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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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« SPECIAL TEV GIVEAWAY: CHARLES BUKOWSKI'S L.A. | Main | SPEECHLESS »

May 23, 2008

BEFORE WE LEAVE YOU FOR THE WEEKEND ...

... we duly note that the summer issue of our beloved Bookforum has gone online.  In case you were looking for stuff to do this weekend ...

Posted by TEV at 06:30 PM in Litlinks |

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