Style

"Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity."--Gustave Flaubert

If you're worried about your writing style, sit back, get cuppa coffee/tea/whatever-suits-you, and relax. It comes easier for some than others, but when you get right down to it, style is a function of personality...and you have a personality, right? (If you don't, that's beyond my expertise.)

At Cornell's Writing Walk-In Service, I've seen a lot of ~~poor souls~~ ~~professorial victims~~...er, let's start over. I've seen a lot of writers commit one of two fundamental sins:

- bland, boring, boring prose, or - convoluted, incomprehensible, incomprehensible prose.

The first sin often comes of insufficient thinking (e.g. student's brain has been fried by an organic chemistry lab, three prelims the past week, a killer programming assignment, bad dorm food, and one or more relatives undergoing open-heart surgery) or a fear of Big Words. Don't be afraid of Big Words. Big Words can lend precision to your prose, and if we all had to use circumlocutions in technical physics, a lot more trees would perish. (This can be taken to excess. See below.)

Clarity is good. But don't assume your reader is an idiot, either. If you've hammered on your thesis (assuming your paper has one, which it needn't in all cases) every paragraph for the last 10 paragraphs, you're overdoing it. Some people have "favorite words" (often a transition forced upon them by a well-meaning teacher, like "moreover," or pet adjectives) that they reuse every other sentence. Others can't get off the soapbox. There are too many ways to go wrong for a comprehensive list.

If in doubt, find a friend who knows something about writing to go over your writing. Someone you trust. (Someone who doesn't know the fundamentals of writing is likely to screw you over. If you had to get your car repaired, would you take it to a shop or to your neighbor's seven-year-old son Bobby?) If you can't find such a person--no, don't email me, I got paid to do this and I've done enough of it, thankyouverymuch.

If you can't find such a friend, use the "idiot test." If you're unsure about something, ask yourself, "Would an idiot start yawning at this point?" If the answer is yes, fix it. There are ways to work on sophistication-of-prose. The ones I find best are (a) practice and (b) a good night's sleep. (Yes, I turn out crap when I write prose past midnight. The scary part is when a professor falls for it.)

The other side is avoiding too much complexity. That is, you must not only assume the reader is not an idiot, but you must also assume the reader is not a telepath. There are those who garnish their prose with quips, witticisms, allusions beyond the ken of ordinary men, gratuitous rhyme, lofty alliteration...you get the point. Use such devices as you would spices on your food: to taste, and on the sparing side. Many people try to "sophisticate" their prose with obscure words or archaic diction, and end up sounding stupid. If you're good enough to make your highfalutin' prose work, then you know what you're doing and are ignoring this section (and probably this page).

A note on the thesaurus: some people use it to find the most "accurate" word; this is good, since there are few exact synonyms in most languages. But some people use it to find Big Words and pick the wrong one. Maybe the connotations undercut your meaning, or it's a technical term. If you use a thesaurus word, make sure you know what it means and how it's used.

There are those who confuse themselves while trying to sound sophisticated. If necessary, use an outline. (The best use of an outline is usually after the first or second draft.) Outline your work...then look at the outline and see if it makes sense. If it doesn't, you've screwed up. That's okay; don't bash yourself on the head. Just work on making the writing better. Cut and paste, move ideas around, find the logical sequence (or three) lurking within what you have. Organization helps.

Incidentally, most people treat "failed" drafts as exactly that: failures. Not so! Writing is a process. Each draft is a step in that process. You wouldn't expect to build a perfect bridge in one go, would you? Or compare it to math: what you hand in doesn't include all your scratchwork, half-scrawled calculations and screwups. But all the work that doesn't show still contributed to the final product.

Ideally, every word, phrase, paragraph and its placement should be considered for its effect on the reader. This might involve meaning (what you want to say), audience (whom you want to say it to), tone and mood (how you want to say it), etc. Since this is time-consuming and many of us have lives, people do this by gestalt rather than calculation. Which is fine, and often works...but if it doesn't, go back and read every word (out loud helps, if you're not too embarrassed and/or you have privacy and/or the piece isn't too long). Ask yourself: what does this word/phrase/paragraph accomplish? If it isn't accomplishing what you thought it was, or what you meant it to, axe it. (You'd be surprised how effectively this kills some of writing's deadly sins, like Too Many Misused Big Words and Pointless Repetitions.)

In style, err on the side of clarity. The world's most beautiful turn of phrase is worthless (except perhaps as a curiosity, or as poetry) if it doesn't convey the meaning(s) you want it to convey. Good style is like good taste in clothing, or art: opinions vary among the general populace, and it requires some refinement.

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