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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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March 31, 2008

THWAITE SPEAKS

It was a real treat for us to finally get to hear Mark Thwaite, one of the UK's best and brightest book bloggers, as he makes the case (and for some, apparently, the case still needs to be made) for reading literary blogs.  Well done, Mark.

Posted by TEV at 07:05 PM in Litlinks |

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