THE MORAL OF THESE STORIES.
Most stories have a moral. At least grown-up people have a habit of
tacking a little lesson on to the end of the stories they tell to
children. And as a rule the children will listen to the moral for the
sake of the story. And so even the stories which words tell us have
their lessons for us too, and, let us hope, the stories are
sufficiently interesting to pay for the moral.
One thing that these stories must have shown us is that the English
language is a very ancient and wonderful thing. We have only been able
to get mere glimpses of its wonderful development since the days when
the ancestors of the peoples of Europe and many of the peoples of
India spoke the one Aryan tongue. All the history of Europe and of
India--we might almost say of the world--is contained in the languages
which have descended from that Aryan tongue.
Another point which these stories have impressed upon us is that
language is a kind of mirror to thought. For every new idea people
must find a word, and as ideas change words change with them. These
stories have given us some idea of the wonderful growth of ideas in
the minds of men in the past; they have shown us men daring all
dangers for the sake of adventure and discovery and for pride of
country; they have shown us the growth of new ideas of religion and
kindness, new notions about science and learning: in fact, they have
given us glimpses of the whole story of human progress.
The great lesson which these stories ought to teach us is respect for
words. Seeing as we do what a beautiful and wonderful thing the
English language has become, it ought to be the resolution of each one
of us never to do anything to spoil that beauty. Every writer ought to
choose his words carefully, neither inventing nor copying ugly forms
of speech. We have seen also from these stories, especially in the
chapter on "Slang," how people have misused certain words, until
speakers and writers of good taste can no longer use them in their
original sense, and therefore do not use them at all.
There are many other faults in speaking and in writing which take away
from the beauty and dignity of the language. We shall see what some of
these faults are; but one golden rule can be laid down which, if
people keep it, will help them to avoid all these faults. No one
should ever try to write in a fine style. The chief aim which all
young writers should keep before them is to say exactly what they
mean, and in as few and simple words as possible. If on reading what
they have written they find that it is not perfectly clear, they
should not immediately begin to rewrite, but instead set themselves to
find out whether their _thoughts_ are perfectly clear.
There is no idea which has no word to fit it. Of course some writers
must use difficult language. The ordinary reader can sometimes not
understand a sentence of a book of philosophy. This is not because the
philosophers do not write clearly, but because the ideas with which
they have to deal are very subtle, and hard for the ordinary person to
understand.
But for ordinary people writing on ordinary things there is no excuse
for writing so as not to be clearly understood, or for writing in such
a long and round-about way that people are tired instead of refreshed
by reading. Nor is there any excuse for the use of words and phrases
which are vulgar or too colloquial for the subject; yet how often is
this done in the modern newspaper. It may seem unnecessary to speak to
boys and girls of the faults of newspaper writers. But the boys and
girls of to-day are the newspaper writers and readers of the future,
and the habits which young writers form cling to them afterwards. Of
course many of the faults which the worse kind of journalists commit
in writing would not occur to boys and girls; but one fault leads to
another. The motive at the root of most poor and showy writing is the
desire to "shine." The faults which seem so detestable to the critical
reader seem very ingenious and brilliant to the writer of poor taste.
To the journalist, as to the schoolboy and the schoolgirl, the golden
rule is, "Be simple."
Let us see what some of the commonest faults of showy and poor writers
of English are--always with the moral before us that they are to be
avoided.
One great fault of newspaper writers and of young writers in general
is to sprinkle their compositions thickly with quotations, until some
beautiful and expressive lines from the greatest poetry and prose have
almost lost their force through the ear having become tired by hearing
them too often. Some such phrases are--
"Tell it not in Gath;"
"Heap coals of fire upon his head;"
"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof:"
all fine and picturesque lines, the apt quotation of which must have
been very impressive, until, through frequent repetition, they have
become almost commonplace.
A similar hackneyed fault is the too frequent application of the name
of some historical or Biblical personage to describe the character of
some person of whom we are writing. It is much more expressive now to
describe a person as a "doubter" than as a "doubting Thomas," though
the latter phrase may serve to show that the writer knows something
of his New Testament. The first man who called a sceptic a "doubting
Thomas" was certainly a witty and cultivated person; but this cannot
now be said of the use of this hackneyed phrase. Again, it is better
to say a "traitor" than a "Judas," a "wise man" than a "Solomon," a
"tyrant" than a "Nero," a "great general" than a "Napoleon;" for all
these names used in this way have lost their force.
A similar fault is the describing of a person by some abstract noun
such as a "joy," a "delight," an "inspiration"--a way of speaking
which savours both of slang and affectation, and which is not likely
to appeal to people of good taste. Of course it is quite different
when the poet writes--
"She was a vision of delight;"
for poetry has its own rules, just as it has its own range of ideas
and inspiration, and we are speaking now of the writing of mere prose.
Another bad fault of the same kind, but more colloquial, and more
often met with in speaking than in writing, is the too frequent use of
a word or phrase. Some people say "I mean," or "personally," or "I
see," or "you see," or similar expressions, at nearly every second
sentence, until people listening to them begin to count the number of
times these expressions occur, instead of attending to the subject of
conversation.
Another very common fault in writing made by newspaper writers, and
even more so by young beginners in composition, is the use of long
words derived from Latin instead of the simpler words which have come
down from the Old English. This does not mean that these words are not
so good or so beautiful as the Old English words. As we have seen,
these words were borrowed by our language to express ideas for which
no native word could be found. But a person who deliberately chooses
long Latin words because they are longer, and, as he thinks, sound
grander, is sure to write a poor style. A saying which is perhaps
becoming almost as "hackneyed" as some of the quotations already
mentioned in this chapter is, "The style is the man." This means that
if a person thinks clearly and sincerely he will write clearly and
sincerely. If a person's thoughts are lofty, he will naturally find
dignified words to express them. No good writer will deliberately
choose "high-sounding" words to express his ideas. All young writers
should avoid what have been called "flowery flourishes."
Again, young writers should be very careful not to use really foreign
words to express an idea for which we have already a good word in
English. Sometimes the foreign word comes first to our pen, but this
may be because of the bad habit which has grown up of using these
words in place of the English words which are quite as correct and
expressive. Sometimes, on the other hand, the foreign word expresses
a shade of meaning which the English word misses, and then, of course,
it is quite right to use it. For instance, _amour propre_ is not in
any way better than "self-love," _bêtise_ than "stupid action,"
_camaraderie_ than "comradeship," _savoir faire_ than "knowledge of
the world," _chef d'oeuvre_ than "masterpiece," and so on.
One disadvantage of borrowing such words is that they often come to be
used in a different sense from their use in their native language; and
people with an imperfect knowledge of these languages will say rather
vulgar or shocking things when using them in the English manner in
those languages. Thus, to speak of a person of a certain "calibre" in
French is exceedingly vulgar; and refined people do not use the word
_chic_ as freely as the English use of it would suggest. Examples of
foreign words which we could hardly replace by English expressions are
_blasé_, _tête-à-tête_, _brusque_, _bourgeois_, _deshabille_. These
have been borrowed, just as words have been borrowed all through its
history, by the English language to fill gaps. They have really become
English words. But there are many foreign expressions now scattered
freely through newspapers the sense of which can only be plain to
those who have had a classical education. Unfortunately it is only the
minority of readers who have had this. The effect is to make whole
passages unintelligible or only half intelligible to the majority of
readers. This is not writing good English. Thus people will write _le
tout Paris_ instead of "all Paris," _mémoires pour servir_ instead of
"documents," _ipsis Hibernis Hiberniores_ for "more Irish than the
Irish." Such phrases are quite unsuitable to the general reader, and
as perfect equivalents can be found in English, there would be no
point in using them, even if writing for a learned society.
Modern English, and especially colloquial English, has borrowed a
great deal from the American way of speaking English. The people of
the United States, though their language is that of the
mother-country, have modified it so that it is, as it were, a mirror
of the difference between American and English life. In America there
is more hurry and bustle and less dignity. It is this difference which
makes Americans and the American way of speaking appear interesting
and piquant to English people. But this is no good reason for the
adoption of American mannerisms into the English language. A typically
American word is _boom_, meaning a sudden coming into popularity of
something. Thus one may speak of a "boom" in motors, and the word has
become quite common in English; but it is not beautiful, and we could
easily have done without it. Words which sound quite natural when used
by Americans often seem unnecessarily "slangy" when used by English
people.
* * * * *
End of Project Gutenberg's Stories That Words Tell Us, by Elizabeth O'Neill