Tag Archives: style guide

Style: Towards Clarity and Grace – Williams

15 years. That’s how long it’s taken to read Style: Towards Clarity and Grace by Williams and Colomb. Professor LB recommended it back in 2000. I picked up a copy at the University of Victoria bookstore (the sticker is still on the back). I read a few chapters. Then it went onto a sunny spot on the bookshelf. You can tell because the parts of the cover that were exposed have been bleached white by the sun. The cover was originally an attractive bright yellow colour.

Williams 'Style' Cover Illustration

Williams ‘Style’ Cover Illustration

Style Back Blurb

This acclaimed book is a master teacher’s tested program for turning clumsy prose into clear, powerful, effective writing. A logical, expert, easy-to-use plan for achieving excellence in expression, Style offers neither simplistic rules nor endless lists of dos and don’ts. Rather, Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb explain how to be concise, how to be focused, how to be organized.

Filled with realistic examples of good, bad, and better writing, and step-by-step strategies for crafting a sentence or organizing a paragraphs, Style does much more than teach mechanics: it helps anyone who must write clearly and persuasively transform even the roughest of drafts into a polished work of clarity, coherence, impact, and personality

Style Author Blurb

Joseph M. Williams and Gregory C. Colomb are sought-after communications consultants. Williams is Professor Emeritus in the University of Chicago’s Department of English Language and Literature and author of Origins of the English Language. Colomb is professor of English language and literature at the University of Virginia.

I never knew: Williams is Professor Emeritus with a capital ‘P’ whereas Colomb is only a small ‘p’ professor! That could be because ‘Professor Emeritus’ is a title whereas ‘professor’ is the name of an occupation like ‘plumber’. But poor Colomb: not only is he a small ‘p’ professor, he teaches English language and literature with small a small ‘l’ at Virginia whereas Williams is part of Chicago’s Department of English Language and Literature with a big ‘L’! Colomb seems to get short shrift, no? And besides co-authoring two chapters in Style, has Colomb published anything? He certainly doesn’t seem to have written an Origins of the English Language like how Williams has done!

Why It Took Fifteen Years to Read Style

Unlike Strunk and White’s Elements of Style (which is short) or Stephen King’s On Writing (which is fun to read), William’s Style is neither short (208 pages) nor fun to read. Will it make writers write better? Perhaps some. Will it make writers better readers. Yes. The numerous examples give a x-ray view into how other writers write well or poorly. The problem is that it’s hard to evaluate your own writing with the same set of eyes you’d evaluate others’ writings. Perhaps the reason why it’s taken me so long to read Style is because while it it undoubtedly helpful, it makes writing less enjoyable for me.

Part of the problem is that Style presupposes that the writer is already at quite an advanced level. For writers not already there, it’s a headache to take in all the tips. Mind you, they’re good tips. For example, avoid nominalizations (nouns derived from verbs):

The police conducted an inquiry into the matter.

Just use the verb by itself:

The police investigated the matter.

But nominalization is good for effect at the end of a passage:

…until in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old (Churchill).

Williams’ Style reminds me of economics articles on Bloomberg or Marketwatch. Do you ever read the business section and notice how the articles are laid out? Well, it goes something like this. Let’s say they’re talking about interest rates (but it could be anything: employment numbers, GDP growth, bond yields, etc.,). The article will start off saying they’ll raise/lower interest rates. Then it will quote two specialists who will give their rationale. As they explain their thinking, then they will say their projection is based on x, y, and z. Then they have the hedge or the ‘get out’ clause: if x, y, and z are different than what the consensus is, then things will turn out opposite to their projection. To me, what they’re actually saying is that they have no idea of what’s going to happen. If they’re right, then they’re clever. If they’re wrong, well, they weren’t really wrong; it was just that variables x, y, and z did not play nice.

Well, Style is sort of like that. Williams will point out certain rules. He shows why his rules work with a bunch of examples. Then he takes a really famous and beautiful passage (a so-called purple passage) and rewrites it according to his rules. Invariably, his rules damage the beauty of the purple passage, making it seem pedestrian. So it’s like he tells you how he thinks you ought to write, but cautions you against writing like that. Sort of like the self-defeating economics articles in Bloomberg and Marketwatch.

But there is a certain honesty to that approach: rules are made to be broken. What I find is that after reading Style, I focus very carefully on how the words and sentences and paragraphs are put together. Did I use nominalizations? Did I put the new information towards the end? Did I get to the point quickly enough? How many subjects are there in the paragraph–is it too many? But to think about all this stuff…is hard. But perhaps that’s what a good style guide should do: push the writer to think more. The jury’s still out on this one.

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong and I’m finding that to do Melpomene’s work with clarity and grace is easier said than done.

On Writing – Stephen King

Sometimes such a tremendous book comes along you have to lay aside everything else you’re reading. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen Edwin King is one of those books. The last one that had that power was Consilience by Wilson.

King, On Writing Cover Illustration

King, On Writing Cover Illustration

Hmmm, what’s in the cellar?

Assiduous readers will know that I’ve been reading style guides and ‘how-to’ books on writing lately. Big King fan JC in the 90s had persuaded me to try reading ‘The Long Walk’, a short story by King. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. JC also told me that King had written a book on writing horror. Now that is in line with what I like. It’s always been in the back of my mind to read it. It would be like learning about comedy from Seinfeld: learning from the master.

So I picked up On Writing at the library. But looking at the publication date (2000), this wasn’t the right book! It turns out Danse Macabre is the book that JC had mentioned. But no matter. On Writing fits the bill of what I’m looking for: some tips on how to write for readers.

King, On Writing Back Blurb

‘If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write’.

In 1999, Stephen King began to write about his craft–and his life. By midyear, a widely reported accident jeopardized the survival of both. And in his months of recovery, the link between writing and living became more crucial than ever.

Rarely has a book on writing been so clear, so useful, and so revealing. On Writing begins with a mesmerizing account of King’s childhood and his uncannily early focus on writing to tell a story. A series of vivid memories from adolescence, college, and the stuffing years that led up to his first novel, Carrie, will afford readers a fresh and often very funny perspective on the formation of a writer. King next turns to the basic tools of his trade–how to sharpen and multiply them through use, and how the writer must always have them close at hand. He takes the reader through crucial aspects of the writer’s art and life, offering practical and inspiring advice on everything from plot and character development to work habits and rejection.

Serialized in the New Yorker to vivid acclaim, On Writing culminates with a profoundly moving account of how King’s overwhelming need to write spurred him toward recovery, and brough him back to his life.

Brilliantly structure, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower–and entertain–everyone who reads it.

Wow, the back blurb wasn’t written by King: he hates adverbs. Most of the time.

The Book

The book is part autobiography, part style guide, part analysis of his own novels, and part about living. The best way to put it is that it’s a book on the writing lifestyle: writing and life are intertwined. To prove the point, King even has tips on where to place furniture:

It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you site down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.

Oops, my writing table is smack dab in the middle of the living room…the sign of an apprentice writer!

It’s refreshing to read King after reading the other style guides. King doesn’t like pretentious writing books either. The only one that passes his ‘bullshit rule’ is The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. King advocates simple writing. I love one of his examples:

He came to the river. The river was there.

That’s no less a writer than Hemingway.

Now, every style guide advocates simple writing. But King provides good and bad examples from his works and others. They are entertaining examples. That’s what makes this book good: you want to read it.

But there are places where he taught me something new. For example, he talks about paragraphs, and how to make paragraphs look nice and inviting to readers. The first thing readers do, even before they start reading, is they scan the page: how to the paragraphs look? Easy? Or do they look big and daunting? I had never thought of that. Thanks, King! I will make paragraphs shorter and more evenly sized! Why didn’t I think of that? Or someone else, for that matter?

King advocates honesty. Write about things you know about. That’s what he does. His characters are the types of people he runs across. Even when he was run down, as he was going in and out of consciousness, it struck him that the careless driver was someone straight out of his novels. Even the advice he gives writers is deadly honest: if you can’t write, his book isn’t going to help you. Nothing will. The most his book can do is make a competent writer a good writer. Going from bad to good is out of the question. Going from good to great is also out of the question. That’s what genes are for.

Although King talks about fiction writing, the wisdom is transferable to any sort of writing. Writing to King is just like a toolbox. There may be special tools for fiction writing, but in the fiction toolbox are all the sorts of tools you’d make everything else with too. Yes, he uses the toolbox analogy. His writing toolbox is actually modelled after his uncle’s toolbox. I like this book. Things are real. You can touch them. It’s not one of those writing books filled with linguistic theory. When I read those books I feel like they are bashing me over the head with a hammer.

So why write?

Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.

Damn, I like that! Speaking of getting happy, I am happy to have read this fine book! And now I think I will have to read The Stand somewhere down the line…in another twenty years maybe…

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong, and I’m getting happy by Doing Melpomene’s Work.