After the power of thinking coherently, the ability most important to a writer is that of picking out from the wide world of words the one expression that mates his unworded idea. His choice of words—i.e. his diction—must meet three requirements. If it is to be clear, it must mean the same to the reader’s intellect that it does to the writer’s. If it is to forcible, it must move the reader’s feelings as it moved the writer’s. Furthermore, if it is to be beautiful, it must please a reader who has good taste.
Clearness.—Clearness, the intellectual quality of style, has already been referred to ([p. 43]), for it is the quality aimed at in making sentences coherent. That the idea should be made unmistakably clear is the first requisite of good writing. The thinking must be clear; the division of the theme into paragraphs, and of paragraphs into sentences must be clear; and the words must be clear. We have presently to ask what effect number and choice of words have upon clearness.
Force.—Force is the emotional quality of style. It may occur in a very moderate degree, just enough to interest the reader slightly, or it may be present to such an extent as to move the deepest springs of feeling. It is hard to give suggestions for securing force, because language is better adapted to communicating ideas than emotions. We find that language furnishes very few names for feelings. Furthermore, these names, even such as love, fear, anger, do not in themselves move us. What a marvellous variety of emotion each of us feels in a day! how many delicate tints of pleasure! how many shades of regret or fear, of painful memory or suggestion! The psychologists tell us that we do no act which does not bring with it some touch of pleasure or of pain. And yet most of these shades and tints and touches of feeling neither have names nor can be communicated by words. Nevertheless, though language cannot directly convey feeling, it can sometimes suggest feeling. If your reader has experienced a given emotion, some word of yours may recall that to his mind. One secret of being forcible lies in choosing theme subjects that interest the reader; subjects that set up a train of feeling and memory in his mind. Other secrets are, to choose suggestive words and figures of speech, and to refrain from wearing out interest by too many words. We shall presently inquire, what words and figures are most suggestive.
Something may be done to secure force by so arranging words as to attract the reader’s attention. It will be noted that emphasis ([p. 110]) and climax ([p. 112]) are means of force.
Beauty.—Beauty is the quality of style which satisfies what is called, for lack of a better word, the æsthetic sense; this is little else but saying, beauty of style satisfies the sense for beauty. One element of beauty is simplicity, a quality closely allied to clearness, yet not the same. Euphony, or absence of ugly sounds, is another element of beauty. Variety is another element of beauty. It is clear that the last exercise in Chapter X is as much an exercise in beauty as in vocabulary. In the present chapter we shall have space to consider only one element of beauty,—that of simplicity.
Prolixity.—If a writer descends into tedious details, or if he repeats the same idea over and over in slightly different words, without developing or adding to the thought, he is said to be prolix. Prolixity offends chiefly against force, for it kills interest. This fault may affect merely a single sentence or paragraph, or it may infest a whole composition. It does not much beset the writer who plans his work ahead. It can be corrected only by rewriting.
Written Exercise.—The following prolix passage should be rewritten, only the essential thoughts being kept. Any mistakes and crudities of style should be corrected.
“My friend the doctor was a collector of ancient coins and was always roaming about the ruins of old cities in search of coins. He would wander around and pick up valuable relics like the Venus he wore in his seal ring. He was always finding something worth keeping. He would pick up a precious bit of antiquity and put it in his pocket, and so he always carried with him a regular collection of relics. One afternoon he was out among the mountains picking up relics and not looking up to see whether any one was near. When he looked around he saw five or perhaps six rough fellows who were standing there behind him. He fell to quivering with fright and stood trembling and shaking, but managed to greet them. After he had greeted the five or six men they all walked along down the road until they came to an inn that was there on the mountain-side. It was an inn and not a cave there in the mountains, as was incorrectly said by one member of the class.”
Surplusage.--Surplusage consists of words that can be excised without hurting the sense of the passage. In tyros it is perhaps less of a fault than the opposite one of deficiency,—the absence of needed words; for fulness of expression is essential to clearness, and surplusage often results from the desire to be clear. Verbosity, however, dulls the edge of the keenest thought. Like prolixity, it weakens. Just as many a prolix speaker could make a brilliant oration if he knew when to stop, so many a wordy writer could make an effective sentence if he knew what to prune away. As Mr. Lowell would say:[45] Thoughts are never draped in long skirts like babies, if they are strong enough to go alone.
The redundant use of the following common words should be avoided:—