Polishing Your Style
(our style betrays us)
Overview | Clarity and Grace | Links
The word style comes from stylus, a sharp, pointed tool used for writing on wax tablets during ancient times, but it has come to mean the distinctive characteristics of a writer's verbal expression, especially the choice of words, syntax, and sentence structure; the kinds of figurative language employed; and patterns of sound and rhythm.
Although different disciplines favor different styles, most people agree that a pleasing style is clear, precise, vivid, concise, dynamic,
coherent, and fluent. It may even be elegant.
- CLEAR WRITING enables readers to grasp meanings easily--even effortlessly
- PRECISE WRITING demonstrates careful selection of words to convey exact and accurate meanings as well as awareness of their connotations
- VIVID WRITING appeals to the reader's sensory imagination through use of striking images, metaphors, or other rhetorical figures
- CONCISE WRITING excludes all superfluous words, making each word count
- DYNAMIC WRITING conveys energy through active verbs and shifting rhythms
- COHERENT WRITING provides associations and connections between elements, enabling readers to grasp easily how they are related
- FLUENT WRITING seems to flow because of carefully orchestrated cadence and rhythm, symmetrical or balanced structures
- ELEGANT WRITING is not only clear, precise, and coherent; it is also graceful, rhythmic, and seemingly effortless
Achieving stylistic clarity and grace entails attention to the following:
St Cloud State University's website, "Leo: Literacy Education Online," has excellent style-related handouts on:
- reducing wordiness
- cohesion
- sentence patterns
- parallelism.
- sentence variety
- transitions
- vocabulary.
- tone of voice
- use of a lot, few, and less
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