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  • 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."
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February 05, 2008

SAY IT WITH US: CHURCHILL, REAL. HOLMES, FICTIONAL

Something to save for our UK travels: 48 hours in literary London.

7 p.m. - You'll be thirsty for a drink when you arrive, but don't waste time searching for George Orwell's mythical perfect public-house, the "Moon Under Water." Start your weekend in the world of P.G. Wodehouse's butler Jeeves by drinking and dining in the historic pub "I Am the Only Running Footman" on Charles Street in Mayfair. The 1749 pub, rebuilt in 1937, was once the haunt of servants and is said to have inspired Wodehouse to create the fictional Junior Ganymede, the club for "the gentlemen's gentleman" where Jeeves took his ease. As you head back to your hotel, take a look at Number 48, where Winston Churchill lived as a child.

Posted by TEV at 12:01 AM in World Beat |

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