Write it right
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:HOW TO WRITE
AIMS AND THE PLAN:
The author’s main purpose in this book is to teach precision in
writing; and of good writing (which, essentially, is clear thinking
made visible) precision is the point of capital concern. It is
attained by choice of the word that accurately and adequately
expresses what the writer has in mind, and by exclusion of that which
either denotes or connotes something else. As Quintilian puts it, the
writer should so write that his reader not only may, but must,
understand.
Few words have more than one literal and serviceable meaning, however
many metaphorical, derivative, related, or even unrelated, meanings
lexicographers may think it worth while to gather from all sorts and
conditions of men, with which to bloat their absurd and misleading
dictionaries. This actual and serviceable meaning–not always
determined by derivation, and seldom by popular usage–is the one
affirmed, according to his light, by the author of this little manual
of solecisms. Narrow etymons of the mere scholar and loose locutions
of the ignorant are alike denied a standing.
The plan of the book is more illustrative than expository, the aim
being to use the terms of etymology and syntax as little as is
compatible with clarity, familiar example being more easily
apprehended than technical precept. When both are employed the precept
is commonly given after the example has prepared the student to apply
it, not only to the matter in mind, but to similar matters not
mentioned. Everything in quotation marks is to be understood as
disapproved.
Not all locutions blacklisted herein are always to be reprobated
as universal outlaws. Excepting in the case of capital
offenders–expressions ancestrally vulgar or irreclaimably
degenerate–absolute proscription is possible as to serious
composition only; in other forms the writer must rely on his sense of
values and the fitness of things. While it is true that some
colloquialisms and, with less of license, even some slang, may be
sparingly employed in light literature, for point, piquancy or any of
the purposes of the skilled writer sensible to the necessity and charm
of keeping at least one foot on the ground, to others the virtue of
restraint may be commended as distinctly superior to the joy of
indulgence.
Precision is much, but not all; some words and phrases are disallowed
on the ground of taste. As there are neither standards nor arbiters of
taste, the book can do little more than reflect that of its author,
who is far indeed from professing impeccability. In neither taste nor
precision is any man’s practice a court of last appeal, for writers
all, both great and small, are habitual sinners against the light; and
their accuser is cheerfully aware that his own work will supply (as in
making this book it has supplied) many “awful examples”–his later
work less abundantly, he hopes, than his earlier. He nevertheless
believes that this does not disqualify him for showing by other
instances than his own how not to write. The infallible teacher is
still in the forest primeval, throwing seeds to the white blackbirds.
Price: 4,99 USD
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