Short & Simple Words & Styles
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a discursive strategy that chooses common words and words of few syllables over less frequent and longer ones; to use the demotic style that speaks in 'the most current idiom of standard speech' - Rhetorica ad Herennium
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Examples
Jonathan Swift (17th Century)
Because it is idle to propose remedies before we are assured of the disease, or to be in fear till we are convinced of the danger, I shall first show in general that the nation is extremely corrupted in religion and morals; and then I will offer a short scheme for the reformation of both.
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George Orwell (20th Century)
England is perhaps the only great country where intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true, that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during 'God save the King' than of stealing from the poor box.
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Purpose
The Plain Style
Different ages favour different professional communication styles. Elizabethan England favoured the high style; the plain style is popular today. What's remarkable about the texts above is how their shared, plain style hides the three-hundred years separating them. Things we can notice:
- The sentences use many simple words.
- The sentences have clear subjects and active verbs.
- Some sentences are long, but all are easy to understand.
Use the plain style to be better understood. Audiences can more easily grasp shorter and simpler words and more easily understand complex things if we speak plainly. And audiences will better bond with us and trust us if we use and share their vernacular. Winston Churchill and George Orwell understood this well:
Winston Churchill
All the speeches of great rhetoricians [...] display a uniform preference for short, homely words of common usage.
George Orwell
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
All the speeches of great rhetoricians [...] display a uniform preference for short, homely words of common usage.
George Orwell
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Usage
Communicating in the Common Tongue
Use short words and phrases to be understood, because everyday language uses short words and phrases. We find them in slogans, popular songs, common verse, everyday phases, idioms:
Phrases
under the sun on a daily basis from time to time at the end of the day |
Idioms
best of both worlds once in a blue moon kill two birds with one stone |
Advertising Slogans
It's the real thing - Coke Have a break…Have a Kit Kat All the news that's fit to print - NY Times |
Bob Dylan
The line it is drawn The curse it is cast The slow one now Will later be fast |
Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. |
Philip Larkin
They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. |
We could of course say daily instead of on a daily basis. Academic style prefers the former, but everyday style prefers the latter. It simply sounds better. Use short and simple words whenever the plain style is appropriate - that means almost always.
Audience and Style
Understanding when not to use the plain style means first knowing something about the Classical styles in rhetoric. We still call them what Cicero called them:
- The low or plain style: How we chat, gossip and joke; texts like tabloid news, most websites and instruction manuals
- The middle style: Somewhere between the mundane and the showy. Think of academics presenting, politicians debating and journalists essaying
- The high or grand style: The rhetorical fireworks display. Think of grand texts bejeweled with figures of speech: the language of William Shakespeare, of presidential inaugurations, of motivational speeches
Now comes the tricky bit. We find everyday language in the higher styles, and the higher styles in everyday language. Picture the three styles as clothing.
We all dress plainly in underwear, tee shirts, jeans, pullovers when we can. But on some days, in some places, we pull on blouse, a tie, a suit, a lab coat, a graduation gown. We wear these middle and grand clothes in our jobs and in institutions. But we're still wearing our plain underwear underneath.
We all dress plainly in underwear, tee shirts, jeans, pullovers when we can. But on some days, in some places, we pull on blouse, a tie, a suit, a lab coat, a graduation gown. We wear these middle and grand clothes in our jobs and in institutions. But we're still wearing our plain underwear underneath.
Discourses of Middle & High Styles
Institutional Discourses
for example, professional communications of professionals in similar and the same fields |
Professional-Professional Discourses
for example, professional communications between different professional fields |
Institutional Discourses Involving Professionals and the Public
for example, graduation ceremonies, politics, the law
for example, graduation ceremonies, politics, the law
Hortatory Discourses
for example, speeches at funerals and weddings |
Literature
Some literature uses the plain style while other literature uses more complex rhetorical figures and literary devices. |
So we have to speak in styles, not one style. And we have to speak in the style of our profession or institution to be a member of that profession or institution.
Personal Style
A writer's style says a lot about a writer's personality. And writing style is a personal choice. Writers who like bigger words, longer sentences and elaborate figures of speech may prefer reading and writing in the middle or high styles. Writers who like shorter words, shorter sentences and everyday figures of speech may prefer reading and writing in the plain style.
Compare the stylistic differences between a novelist's non-fiction paragraph and another by an evolutionary biologist:
Compare the stylistic differences between a novelist's non-fiction paragraph and another by an evolutionary biologist:
The Middle and the Low Style Compared
Will Self - The Joy of Text
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Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion
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In my novel The Book of Dave, I employ some of the orthographic conventions - if they can be so dignified - of soi-disant text speak. I did it not because I believe in the permanence of this script, or even because I think of it as having lasting significance - what could such a thing imply? But merely in order to counter what I term the Star Trek convention. This is that bizarre phenomenon, all too often met in narratives - film, or book - that try to introduce their readers or viewers to alternative worlds. The crew of the Starship Enterprise journey to strange new galaxies, where they encounter strange new life forms who - strangest of all - speak standard English!
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The great French mathematician Blaise Pascal reckoned that, however long the odds against God's existence might be, there is an ever larger asymmetry in the penalty for guessing wrong. You'd better believe in God, because if you are right you stand to gain eternal bliss and if you are wrong it won't make any difference anyway. On the other hand, if you don't believe in God and you turn out to be wrong you get eternal damnation, whereas if you are right it makes no difference. On the face of it the decision is a no-brainer. Believe in God.
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Both writers wrote for the general public. Spoken aloud, the Self text sounds more like the institutional discourse of a university or a public lecture. The Dawkins text sounds more like everyday speech and is easier to understand. But this may not make this text 'better.' Always choose a style that best serves the audience's expectations and the author's purposes. Ideally, these should match.
Official Styles
Official styles are the ugliest styles. Did you read the 'terms and conditions' when you installed that last piece of software? Of course not. It was written not to be understood by us. Lawyers wrote it for other lawyers to keep those lawyers in work with still other lawyers.
Official styles are ugly because:
Official styles are ugly because:
- They contain the professional terms and jargon of their professions which 'outsiders' may not know.
- Professionals mostly write for other professionals so they may have forgotten, or never learned, how to write clearly or for outsiders.
- Professional texts contain formal words and structures that most people don't know or use: sesquipedalian vocabulary (big words with lots of syllables); zombie nouns 'The complexities of argumentation analytics have been acknowledged' means We know analyzing arguments is hard; and sentences without obvious actors and verbs: 'The reading-comprehension efficacy of the subjects was maximized' means Students read better.
The Academic Style
Academia is one of the worst style-offenders because it commits all the mortal sins of bad writing. These demonic habituations have been unresponsive to continual contestation - it means We know it's a problem but it ain't improving.
Winston Churchill, probably, 1940s
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Lionel Trilling, 1940s
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Asked to comment on a draft of another's speech:
Too many Latinate polysyllabics like 'systematize, prioritize, finalize'. And then the passives. What if I had said - instead of 'We shall fight on the beaches' - 'Hostilities will be engaged with our adversary on the coastal perimeter'? |
A spectre haunts our culture. It is that people will eventually be unable to say 'We fell in love and married'...but will, as a matter of course, say, 'Their libidinal impulses being reciprocal, they integrated their individual erotic drives and brought them within the same frame of reference'.
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Steven Pinker, 2014
I once attended a lecture on biology addressed to a large general audience at a conference on technology, entertainment and design. The lecture was also being filmed for distribution over the internet to millions of other laypeople. The speaker was an eminent biologist who had been invited to explain his recent breakthrough in the structure of DNA. He launched into a jargon-packed technical presentation that was geared to his fellow molecular biologists, and it was immediately apparent to everyone in the room that none of them understood a word. Apparent to everyone, that is, except the eminent biologist. When the host interrupted and asked him to explain the work more clearly, he seemed genuinely surprised and not a little annoyed.
The good news is we can write and speak like academic angels if we avoid committing the mortal sins above. Write and speak clearly, creatively and engagingly. Use the plain style. Use simple words. Use figures of speech. Read and emulate good academic writers - see also the style guides for unstylish academics.