English Grammar for the Utterly Confused - Laurie Rozakis 2003
The Elements of Style
Chapter 12 Developing Your Own Writing Style
Part 5 Struttin Your Stuff with Style
As this analysis reveals, different writers have their own distinctive way of writing. A writer’s style is his or her distinctive way of writing. Style is a series of choices, shown on the following chart.
Style can be described in many ways, including
formal informal stiff grand allusive
elevated academic relaxed heroic ironic
colloquial breezy familiar rich serious
technical sensory abstract plain ornate
Some professional writers celebrated for their distinctive writing style include Jane Austen, Ernest Hemingway, Truman Capote, John McPhee, Tracy Kidder, and E. B. White. (Some criticized for their writing style include James Joyce, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Charles Dickens!)
A clear writing style is not restricted to professional writers, however. Everyday people get ahead in part because of their ability to write clearly and effectively. For example,
• Accountants must write clear cover letters for audits.
• Computer specialists write proposals.
• Educators write observations of staff members and reports on students.
• Engineers write reports, e-mails, and faxes.
• Insurance brokers write letters soliciting business.
• Lawyers need to make their briefs logical.
• Marketing personnel do sales reports.
• Retail workers often write letters of recommendation and promotion.
• Stock and bond traders write letters and prospectuses.
Everyone writes resumes, cover letters, memos, faxes, and business letters. Therefore, we all need to develop an effective writing style that helps us get our point across clearly, concisely, and gracefully.
While everyone’s writing style is as individual as his or her fingerprints, every writing style shares the same characteristics:
• It suits the tone to the readers. For example, you would use a respectful tone in a eulogy (funeral speech), but you could use a humorous tone in a speech at a birthday party.
• It is free of errors in grammar and usage (unless fragments are being used in dialogue).
• It is free of errors in spelling and punctuation (unless misspellings are being used in dialect).
• It does not include offensive words.
Writers often change their style for different kinds of writing and to suit different audiences. In poetry, for example, an author might use more imagery than he or she would use in prose. Dr. Seuss wrote whimsical novels such as The Cat in the Hat for children, as well as effective advertisements for Burma Shave! E. B. White wrote the children’s classics Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan, as well as essays for adults collected under the title Is Sex Dead? The style of each publication is clearly different, yet each can be equally well written. As these examples show, writing style is first adjusted to satisfy your audience.
Quick Tip
Unless you’ve been granted the gift of an exceptionally fluent tongue, writing as you talk usually results in awkward and repetitive documents. Most of us hesitate as we speak to allow us time to gather our thoughts. We also backtrack to pick up points we might have missed on the first go-round. As a result, a document written “by ear” usually sounds illogical.