Absolute Style

There are many things I believe I have learned from reading “Style: toward clarity and grace” by Joseph Williams, and “The Elements of Style” by Strunk and White. Among these things are to use metaphors, have coherence, to write what comes naturally, to revise and rewrite, and to avoid fancy words.

First, write what comes naturally. I think this is important because it shows the writer’s personality. When a writer writes what comes naturally they use words and phrases unique to them. Or like when I wrote a story I titled “Guardian Angel” my teacher said I gave a sense of honesty and spirituality. I gave the sense of honesty just from my word choices, a lot of which I used in the first draft and they just stuck through the drafts because it is part of the story.

Coherence is also important. If what you are writing does not stick together the reader will reject it. For example, if I wrote an essay that just went from one sub-topic to the next, without connecting them to the main topic, readers wouldn’t accept it. They would be left wondering what I was talking about. If someone wrote an essay on gardening and started talking about the guy who experimented with peas and with dominant and recessive traits, the readers would be left wondering what the guy had to do with how knowing about him will help them keep their plants alive.

Thirdly, I think metaphors are important. They can help a writer, or anyone make a point. You don’t have to be a writer to use a metaphor. In middle school I was called to the counselor’s office because my teachers noticed I wasn’t as happy as I usually was. I have controlling parents, and I was having a fight over how controlling they were. I don’t remember the specifics of the argument anymore, but that isn’t important. When the counselor asked how I felt, I replied “I feel I’m a ball in a dryer.” I didn’t have to go any further, she immediately knew how I felt, or at least had a good idea. A ball in a dryer has no control over where it goes, which is how I felt, and I didn’t have to explain anymore after the metaphor. The counselor even commented she liked how I used the metaphor to explain how I felt. You can’t get away with not explaining a metaphor in writing. You don’t have a second chance to say something, or clarify if one reader doesn’t understand the metaphor. So in writing it’s better to explain the metaphor. With my ball in a dryer example, I would have explained how the ball has no control over where it goes, and how it is trapped in the dryer, and can’t get out until someone comes and says its okay and removes the ball from the dryer.

Last but not least, and I believe the most important thing, is to revise and rewrite. If in your writing you use a quote where the person uses a word like ain’t, you need to revise and change the word because ain’t isn’t a word. That and no one gets it right the first time. Most of us revise our writing while we write. We use a computer and we cut and paste, and use the backspace key before we’ve written the first draft from start to finish. Like this post, I have used the backspace key at least fifty times; I have also used the arrows to go back up to previous paragraphs and add things to my explanations to help make the explanations better. Revising is also important because it helps us catch our spelling errors, and even though we may use the spell check, it doesn’t catch where we have typed "of" instead of "if".