Words and Their Uses, Past and Present
Format: Paperback
ISBN13: 9780217656641
Paperback|9780217656641
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Overview
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. STYLE. ACCURACY of expression is the most essen- tial element of a good style; and inaccurate writing is generally the expression of inaccurate thinking. But when men have shown that their thought is important, it is ungracious and superfluous to hunt down their ifs and ands, and arraign their pronouns and prepositions. This remark would apply to some of the criticisms in the previous chapter, if their special purpose were left out of consideration. Style, according to my observation, cannot be taught, and can hardly be acquired. Any person of moderate ability may, by study and practice, learn to use a language according to its grammar. But such a use of language, although necessary to a good style, has no more direct relation to it than her daily dinner has to the blush of a blooming beauty. Without dinner, no bloom; without grammar, no style. The same viand which one young woman, digesting it healthily and sleeping upon it soundly, is able to present to us again in but a very unattractive form, Gloriana, assimilating it not more perfectly in slumbers no sounder, transmutes into charms that make her a delight to the eyes of everybeholder. That proceeding is Glonana's physiological style. It is a gift to her. Such a gift is style in the use of language. It is mere clearness of outline, beauty of form and expression, and has no relation whatever to the soundness or the value of the thought which it embodies, or to the importance or the interest of the fact which it records. Learned men, strong and subtle thinkers, and scholars of wide and critical acquaintance with literature, are often unable to acquire even an acceptably good, not to say an admirable, style; and, on the other hand, men who can read only their own language, and who have received very little ...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217656641 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217656641 |
| Weight | 0.87 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.60 In |
| List Price | $21.79 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 266 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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