Peculiarities of prose style

Peculiarities of prose style

THE MINISTRY OF HIGHER AND SECONDARY SPECIAL EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN

THE UZBEK STATE WORLD LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY

II ENGLISH PHILOLOGY FACULTY

ENGLISH STYLISTICS DEPARTMENT

COURSE PAPER

on

PECULIARITIES OF PROSE STYLE

Written by the student of

__________________________

SCIENTIFIC ADVISER

______________________________

TASHKENT 2011

PLAN

INTRODUCTION

STYLISTICS AS A SCIENCE

BASIC PROSE STYLE

1. Write in the Active Voice

2. Avoid Nominalizations

3. Express Parallel Ideas in Parallel Grammatical Form

4. Place the Emphatic Words at the End of the Sentence

5. Express Statements in Positive Form

6. Vary Sentence Patterns

7. Choose Your Words Carefully

8. Avoid Overusing Word Modifiers

9. Clarify the Logical Relationships between Your Ideas

10. Prune Deadwood

11. Avoid Redundancy

12. Use Metaphor to Illustrate

BASIC PUNCTUATION AND MECHANICS

1. Commas

2. Semicolons

3. Colons

4. Dashes

5. Parentheses

6. Ellipsis Dots

7. Hyphens

8. Apostrophes

9. Italics

10. Titles

11. Numbers

12. Quotation Marks

13. Punctuating Quotations

14. Introducing Indented Quotations, Vertical Lists, and Formulas

15. Punctuating Vertical Lists

16. Question Marks

17. Exclamation Points

18. Multiple Punctuation

CONCLUSION

THE LIST OF THE USED LITERATURE

INTRODUCTION

This pamphlet is designed to introduce you to, or remind you of, the basic principles of prose style and mechanics. The Prose Style Section describes twelve basic principles of good prose style and illustrates most of these principles with examples. Since most writers and editors agree about the importance of these twelve basic principles, I have drawn from a wide variety of sources. However, I would especially recommend two texts: The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White and Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity & Grace by Joseph Williams.

All twelve principles described in the style section above are based on one overriding principle—that the essence of good writing is rewriting. You may attend to some of these principles spontaneously when you compose your first draft, but stylistic considerations become more deliberate concerns when you work on second, third, and fourth drafts. Remember that good writing is hard work, and as Samuel Johnson said, "What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure."

The Basic Punctuation and Mechanics Section of the pamphlet presents rules that govern the approximately fifty most common problems with punctuation and mechanics. Most of these rules are illustrated with examples, and many are cross-referenced with other rules with which they are frequently confused. This section is based primarily on The Associated Press Stylebook and The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition, generally considered the definitive reference on questions of punctuation and mechanics.

STYLISTICS AS A SCIENCE

Treatises devoted to the study of style can be found as early as Demetrius's On Style. But most pre-twentieth-century discussions appear as secondary components of rhetorical and grammatical analyses or in general studies of literature and literary language. The appearance of stylistics as a semiautonomous discipline is a modern phenomenon, an ongoing development in linguistic description that is closely tied to the similar rise of literary criticism and linguistics as academic subjects and departments. Modern stylistics, in general, draws much of its analytical power from the analytical methods and descriptive intentions of linguistics, while modern literary stylistics, in particular, draws upon that area and adds to it the interpretive goals of modern literary criticism. In both cases, the use of linguistic methodology has allowed stylistics to move beyond earlier normative and prescriptive descriptions of "correct" styles to a fuller analysis of language itself and the purposes to which language regularly is put[1].

Whatever the limits of previous approaches to style, or the difficulties that have arisen from the practical application of linguistic methods to stylistic analysis, the desire to begin with a set of well-defined terms and procedures lies at the core of the initial formation of stylistics as a discipline. While all versions of literary stylistics have dedicated themselves to the study and interpretation of literary texts, it was the growing importance of European historical linguistics during the mid-nineteenth century that produced the most easily recognized component of early modern stylistics: a deeply rooted concern with formal linguistic description of literary language. The methodological benefits that stylistics gained by uniting literary interpretation and linguistic analysis were matched by institutional gains as well[2]. Historical and general linguistics were well-established academic disciplines at the turn of the twentieth century, and stylistics could expect to benefit from that status. The use of linguistic procedures thus offered stylistics both an affinity with an established discipline and the possibility of founding the description and interpretation of style upon the bedrock of science. .

While its air of scientific analysis made linguistics attractive, linguistic science was not itself a monolithic entity. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, linguistic study oscillated between a desire to define language through efficient analytical methods (often requiring a-contextual descriptions) and another, competing desire to define language as a social and cultural phenomenon. The work of the neogrammarians, key figures in the formation of linguistics as a modern scientific discipline, displays the tension well. Although the neogrammarians began their work with the intention of reintroducing behavior into linguistic description, the attractiveness of scientific method dictated the slow elimination of the user as a complex part of the description. The result for some linguists, notably the philologians, was a sacrificing of the real heart of linguistics to a sterile formalism; for many, however, the shift was the logical result of a move into the modern scientific age. It was in terms of these separate views of the proper role of linguistic description that the predominant approaches to modern stylistics developed, and because of the strong Continental influence of Romance Philology on historical linguistics, modern stylistics usually is seen as having begun there.

The roots of modern stylistics can be uncovered in the work of Charles Bally (1865-1947) and Leo Spitzer (1887-1960). Bally's Précis de stylistique (1905) stresses the description and analysis of a language's generally available stylistic properties. Literary texts, in Bally's formulation, are particular examples of language use, and the analysis of their style is not a central part of the general stylistics he emphasizes. Nevertheless, Bally's work, and its later realization in the work of Jules Marouzeau (Précis de stylistique française, 1946) and Marcel Cressot (Le Style et ses techniques, 1947), strongly influenced the formation of literary stylistics. Such analytical work offered literary critics a relatively precise methodology for describing the components and features of a text. In place of an open-ended and evaluative interpretive process, linguistics both underwrote the need for a more precise analytical attitude toward language study and provided specific categories for characterizing sound, rhythm, and eventually syntax, as well as points of comparison and contrast between registers, forms, and functions within genres and literary periods.

In contrast to the stylistique of Bally and his proponents, Leo Spitzer insisted upon following the more philologically based tradition of textual (and often literary-textual) analysis. Such work, while using the analytical techniques of modern linguistics, strives to unite the analytical description with a critical interpretation that relates the style to a larger conceptual or situational frame. Style is seen as an expression of a particular psychological, social, or historical sensibility or moment rather than as a general property of a particular language. In undertaking these wider interpretations, critics such as Spitzer did not, however, assume that they were defining their stylistics as separate from, or even as a subset of, linguistic analysis. In both his etymological studies and his more specifically literary-critical interpretations[3], Spitzer insisted that he was promulgating a general program of linguistic study, offering his stylistics in opposition to what he saw as the more reductionist analyses of general, scientific linguistics. Spitzer himself emphasized the split until the end of his career, regularly referring to his work as Stilforschung (literary, cultural interpretation of style--philology in his eyes) to set it apart from that of Stilistik, or Bally's stylistique (e.g., "Les Études de style et les différents pays" 23-39). At the same time, he assumed--as did fellow critics of style such as Ernst Robert Curtius, Karl Vossler, and Helmut Hatzfeld--that he was not reducing the scientific aspect of linguistics but only offsetting a false, positivistic tone that was becoming increasingly predominant in the field. The tension in linguistics between general linguistic description and less formal sociocultural interpretation thus was mirrored in this early separation in stylistics between linguistic stylistic description and literary stylistic interpretation. It is a separation, and a tension, that remains at the heart of modern stylistics[4].

This tension, Spitzer's and Bally's position as Continental rather than Anglo-American linguists, and the popularity of Practical Criticism and New Criticism in England and the United States all lay behind the relative lack of an organized, Anglo-American literary stylistics during the first half of the twentieth century. Literary stylistic analyses were occurring in England and in the United States at this time, but they often did not contain the formal linguistic orientation that characterizes the modern discipline of stylistics. Instead, they drew support and procedures from the basic but less analytically structured orientation of New Criticism and practical criticism. And while the influence of Romance language study grew during the mid-twentieth century (due in no small part to the presence in England and in the United States of many expatriated scholars), the established strength of other, more empirical linguistic methodologies reduced possible exchanges between linguistics and literary criticism.

The eventual appearance of modern stylistics in Anglo-American work repeated the earlier Continental process, appearing most clearly when united with an interest in linguistic analysis at mid-century and with the related interest in literary Structuralism somewhat later. By the late 1950s, the general critical ambience provided by the rise and fall of New Criticism and practical criticism, in combination with a growing interest in comparative literary studies and a new awareness of the increasing importance of linguistic science, provided the needed impetus for a strong appearance of literary stylistics outside the European continent. The processes behind the formation of American stylistics are exemplified by work done by Michael Riffaterre on Romance languages. Riffaterre's published dissertation, Le Style des Pléiades de Gobineau (1957), is a self-described attempt to blend Spitzer's work with that of contemporary structural linguistics, while the later, even more formal stylistic methodology set forth in "Criteria for Style Analysis" (1959) and "Stylistic Context" (1960) shifts away from interpretive description and toward the general linguistic analysis that was beginning to dominate academic study[5]. .

Such work in stylistics reflected a larger trend occurring within literary criticism as a whole during this period. Riffaterre's particular interest in a systematic, formal description of literary style mirrored a growing awareness among literary critics in general of the possibilities provided to literary study by trends and theories available from formal linguistic study. The discovery of linguistic work[6] by Ferdinand de Saussure, Roman Jakobson, and structural linguistic theory in general all formed part of the rapid flowering of critical work closely related to, if not directly based upon, particular methods of linguistic analysis. It was not a link between literary stylistics and structural linguistic analysis that marked the real establishment of stylistics as a discipline within the United States, however. It was the transformational-generative grammar of Noam Chomsky [7] that signaled the arrival of stylistics as a discipline with independent, self-defined goals, if not yet a real autonomy from either linguistic or literary-critical approaches to language analysis. The rapidly established importance of Chomsky's linguistics within his own discipline provided a strong argument for the importance of transformational-generative grammar within literary stylistics as well. But beneath that academic, institutional cause lay particular features of the theory that explain further the explosion of stylistic work using transformational-generative grammar. The grammar's focus on syntax, its distinction between deep and surface structures, and the resulting dynamism in its descriptive procedures all contributed to a methodology that allowed for a much wider discussion of the possible forms (and by implication styles) available to the user of language. At the same time, the declared mentalism of Chomsky's grammar was seen by many as providing literary stylistics with a means of uniting a still lingering Romantic sense of creativity with the formal linguistic description needed to provide the analysis with a now-requisite air of scientific study. Many critics found not only an implied linkage between language and mind within Chomsky's grammar but an actual justification for tying intention to structure. Whichever aspect of Chomsky's grammar provided the impetus for a particular study, the general influence was huge, and the numerous studies that appeared during the years 1965-75 testify to the boost that Chomsky's thinking on language gave to the era, one of the most hectic and dramatic in the formation and growth of stylistics.

BASIC PROSE STYLE

1. Write in the Active Voice

Unless you have a good reason to do otherwise, always choose the active, rather than the passive, voice. With the active voice, the agent (the person or thing carrying out the action expressed by the verb) is the subject:

John opened the door.

There are two types of passive voice constructions. In one, the agent is identified, but the person or thing toward which the action is directed (rather than the agent) is the subject of the sentence:

The door was opened by John.

In the second type of passive voice construction, the agent is not identified at all:

The door was opened.

(Note: The verb "to be" [am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been] often flags the passive voice.)

In addition to being less natural, less direct, and less vigorous, sentences that fail to identify an agent can raise ethical questions, since they fail to attribute responsibility for the action they express. The passive voice can, however, be an effective means of doing at least three things:

a. Focusing attention on the thing acted upon:

The bus was destroyed by a freight train.

b. Describing action when the agent is unknown or unimportant:

The building was demolished over fifteen years ago.

c. Placing the agent at the end of a clause where he, she, or it can more easily be modified by a long modifier:

The house was built by John Hanson, who went on, years later, to become president of the Continental Congress.

Many science and technical writers once considered passive voice more objective than active voice and, hence, more appropriate to their writing. As the quotations below suggest, however, the traditional preference for passive voice in scientific and technical writing is changing:

We cannot object to this use of the passive construction in itself. We can object to its abuse—to use almost to the exclusion of all other constructions. When the passive is used as a rule, not as an exception to obtain a particular effect, writing soon begins to seem forced and uncomfortable.

— John Kirkman, Good Style: Writing for Science and Technology

The active is the natural voice, the one in which people usually speak or write, and its use is less likely to lead to wordiness or ambiguity. The passive of modesty, a device of writers who shun the first-person singular, should be avoided. I discovered is shorter and less likely to be ambiguous than it was discovered. The use of I or we. . .avoids dangling participles, common in sentences written in the third-person passive.

— Council of Biology Editors, CBE Style Manual, 5th ed.

[Passive voice] implies that events take place without any one doing anything. Moves files, desks, and ideas without any assistance from a human being. Makes readers wonder whether they should be doing something or just sitting there waiting for the system to perform. It turns actions into states of being. It's somewhat mystical, but tends to put readers to sleep. . . .

To get more active, say who does what. Assign responsibility to the system or to the program or, if necessary, to the reader. If you have to tell readers to do something, don't pussyfoot around—tell them. (Are you slipping into the passive because you don't dare to order readers around?)

— Jonathan Price, How to Write a Computer Manual

2. Avoid Nominalizations

Unless you have a good reason to do otherwise, avoid nominalizations. A nominalization is a noun derived from and communicating the same meaning as a verb or adjective. It is usually more direct, vigorous and natural to express action in verbs and qualities in adjectives.

no: Our expectation was that we would be rewarded for our efforts.

yes: We expected to be rewarded for our efforts.

no: There was a stuffiness about the room.

yes: The room was stuffy.

Nominalizations frequently crop up in noun strings. A noun string, a series of nouns that modify one another, is often concise but ambiguous. If the noun string is short, it can usually be tamed with a few judicious hyphens:

no: The test area probes were delivered last week.

yes: The test-area probes were delivered last week.

Longer noun strings, however, are often confusing, and it is generally best to unstring them by converting nominalizations back to verbs or by adding a few strategic articles and prepositions:

no: Missile guidance center office equipment maintenance is performed weekly.

yes: The office equipment in the missile guidance center is maintained weekly.

Like passive voice, nominalizations can serve some useful purposes:

a. Nominalizations can facilitate smooth transitions between sentences by serving as subjects that refer back to ideas in previous sentences:

Susan refused to accept the five-stroke handicap. Ultimately, this refusal cost her the match.

b. Nominalizations can be effective when you choose to desensitize a statement by converting the more vigorous and direct verb form into the less vigorous and direct noun form. Thus,

He is scheduled to be executed on Monday.

becomes

His execution is scheduled for Monday.

c. Since nouns often name material things, they have a certain status in our culture, where the concrete often seems more real (hence, more credible) than the abstract. Therefore, although nominalizations often result in pompous and convoluted prose, they occasionally can be used to make the abstract seem more concrete and, perhaps, more convincing. Thus,

The colonists would not tolerate being taxed.

becomes

The colonists would not tolerate taxation.

Joseph Williams neatly sums up these first two principles (write in the active voice and avoid nominalizations): "Try to state who's doing what in the subject of your sentence, and try to state what that who is doing in your verb. . . . Get that straight, and the rest of the sentence begins to fall into place" (Style, 1st ed., p. 8)

3. Express Parallel Ideas in Parallel Grammatical Form

Parallelism is the principle that units of equal function should be expressed in equal form. Repetition of the same structure allows the reader to recognize parallel ideas more readily:

no: This could be a problem for both the winners and for those who lose.

yes: This could be a problem for both the winners and the losers.

no: Output from VM appears in the output display area. The input area is where commands typed by the user are displayed.

yes: Output from VM appears in the output display area. Commands typed by the user appear in the input display area.

Note that any two (or more) units of discourse—words, phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs, chapters—can be made parallel with one another. Note also that, although it is a powerful rhetorical device, parallelism is only one of many factors writers must consider as they compose. Hence, parallelism is occasionally overridden by other, more pressing considerations, such as clarity and variety.

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