrong
dows are open. with a news report that uses the passive voice to say, "Helicopters were
Only use OUTSIDE and far away from windows, doors, and vents. flown in to put out the fires." 24 Toe reader <loes not need to be informed
that a guy named Bob was flying one of the helicopters.
In this sticker a concrete verb in the active voice and the use of the Even when both the actor and the target of an action are visible in
th
second person narrate a concrete event: if you do this, it can kili you. e scene, the choice of the active or passive voice allows the writer to
And what is intended as a warning is expressed in the imperatiVe kee_p the reader focused on one of those characters before pointing out
(NE VER use inside), justas one would do in a conversation, rather than an mteresting fact involving that character. That's because the reader's
as an impersonal generalization (Mild Exposure can result in damage). attention usually starts out on the entity named by the subject of the
The advice to bring zombie nouns back to life as verbs and to con· sentence. Actives and passives differ in which character gets to be the
sub·
vert passives into actives is ubiquitous in style guides and plain Jan· a :ect, and hence which starts out in the reader's mental spotlight. An
guage laws. For the reasons we've just seen, it's often good advice. But Chve construction trains the reader's gaze on someone who is doing
1
56 THE SENSE OF STYLE

something: See that lady with the shopping bag? She's pelting a mittie
with zucchini. Toe passive trains the reader's gaze on someone who's
having something done to him: See that mime? He's being pelted with Chapter 3
zucchini by the lady with the shopping bag. Using the wrong voice can
make the reader crane back and forth like a spectator ata tennis match:
See that lady with the shopping bag? A mime is being pelted with zucchini THE CURSE OF
by her.
Toe problem with the passives that bog clown bureaucratic and KNOWLEDGE
academic prose is that they are not selected with these purposes in
mind. They are symptoms of absent-mindedness in a writer who has THE MAIN CAUSE OF INCOMPREHENSIBLE
forgotten that he should be staging an event for the reader. He knows PROSE IS THE DIFFICULTY OF IMAGINING WHAT
how the story turned out, so he just describes the outcome (something IT'S LIKE FOR SOMEONE ELSE NOT TO KNOW
was done). But the reader, with no agent in sight, has no way to visual- SOMETHING THAT YOU KNOW
ize the event being moved forward by its instigator. She is forced to
imagine an effect without a cause, which is as hard to visualize as Lewis

W
Carroll's grin without a cat. hy is so much writing so hard to understand? Why must a
typical_ reader struggle to follow an academic article, the
In this chapter I have tried to call your attention to many of the writerly fine pnnt on a tax return, or the instructions for setting up
habits that result in soggy prose: metadiscourse, signposting, hedging, a wireless home network?
apologizing, professional narcissism, clichés, mixed metaphors, metacon· The most popular explanation I héár is the one captured in this
cepts, zombie nouns, and unnecessary passives. Writers who want to cartoon:
invigorate their prose could try to memorize that list of don'ts. But it's
better to keep in mind the guiding metaphor of classic style: a writer,
in conversation with a reader, directs the reader's gaze to something in
the world. Each of the don'ts corresponds to a way in which a writer
can stray from this scenario.
Classic style is not the only way to write. But it's an ideal that can
pull writers away from many of theír worst habits, and it works partic-
ularly well because it makes the unnatural act of writing seem like tw0
of our most natural acts: talking and seeing.

Good start. Ne~ds more gibberish.