Reading for Style

28 November 2010

John McIntyre, a copy editor at the Baltimore Sun, is one of the most insightful commentators on good language writing today. He hits another one out of the park with this post about the absurd maxim, “When you meet an adverb, kill it.” He does a close reading of a Nabokov passage that rips that maxim to shreds. Money quote:

Maxims can only carry you a little way forward. What you need to do is study why low-grade prose (easily found if you subscribe to a daily newspaper or have access to the Internet) never gets aloft, and why first-rate prose soars. That is when you will begin to get somewhere yourself.

Those who dispense style advice in bite-sized chunks really ought to read more. They will quickly see that almost all of their advice is exactly the opposite of how great writers write.

UK Free Speech Update

26 November 2010

Diplomats, bishops, bombers, and fruit bats. Geoffrey Pullum over at Language Log has a summary of some recent cases in the UK involving, at least tangentially in the case of the fruit bats, free speech. Many Americans might be surprised to learn that the UK has nothing like the First Amendment, and while one generally has the freedom to say whatever one likes in Britain, the right to free speech is not backed by the same type of constitutional guarantees that it is in the States. (Speaking of which, I really ought to find out what the legal rights in Canada are; not that I’m worried about anything I might say.) But in each of these British cases, the resolution appears to be the right one, albeit after some overreaction. Although, I do think the diplomat needs to find another line of work, and the fruit-bat scientist might also, depending on the details of the case—judging sexual harassment from a distance is nigh impossible, so I really can’t say.

Invention of the Vernacular

26 November 2010

There is an interesting Q&A here, with part two here, on how and why ancient Israelites began writing in Hebrew. Of particular note is the idea that for most civilizations throughout history, most writing is not in the vernacular, but in a cosmopolitan language. For ancient Israel, it was Babylonian. For medieval Europe, it was Latin. Today, it is, to a lesser extent, English.

A similar process happened in tenth century Britain, when English writers, mainly monks, began writing in Old English as opposed to, or rather in addition to, Latin. This was partly due to a lack of qualified Latinists in England, which was the express reason that King Alfred ordered translations of some of the most important Latin works, but there was also a surge of English poetry that riffed on Latin poetic traditions, but took a distinctly different and English direction. The development of English literature was rudely interrupted but continued despite the best efforts of the Norman overlords to impose French on the English, and flourished anew in the fourteenth century with Gower, Langland, and Chaucer.

(Hat tip to Languagehat)