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How to write English prose (2023)

thelampmagazine.com

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Re: How to write English prose (2023)

#21

Post by Myrmornis »

> How to Write English Prose

> There are few if any passages in the works of Sir Thomas Browne that I do not find thoroughly delightful; but two afford me particularly intense pleasure.

> To my mind, each is in its own way a perfect, exquisitely faceted gem of English prose from an especially glorious literary epoch. The music of the one has haunted me for most of my life;

Oh come on. Sir Thomas Browne looks well worth reading but the author of this article is unreadably pretentious.

Re: How to write English prose (2023)

#22

Post by doodaddy »

Look, I am in no position to seriously critique the author’s writing. He clearly has linguistic chops. But what kind of bunk is this? We get it, the flowery, overdrawn language of yore is more expressive. But that kind of writing gets in its own way. Words seem to trump concept. But reading that sort of writing feels like being in a museum; sure that Victorian gown looks pretty but does anyone actually want to wear it?

And then, while arguing against monotony, this piece spends all its time repeating the same structure: a ten-dollar adjective followed by a ten-dollar noun. Ironically, the five passages cited as “good writing” mostly avoid the wordiness that the piece spends all its time arguing for.

> Do not use a thesaurus.

Oh now he’s just taking the piss.

Re: How to write English prose (2023)

#23

Post by chris_armstrong »

Animats wrote: post #8

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 writ…

It might just be me, but I find his baroque style very readable. Despite using a vocabulary much broader than mine (irritating but admirable), he at least seems to have read his prose aloud, and considered how it's meter makes its meaning fluent.

I agree that many writers fill their works with needless diversions and unnecessary expositions on their life that add nothing to their text, but this is different from a "baroque style".

Re: How to write English prose (2023)

#24

Post by taylorius »

Animats wrote: post #8

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 writ…

I think Baroque is the wrong descriptor for those passages actually. The constructions employed in both are very varied, its true, and the vocabulary is wide, not to mention archaic to our modern ears - but all the words are performing a useful function in conveying what the author wanted to say. There is not much pointless ornamentation.

Re: How to write English prose (2023)

#25

Post by gammalost »

As someone with english as my second language this style is just too much to bother. Sure, I get that it is elegant and precise. But for me it results in stilted reading.

Hence I disagree with the "Never write for your audience" part of the essay.

Re: How to write English prose (2023)

#26

Post by loopmonster »

doodaddy wrote: post #22

Look, I am in no position to seriously critique the author’s writing. He clearly has linguistic chops. But what kind of bunk is this? We get it, the flowery, overdrawn language of yore is more expressive. But that kind of writing gets in its own way. Words seem to trump concept. But reading that sort of writing feels like being in a museum; sure that Victorian gown looks pretty but does anyone actually want to wear i…

To be fair, even if I have to look up half the words in the post to understand what he's trying to say, 'Do not use a thesaurus' still has weight - it's one thing to already know the perfect word for what you're trying to say (even if many others don't know that word), but another to decide on a whim that a given word should be replaced with a more 'advanced' alternative without knowing what you'll find or understanding the nuances of your pick.

Re: How to write English prose (2023)

#27

Post by breezybottom »

Barrin92 wrote: post #7
GCA10 wrote: post #5

Kept out of sight in this rogue essay is the classic question: Who's your audience? If you're writing for yourself (and maybe a very small number of equally erudite readers) cut loose! Embrace "anfractuous density and heedless flamboyance." But if you're trying to change people's minds, or share knowledge widely, everything in this essay is defiantly at odds with what's necessary to get the rest of the world to pay a…

does anyone need to get the 'rest of the world' to pay attention? That's already a crowded market of questionable characters. There's something ironic and self-defeating in trying to write to the whole world while also having such a low opinion of the whole world that a writer thinks they can't express themselves the way they want to or lose their audience. As DBH says at the end of the essay, don't write down to wha…

Well that's terrible advice. Of course you have to make assumptions about your readers. Highlights Magazine has a different readership than The New Yorker.

Re: How to write English prose (2023)

#28

Post by breezybottom »

juleiie wrote: post #18

For me there is only one rule of writing: Reader must enjoy reading what you wrote. They are ultimately the final judge - the very reason to write anything at all. Anything else is just huffing your own farts for the kick of it. No matter how flowery the words are in your book or how intricate nuances of language. Such things can be outright counterproductive.

That's still bad advice. Sometimes writing is just useful, not enjoyable.

Re: How to write English prose (2023)

#29

Post by specproc »

So much hate for this piece in the thread, I'm seeing almost no positive comments. I'm tempted to be unkind, but will exercise restraint; we are here, for the most part, technical writers, for whom parsimony is a professional virtue.

I loved it.

We're in an age where matrix multiplication can yawn out endless passages of trite, dull, sludge. The author, to my mind, makes a powerful and inspiring case for a future for human-written prose. The ability to effectively and creatively deploy a rich and complex vocabulary is the flex (in the parlance of our times) that distinguishes the craftsmen from the clankers.

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