Preface
Abraham Lincoln wrote more beautifully and memorably than anyone in public life does now. So did Winston Churchill; so did Edmund Burke; so did many others, none of whom sound quite alike but all of whom achieved an eloquence that seems foreign to our times. What did they know that we don't? It might seem strange to seek instruction from writers who lived so long ago. It certainly would sound odd to imitate their styles directly. But writers of lasting stature still make the best teachers. They understood principles of style that are powerful and enduring, even if the principles have to be adapted to our era, or to any other, before they become useful. That is the premise of this book, at any rate. It is a set of lessons on style drawn from writers whose words have stood the test of time.
This book is the third in a series about principles of good writing derived from an earlier age in the life of the language. The first, Classical English Rhetoric, showed how rhetorical figures-ancient patterns for the arrangement of words-have been used to great effect in English oratory and prose. Classical English Metaphor did the same for figurative comparisons. This book takes the same approach to more basic questions of style: choices about the selection of words, the construction of sentences, and so on. It explains some of the ways in which masters of the language have made those choices, and how the choices have put force into their writing and speech.
That is a short summary of the aim of this book. Below are some other ways to think about it. There are already lots of books about how to write, many of which I like very much, so it's worth a moment to explain why this one is any different.
A large share of modern books about prose style are about how to avoid mistakes. They explain why bad writing sounds that way. This book is about stylistic virtue. It asks why good writing sounds that way.
Books on style usually emphasize some general principles. This book also has general principles to offer, but it spends a lot of time on details-the choice of one word or rhythm rather than another. Some readers will find those details too much, but there is no avoiding minutiae if you want to understand why some kinds of writing sound better than others. A style is the result of many small decisions about choice of words, cadence, and so on. If you don't have the patience to look hard at little choices like those, that's perfectly reasonable and probably a sign of good health. This book is for those who do have the patience because they want to know what has made some heroic writers sound the way they do.
Books on style usually state precepts that have some merit but that talented writers violate often. Much of this book is about the violations and reasons to commit them. It often makes sense to avoid Latinate words, long sentences, the passive voice, etc.-but not always. Our topic, in part, is when to make exceptions. A lapse from a supposed rule of style isn't an offense against nature. It's just a choice with consequences. Sometimes you want the consequences.
Typical books about style contain much advice and a few illustrations of how the advice works. The ratio in this book is reversed. It depends more on examples, and it supplies them generously. It takes only a few words to explain a precept, but only illustrations, lots of them from many settings, can make an idea familiar to the ear. So will see examples from many famous sources-from Shakespeare and the King James Bible, from Lincoln and from Churchill, from Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. And we also will see examples from writers and orators who are less famous but have good things to teach.
Most modern books on style use modern examples. The examples in this book are all from writers who died long ago. The book relies on older writers partly because we know that their work has held up well. But it's also because the principles at stake were used with more vigor, prominence, and skill in earlier ages than they are now. A lesson is learned best from those who knew it best themselves. I also think we have more to learn from older writers just because their times are not ours. Their styles offer alternatives to customs that are overly familiar to us. It is true, too, that most of the writers featured in this book are white, and that most of them are men; black or female authors appear much less often. That is because the book is focused on an intersection of period and genre that was not equally open to all. I wish the world had been otherwise. Interesting studies might be written about how the same rhetorical ideas have or haven't been used by different people in other times and places. I would welcome those efforts.
Some mainstream books on style give advice as though there is a best way to write for all occasions: modern American house style, it might be called. This book assumes different styles are right for different occasions, and it doesn't try to talk about all of them. It is about how talented writers have achieved eloquence when they needed it. Some of the book is about special effects that are in order only occasionally. Most of us don't need rhetorical force often but might like to do better when it counts. And understanding the springs of eloquence can be useful even when it doesn't count.
Modern books usually just talk about how to make writing clear, simple, and direct-in a word, efficient. This book treats efficiency as important but not enough if you want to affect your audience. Rhetorical power doesn't come from just being clear or just being concise or by pushing in any other one direction. It's often created by contrasts. The Introduction that follows will explain this idea more fully, and the rest of the book illustrates it in detail.
Most modern books offer advice: write this way, not that way. This book does not offer advice of that kind, let alone formulas; it certainly doesn't say that if you do this or that, you will sound like Lincoln or anyone else. Eloquence is not so easily bottled. But the book does offer some more ideas (to go with the ones from earlier entries in this series) about the elements of style that have made the writings of Lincoln-and Churchill, and Holmes, and others-so compelling.
The approach of this book resembles the indirect tradition from which Lincoln himself learned. He spent long hours reading Shakespeare and the King James Bible-writings from 200 years before he was born. He didn't try to copy them or write as though he were living in the 17th century. He wrote, as everyone must, in a manner acceptable to his own times. Yet his reading still had affected him in ways that we hear in his words. Now we can read Lincoln (and Churchill, and Burke) in something like the way that Lincoln read Shakespeare and the Bible—not to mimic but to listen, learn, and adapt.
This book doesn't mean to displace other books about style or put them down. It is just meant to come afterwards. The first thing any writer should learn about, no doubt, is efficiency. But the first thing isn't the last thing, so what comes next? Learning from those who knew other things, too. This book is about some of those other things.
