The Elegant Variation: ANYWAY, FOR THAT STUFF, YOU NEED TO HIT TIMES SELECT

TEV DEFINED

The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

June 20, 2007

ANYWAY, FOR THAT STUFF, YOU NEED TO HIT TIMES SELECT

Nyt_2 We're not sure what amuses us more - the notion that Times readers, true to the demographic reports, are more interested in immigration than sex; or the notion that anyone at all would turn to the Times to fill their internet sex needs. Either way, we're amused. (And yes, we know we should be working.)

Posted by TEV at 11:52 AM in Personal | Permalink

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June 20, 2007