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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 12, 2008

WHERE WERE YOU?

Just as generations still talk about where they were when they learned Johns Kennedy and Lennon had been murdered, you'll want to be able to tell your kiddies where you were the day Gawker said something nice (and about a publishing figure no less).

Posted by TEV at 06:36 PM in Worthy Titles |

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They were nice to Joshua Ferris too, usually it's people they know semi-socially.

Posted by: Comment | February 13, 2008 at 10:37 AM

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