The Elements of Style: "50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice"

[Richard_Kirk]

@Enkita

@Richard_Kirk

To quote F&F…

“These rules are in order of importance; the last is also the least. It is true that it is often given alone as a sort of compendium of the others. In some sense it is that: the writer whose percentage of Saxon words is high will generally be found to have fewer words that are out of the way, long, or abstract, and fewer periphrases; and conversely. But if, instead of his Saxon percentages being the natural and undesigned consequence of his brevity (and the rest), those other qualities having been attained by his consciously restricting himself to Saxon, his pains will have been worse than wasted; the taint of precosity will be over all he as written.”

But isn’t that itself an opaque and pretentious piece of writing? Or have I missed something and this is supposed to be an example of how not to write? The “; and conversely” coming when the reader will already have forgotten what the sentence was about, and the second example of massive convolution, are the sort of thing that give simultaneous translators nightmares. Like having to translate Bulgarian Marxist-Leninist dialectic into French.

Maybe it is an age thing. My mother felt in her bones that splitting an infinitive was uncouth, yet it has never troubled me. I don’t have trouble with this. Yes, it is dated, and we can disagree with some of their examples as English has moved on. But it is over twice as old as 'The Elements of Style" and I feel it is an easier read. Does ‘and conversely’ jar more than ‘and vice-versa’, which they might have used?

I think my sister told me about ‘jargon’. She studied that sort of thing at University.