English Style - Glenn Conjurske

English Style

by Glenn Conjurske

I do not regard this as one of the most important of themes. Neither do I believe it unimportant, and since my article on plain English may raise some further questions, and since a reader will from time to time take me to task for my own style, I take the opportunity to explain some things.

As to using plain English, I never meant to imply that we ought never to use an uncommon word. To refuse the use of all but common words would greatly impoverish our style, and if all men did this, it would in a short time greatly impoverish the English language. Uncommon words are uncommon precisely because they are not commonly used. If they were never used, they would not be uncommon, but nonexistent. I believe it perfectly proper to use a sprinkling of uncommon words, as occasion calls for them. What I object to is using more than a sprinkling of them—-more of them than occasion may legitimately call for—-or of using them to the extent that our language becomes largely unintelligible to common folks. A common man may look up an occasional uncommon word in the dictionary, but he will soon be discouraged if he has one in every paragraph, to say nothing of two or three in every sentence. He cannot comfortably read anything at such a rate.

I distinguish also between uncommon words which are standard English, and the new-coined Latinized and Greekified jargon of modern intellectualism. There is no good reason to use the latter at all. There is no reason whatsoever to call the plan of salvation the paradigm of the salvific operations of the Deity, and any man who cannot distinguish between this and the occasional use of uncommon words is really beyond hope. The one is merely good English. The other is reeking pride and modernism. And neither is it merely the vocabulary to which I object in this intellectual jargon. It is the phraseology, the manner of speech, which is fastidious and meticulously technical, and always the reverse of simple, common, and natural.

As to vocabulary, I believe it perfectly proper to use uncommon words as occasion calls for them. To use them merely as a display of our learning is contemptible, but there are many occasions which call for their use, and on those occasions it is perfectly natural to use them, and gives no appearance of ostentation. What those occasions are will be obvious enough to those who are thoroughly at home in the English language. Refined English, for example, for reasons which we may not be able to divine, generally abhors the frequent repetition of the same word, and a refined author will therefore vary his expression by the use of synonyms, though this will often oblige him to use longer and less common words. There are subtle shades of meaning even in synonyms, and there are occasions where the less common word is just what we want, while the common word is out of place—-where “prevaricating,” for example, just suits the matter in hand, while “lying” is altogether too strong.

But observe, we do not endorse hunting up new words—-words as unfamiliar to ourselves as they are to our readers—-in order to embellish or vary our style. The man who does this will probably get into water over his head, and make a fool of himself, for he cannot know anything of the connotation of a word when till now he knew nothing of the word. Any tyro can find long words in the dictionary, but the man who either needs or desires to do so has no business to be writing. He had best spend his time reading and meditating, till his mind is well stored and humble. As Spurgeon says of preaching, so we may say of writing also:

“You cannot build a man-of-war out of a currant bush, nor can great soul-moving preachers be formed out of superficial students. If you would be fluent, that is to say flowing, be filled with all knowledge, and especially with the knowledge of Christ Jesus your Lord. But we remarked that a fund of expressions would be also of much help to the extempore speaker; and, truly, second only to a store of ideas is a rich vocabulary. …[I omit a sentence here from which I dissent, on imitating beauties of language, and elegancies of speech. —-editor.] … You are not to carry that gold pencil-case with you, and jot down every polysyllabic word which you meet with in your reading, so as to put it in your next sermon, but you are to know what words mean, to be able to estimate the power of a synonym, to judge the rhythm of a sentence, and to weigh the force of an expletive. You must be masters of words, they must be your genii, your angels, your thunderbolts, or your drops of honey. Mere word-gatherers are hoarders of oyster shells, bean husks, and apple-parings; but to a man who has wide information and deep thought, words are baskets of silver in which to serve up his apples of gold. See to it that you have a good team of words to draw the wagon of your thoughts.”

What we want, in other words, is not word-hunters, but masters of the English language. These know how to use their words to good effect.

John Wesley quotes with approval “the great Lord Boyle,” who says, “It is pedantry to use an hard word where an easier will serve.” Pedantry, no doubt, if this is done merely for show, but if we were literally to observe such a rule, our writing would be greatly impoverished. I do not believe Wesley observed it himself. Am I never to say “vitiate,” because “weaken” will serve, never to say “epithet,” because “name” will do, never to say “incidentally,” because “by the way” will do? We might perhaps say most everything in words of two or three syllables, but this would involve a great deal of circumlocution, and the result would be as bland as food without salt. In some connections, for example, “thing” is so perfectly bland that I am simply forced to say “phenomenon,” though I have never relished the latter word. A good sprinkling of the uncommon and the unusual, and a light sprinkling even of the quaint, will add a little of spice and color to our speech, and surely no one who must read it will object to that. God did not create all the flowers black and white, nor all the birds to say “chirp, chirp, chirp,” and he is no foe to color, or spice, or variety, or beauty.

I object to Lord Boyle’s rule on several accounts. I object to it in the first place because it is a rule. Those who write well do so by instinct and feeling, and not by any rules whatsoever. Their writing is free and easy and natural. Those who write by rules and grammar books only manifest that they ought not to be writing at all. They must labor for an hour over a paragraph, and when they are done, it will be tasteless and artificial after all. They ought to be reading, not writing. They probably have nothing to say which needs to be said, for fire in the bones puts life in the pen, and life and fire do not operate by rules. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Matt. 12:34)—-and so the pen also. What a man writes is a mirror of what he is. A man with a full heart, an earnest spirit, and a refined soul, may write as freely as the bird sings, and his writing will be sober, refined, chaste, pure, and dignified. He needs no rules to make it so. He writes by nature, not art, and he will instinctively shun both the trashy slang and the stilted intellectual jargon of the present generation, and shun them not only because his judgement tells him to do so, but because in his soul he abhors them.

But I further object to the rule of “the great Lord Boyle” because I think it wrong. I do not write merely to communicate ideas, but to move the heart and soul, to stir the spirit, to refresh and regale the mind. A mere skeleton of the barest words which “will serve” can never accomplish any of this. There is charm in quaintness of expression, in beauty of expression, in variety of expression. Yet we want only that charm and beauty of expression which naturally suits the occasion and the matter in hand. When the style is over-done, the substance is ruined.

I recall an incident which took place when I was at Bible school more than thirty years ago. A quartette of students sang in a chapel service. One of the teachers, a very accomplished pianist, accompanied them on the piano. He was thoroughly at home on the keyboard, and obviously enjoying himself, and played with such abandonment that his exuberant finger-work drew all the attention to himself. The song was no sooner finished than the whole student body, quartette and all, began to laugh. His playing was no doubt beautiful, but it was not suited to the occasion, and was therefore out of place. In exactly the same manner an over-wrought style draws the attention of the reader to itself, and thrusts the substance of the writing into the background. This is a great evil. The style ought to exist only as a vehicle by which to communicate and commend the message. When a man makes the message the vehicle by which to set off his grand style, he only proclaims that he ought not to be writing at all.

Yet we have no objection whatsoever to charm and beauty of style, so far as it is the natural and unaffected vehicle of the matter in hand. We know that there is a power in good poetry which prose can rarely equal. Whence comes that power, if not from the charm and beauty of the expression? And I frankly suppose that the more there is of the charm of poetry in our prose, the better it will accomplish its ends. God has no quarrel with beauty or charm, or he had never created a woman.

But understand also, the charm of a woman lies deep within, in her soul, and the most of even her outward beauty arises from the same source. The woman who seeks to create outward beauty by painting and plaiting and piercing and pinning will more likely mar her beauty than enhance it. The woman who is full of charm within will be beautiful without, with little trying, and so it is with the outward form of a man’s writing. The man with an enlarged and refined soul and a weighty and earnest spirit, with a message burning within, with grace in his heart and tears in his eyes, will write in a pleasing and telling style with but little attention to it. He will blow as the north wind or the south wind, the salty gale or the spicy breezes, just as the occasion calls for it, and all this precisely because he is occupied with the message. The man who is too much concerned with his style is on the wrong road to secure it, and is probably a man who ought not to be writing at all.

If he aims at too much dignity, he is likely to hit only too much starch. If he aims at refinement, he is likely to hit only fastidiousness. Such a writer is most likely to remind us of a man splitting wood under the clothes line, where he cannot swing clear. His well-aimed blows have no force. He adopts artificial standards for himself. He will likely object to my phrase “swing clear,” because he cannot find it in Milton or Shakespeare, or in a certain set of authors, or a certain kind of authors, or before a certain time period. The folks who subject themselves to such standards must find it perfect misery to write at all. Not being omniscient, nor having a perfect memory, they must either confine themselves within a very narrow range, or be always hanging in doubt as to whether they have inadvertently violated their self-imposed standards—-though no one else would know or care if they did. The only rule which sensible men will acknowledge is usage. The only proper standard of English style is usage. But in this we refer to chaste and refined usage, not to usage which is vulgar or stilted. Yet the man who has a good command of the English tongue, and also of the truth, has no obligation to submit in every scintilla to the standards of usage. Usage is always subject to change, and it is far better that such a man should set the standard of sober and refined writing, than to follow the vitiated standards which lesser men have set for him.

John Wesley was a man of taste and refinement, who had a message from God, and he is a model of a style which is terse and telling, sober and dignified. Yet he says, “As for me, I never think of my style at all; but just set down the words that come first. Only when I transcribe anything for the press, then I think it my duty to see every phrase be clear, pure, and proper. Conciseness (which is now, as it were, natural to me) brings quantum sufficit of strength. If, after all, I observe any stiff expression, I throw it out, neck and shoulders.”

I cannot say that I write without thinking of my style at all. I think of it constantly, not only when I revise for the press, but when I first commit my thoughts to paper, for I aim that my style shall be as easy and telling as my substance is solid, and my arguments cogent. My readers will no doubt have their own opinions as to how far I succeed in any of the three. I only tell them what I aim at.

But understand, I aim at nothing ornate or flowery. I append no useless embellishments. I utterly contemn the style of such a man as T. DeWitt Talmage, who substituted words for substance, and florid expressions for depth of thought. We are never able to believe that he is half as serious about the truth as he is with setting off his own abilities to the best advantage. Though I confess I grudge to spend the space on it, I nevertheless wish my readers to understand what it is to which I object, and I therefore give as an example a part of Talmage’s description of Belshazzar’s feast:

“Rushing up to the gates are chariots, upholstered with precious cloths “from Dedan and drawn by fire-eyed horses from Togarmah, that rear and “neigh in the grasp of the charioteers, while a thousand lords dismount, “and women, dressed in all the splendors of Syrian emerald, and the “color-blending of agate and the chasteness of coral, and the somber glory “of Tyrian purple and princely embroideries, brought from afar by camels “across the desert, and by ships of Tarshish across the sea. …

“Ah! my friends, it was not any common banquet to which these great “people came. All parts of the earth had sent their richest viands to that “table. Brackets and chandeliers flashed their light upon tankards of “burnished gold. Fruits ripe and luscious, in baskets of silver, entwined “with leaves plucked from royal conservatories. Vases inlaid with emerald “and ridged with exquisite traceries, filled with nuts that were threshed “from forests of distant lands. Wine brought from the royal vats, foaming “in the decanters and bubbling in the chalices. Tufts of cassia and “frankincense wafting their sweetness from wall and table. Gorgeous “banners unfolding in the breeze that came through the open window, “betwitched with the perfume of hanging gardens. Fountains rising up “from inclosures of ivory in jets of crystal, to fall in clattering rain of “diamonds and pearls. Statues of mighty men looking down, from niches “in the wall, upon crowns and shields brought from subdued empires. “Idols of wonderful work, standing on pedestals of precious stones. “Embroideries stooping about the windows, and wrapping pillars of cedar, “and drifting on floor inlaid with ivory and agate. Music, mingling with “the thrum of harps, and the clash of cymbals, and the blast of trumpets in “one wave of transport that went rippling along the wall, and breathing “among the garlands, and pouring down the corridors, and thrilling the “souls of a thousand banqueters.”

All of this is at the farthest remove from real eloquence. It is the merest emptiness, cold and flat and vapid, as devoid of depth and substance as it is of life and fire. It is an effort to be grand, by a man who has nothing to say, and it is a grand failure. The man who has something to say, and a soul on fire with the substance of it, will attain to the grand without ever aiming at it, as Moses and Isaiah and Wesley and Burgon have done. Talmage knows nothing of grandeur of substance, but aims only at grandeur of words, and cannot sustain even that, but often drops us to the most flat and commonplace. Worse yet, while he aims at the grand, he strikes only the grotesque, and speaks a good deal of positive nonsense also, such as “clattering rain,” “embroideries stooping about the windows,” nuts “threshed from forests,” and a “wave of transport rippling along the wall.” But “No doubt,” as James H. Brookes aptly says of another of Talmage’s performances, “his hearers went away delighted with the play of the shimmering soap bubbles.”

We think the man would have done much better to study to have something to say, than to study how to say it. But the latter was all his concern. He wrote his sermons out at length, memorized them, and rehearsed them before a mirror. And we can never escape the conviction that his discourses came more from the dictionary and the encyclopedia than from the Bible. We can never read him without encountering numerous words and historical references which we have never seen before. Here is another sample from the same book: “There are very few good people who seem to imagine it is humbly pious to drive a spavined, galled, glandered, spring-halted, blind-staggered jade. There is not so much virtue in a Rosinante as in a Bucephalus.” Page after page of this bombastic tomfoolery leave us convinced that Mr. Talmage actually labored not to be understood. Having nothing to say, he made it a point to say it in terms and references of which his readers were sure to be ignorant. He did not labor to communicate a message, but to impress his readers with his superior learning. I give one more example: “…the pomologist has changed the acrid and gnarled fruit of the ancients into the very poetry of pear, and peach, and plum, and grape, and apple.” We do not know what a pomologist is, but we do know that “the poetry of pear and peach” is just nonsense—-a halting attempt at eloquence by a man who lacks the first qualification for it.

Talmage is no doubt an extreme example of a forced and artificial oratory, and it may serve my purpose better to give a milder sample. The following paragraph is from a newspaper report of the Chicago fire:

“But all the engines in the country were powerless to have prevented the disaster which already seemed inevitable. The wind was blowing a perfect gale from the south-southwest. With terrible effect the flames leaped around in mad delight, and seized upon everything combustible. Shed after shed went down, and dwelling-houses followed in rapid succession. With a fierceness perfectly indescribable the fiery fiend reached out its red-hot tongue and licked up the dry material. Block after block gave way, and family after family were driven from their homes. The fire department were powerless to prevent the spreading of the calamity. The red demon of destruction was let loose, and in all his fierceness increased by a long restraint, it seized upon every destructible object and blotted it from the face of the earth.”

This paragraph is a mixture of simplicity and affected grandeur, and the only parts of it which are forceful or telling are those which consist of simple narrative. “The wind was blowing a perfect gale … Shed after shed went down, and dwelling-houses followed in rapid succession. … Block after block gave way, and family after family were driven from their homes”—-this is all simple and forceful, but the sentences about the mad delight of the flames and the red-hot tongue of the fiery fiend add nothing, and are in fact a distraction. So also the last sentence, on the “demon of destruction” and its “fierceness increased by a long restraint.” This is just nothing.

F. W. Farrar, a liberal whom we can hardly suspect of being serious enough about the truth, wrote history in the same manner, and various reviews have called attention to his over-wrought style. A review of his Life of Christ in the Guardian, while too commendatory of the substance of the book, yet justly criticizes the style. It says, “We pass from the matter to the manner; from the subject to the style. And here we have to complain of an intensity bordering on sensationalism. Dr. Farrar writes as an orator, not as a sober narrator; piling up epithets—-often merely ornamental—-pouring forth imagery, and dazzling his readers with coruscations of rhetoric out of harmony with the majestic simplicity of the Gospel story. Dr. Farrar has a great command of words, and his words are often very beautiful. But he is far too profuse in his use of them, and the surfeited reader is fatigued by perpetual glitter. It is difficult to see what can be supposed to be gained—-it is very evident what is lost—-by the paraphrase which expands ‘Jesus wept’ into ‘He followed them, His eyes streaming with silent tears,’ and ‘That thou doest do quickly,’ into ‘Thy fell purpose is matured: carry it out with no more of these futile hypocrisies and meaningless delays.”’

And Farrar’s imagery was often as forced and unnatural as that of Talmage. The Guardian continues, “The epithets of which he is so fond are frequently farfetched and incongruous.” This is perhaps inevitable with those who inflate their style beyond the natural requirements of the matter in hand. The natural gives place to the unnatural and the grotesque. Such language may impress the shallow, but it is only so much chaff in the way of the serious. It adds nothing to either the understanding or the emotions. Yet Farrar, and even Talmage, were much admired in their day, and Talmage is so even today, and even by Fundamentalists.

I, on the contrary, quite agree with Spurgeon, who said, “I hate oratory. I come down as low as I can. High-flying and fine language seems to me wicked when souls are perishing.” Such language is wicked whether souls are perishing or not. It is wicked because it is the fruit of pride and ostentation. It is the language of men who aim to impress their readers or their hearers with themselves rather than with the truth.

But there are two sides to the question. If it is carnal to aim at ornate and flowery language, it is no doubt hyperspiritual to neglect clarity, simplicity, and smoothness. I do not suppose it any mark of spirituality to write in a slovenly or careless style, but quite the reverse. Darby claimed to have no time to write briefly, and affirmed that he only thought on paper, and the result of this carelessness was a style which is so rough and obscure that it is often a chore to read it. I think he might have done better, and with very little effort. He wrote some fine poetry. William Blair Neatby says, “…it is hard to read Darby’s better works without fancying that a noble eloquence was really at his command, if only he had chosen to cultivate it.” But there was a marked tendency to hyperspirituality in the early Brethren, and I suppose Darby’s carelessness of his style was one manifestation of it. Neatby says, “He carried his neglect of appearances into his written and spoken composition; and that to such an extent that the style of his writings to the reader of to-day seems half ludicrous, half disgusting. This peculiarity is almost necessarily fatal to abiding influence; but there may well be something singularly impressive in it at the time. All misgiving as to the teacher’s sincerity—-even as to his absorbing earnestness of aim—-disappears before it.”

Neatby was an inveterate detractor of Darby, and his “half ludicrous, half disgusting” is much too strong. He was wrong too about Darby’s style being fatal to his abiding influence. On the other side, we quite agree that his negligence of style is quite enough to convince us of his sincerity and earnestness, while the affected and artificial style of Talmage serves directly to convince us of his lack of sincerity and earnestness.

But I believe with Neatby that Darby’s neglect is to be censured, not praised. I am constantly conscious of my own style, and I pay the strictest attention to everything from word order to rhythm and cadence. I aim to say nothing ambiguous, nothing halting, nothing weak, nothing which is not clear and smooth and forceful. I often alter my word order, or reject a word in favor of a synonym, purely for the sake of the cadence. This in general requires little time or effort, any more than working my fingers on the typewriter as I write, or the foot pedal in playing the piano. This is instinctive and habitual. For a writer purposely to neglect this seems to me to be a great wrong to the truth, as well as to his readers.

One of the prominent differences between the Revised and the Authorized Versions of the Bible lies in the matter of style. “To pass,” as Christopher Wordsworth says, “from the latter to the former is, as it were, to alight from a well-built and well-hung carriage which glides easily over a macadamised road, and to get into one which has bad springs or none at all, and in which you are jolted in ruts with aching bones over the stones of a newly mended and rarely traversed road, like some of the roads in our North Lincolnshire villages.” This is very apt. The style alone of the Revised Version would have disqualified it from general use, even if it had been generally superior to the Authorized Version in other matters.

It is likely also that a rough and uncouth style will deter men from reading the authors who write so. I do not see how a servant of God can escape the obligation to write with clarity, simplicity, and smoothness. Smoothness will involve rhythm and cadence. The neglect of any of these may be a venial fault, but a fault it is. The man who is master of his message may have power, but the man who is master of his style also will have greater power. It can surely be no virtue to neglect this. We know that God has chosen the weak and the base and the despised, but he gives us no commission to labor to be such. If we are so, and cannot help it, the power of God may so rest upon us as to over-ride our deficiencies, but to labor to be deficient is not spiritual, but hyperspiritual. We despise affected oratory. Much more ought we to contemn affected uncouthness.

Glenn Conjurske

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