Style in Handbooks

Warning: This post has a style of enthusiastic personal (rather geeky) exclamation rather than formal academic analysis, and can be revised (using techniques gleaned from the works analyzed herein) if that is more in keeping with the requirements of the exercise.

It was fascinating to see how style was expressed and advocated across more than a century of writing instruction in the three handbooks. I skimmed as best I could, but I did end up getting sucked in more than I had time for, so I am passionately hoping that the dropbox will stay open long enough for me to get back to it and really read through all three of the handbooks. They had so much to offer in all of their different ways that as a future teacher I found them incredibly fascinating.

The Brooks approach surprised me. I would not expect a handbook from 1911 to include, "thinking is more important than the over-emphasis of form," with an admonition not to have students do busy-work grammar corrections but instead move on and practice their grammar with their next essay (which was REALLY interesting to me given the topic of my research paper!). The concept terminology changed across all three handbooks, but they shared a lot of (apparently time-tested) concepts. Brooks used "unity", "coherence", and "emphasis" for essential elements of style; and the "emphasis" aspect was my favorite - "force and vividness - not weak" and "important words in conspicuous positions."

I can't wait for the DKHB text to be published. Talk about style! It is incredibly user-friendly, and popped all sorts of useful terminology and concepts out on the page for assimilation in actual writing and the teaching thereof. A lot of the concepts were there again - clarity, concision, emphasis, coherence, and a new one - engagement, which I think was implied in the Brooks but not overtly stated. Again, I hope it stays up in dropbox so I can reference it as I am writing my own paper. It very clearly delineated all sorts of ways to nuance a paper's style - and make it clearer and thus more effective in intent.

But the Hill was my favorite of the handbooks because of its ancient, pedantic style. What a hoot! I loved the definitions of style: "dry - no beauty", "plain - dry with only essential illustrations", "neat" (Goldilocks finds the perfect chair)", "elegant - more pretentious but avoiding excess, which would degrade", "florid - crowds the expression with superfluous and superficial ornament - excessive, bold, many colors -  the so-called poems of Ossian are this style", and then the (heaven-forbid) "bomBASTic style" (I can almost feel the author's horrified shudder as he writes this) - "such excess of words and ornaments as to become ridiculous." There was an interesting assertion from the author as he proclaimed "The General Law of Style", defining it, from Herbert Spencer's "The Philosophy of Style" as "that form of expression is most excellent which yields its contained idea with the least expenditure of mental power." That approach to writing seems to limit the engagement of the reader, if the point is succinctly made with no initiation of creative process in the reader I would say it would qualify as the unappetizing and beauty-deprived "dry." 

All three handbooks had concepts, definitions and techniques that could be intriguing to work with as I write my paper, and in fact live my life (snark warning). As a life-long writer in a variety of venues it is always in my best interest to acquire an ever-broadening vocabulary, and I have this supercilious advice to follow from Hill:

4. Seek Good Society

One who has the advantage of frequent association with intelligent and cultivated persons, will acquire a good vocabulary without great effort, by paying attention to their language. Low companionship, on the other hand, reveals itself in one's choice and use of words.

(All snark aside, I actually may use a few quotes from the older texts to illustrate historical thinking about grammar. Both of them, but particularly the Hill text, went into great detail on grammar.)