How to write English prose (2023)

English prose is one of those things I never quite got well; I grew up having read different versions of the Bible (like King James), old English versions of books, and found it to more "overtly wordy" (found it funny to imagine people talking like that about grocery shopping). I am curious how prose may change in 20-30 years given how cemented internet/social media talk becomes the norm, as well AI (and however education goes during that time). I agree with the author on some points but it depends on the material and subject matter where each matters.

> A good part of our sleepes is peeced out with visions,

Because of current slang, I read this as “peaced out” then realized it’s “pieced out”. Peace out

What's interesting to me is that the examples he gives are beautiful because of their sincerity. Even if there is artifice, or they're being formal or playful, their style reflects their reading, their shared culture and of course as you say their audience - which I think for them was a very small elite.

Anyone who writes in a flamboyant style now - as the essay's author does - necessarily comes across as a kind of pastiche. There is something camp or affected about it. Maybe that can change. Maybe a new flamboyance can develop. But I think his antiquated style of flamboyance is unlikely to come back to real life.

This guy hates Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, the famous "omit needless words" book. He's plugging for a baroque style that would be unreadable today.

We do have baroque styles today, but they're different from classical baroque literature. They're the postings that start with a bio and cover the author's hobbies before getting to the point, perhaps including an anecdote from the author's past. There are writers who can make that interesting, and you can read them in the New Yorker. But the serious magazines have editors. In blog postings, you're reading the slush pile.

Kept out of sight in this dismissive comment is the pressing question: What year is it?

Up until four years ago, your notion of "what's necessary" was the law of the land. Starting from sometime around Hemingway, we produced a century's worth of flattened, easy-reading slop, and much knowledge was shared very widely. There was a certain art to the blandness. (One notable master of that art is pg, the creator of this website.)

Then we fed that slop into a giant machine that makes it trivial for anyone and everyone to produce that sort of generic writing. If you want to change minds and differentiate yourself now, you can't just do the old flat style anymore. You have to set yourself apart somehow, and you can start by loving the craft of writing again.

The people who matter will read it and love it. Everybody else can take what you wrote, dump it into the slop machine, and rearrange it into something they find easier to read.