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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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« MORE THINGS FALL APART | Main | IT MUST HAVE BEEN "SATURDAY" »

March 27, 2008

SPITZER'S LUCKY HE WAS ALREADY HERE

Apparently, we're now blocking writers from entering the U.S. on the grounds of "moral turpitude." 

For eight hours, armed agents of the US Customs and Border Protection interrogated Horsley. A party was set to kick-off a week of television and radio appearances to promote the US launch of Horsley’s autobiography, Dandy in the Underworld.

Posted by TEV at 10:13 AM in Words Fail |

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