hand to write a story or an article, that they cannot be natural. They
do not realise that they should write as ordinary human beings; they
invariably feel they should write as famous authors; and they promptly
drop the language they use as ordinary human beings in every-day life,
and adopt an artificial, stilted style which they seem to think the
correct thing for an author.
And this artificial phraseology is invariably archaic or Early
Victorian, because the books people see labelled "good literature" or
"the classics" are chiefly by dead-and-gone writers, who wrote in a
style that sometimes sounds old-fashioned in these days, even though
their English was excellent.
[Sidenote: Every Generation shows Special Characteristics of Speech]
Our mode of speech and of writing in this twentieth century is not
precisely that of Shakespeare or Milton, even though the fundamentals
are the same. We live in a nervous, hurrying age, and our language is
more nervous, more terse than it was even twenty years ago. We "speed
up" our sentences, just as we "speed up" our stories and our articles.
We have not time for lengthy introductions that arrive nowhere, and for
ornate perorations that are superfluous. "Labour-saving" and
"conservation of energy" are prominent watchwords of this present age,
and are being applied to our language no less than to our work.
In order to get through all we must get through in a day (or, at any
rate, all that we imagine we must get through!) it has become an
unwritten law that the same thing must not be done twice over; more than
this, we try to find the shortest cut to everywhere. As one result, we
do not use two words where one will suffice; only the undisciplined,
untrained mind employs a string of adjectives where one will convey the
same idea, or repeats practically the same thing several times in
succession.
Of course, all this curtailment can be--and often is--carried to excess,
till only a few essential words are left in a sentence, and these are
clipped of half their syllables; we find much of this in the newspapers
and the periodicals of an inferior class. And it could be pushed so far,
till at length we got to communicate with one another by nothing more
than a series of grunts and snaps and snarls!
[Sidenote: Modernity of Style is Desirable]
But I am not dealing with the forms of speech used by the illiterate or
the half-educated; I am referring to the language used by the most
intelligent of the educated classes, and I want the amateur to remember
that this is not necessarily the language of Shakespeare, even though
the same words be employed. There is a subtle difference in the
placement of words, in the turn of phrases, in the strength and even the
meaning of words, in the shaping of sentences, and that difference is
what, for want of a better word, I term "modernity," and it is a
quality that the amateur requires to cultivate.
This lack of modernity is noticeable in amateurs of all types. It is a
marked feature in the writings of teachers and those who have had a
university education, or purely academic training; and equally it is
conspicuous in the MSS. of the one who leads a very quiet, retired
existence, or has a restricted view of life.
At first sight it may seem strange to the 'varsity girl, who considers
herself the last word in modernity, that I classify her early literary
attempts with those of a middle-aged invalid, let us say, who knows very
little of the world at large.
But those who concentrate exclusively on one idea, or have their outlook
narrowed to one particular groove--whether that groove be church-work,
or housekeeping, or hockey, or reading for a degree--drop into an
antiquated mode of expression, as a rule, the moment they start to write
anything apart from a letter to an intimate. The role of author looms
large before them. The mind instantly suggests the style of those
authors they have been in the habit of reading--and more particularly
those they would like other people to think they were in the habit of
reading--the books that are accepted classics, and, consequently, must
be beyond all question.
It matters not whether amateurs are shaping themselves according to
Cowper and Miss Edgeworth, or striving to live up to the Elizabethan
giants, they arrive at an old-fashioned style for which there is no more
call in the world of to-day than there is for a crinoline or a Roman
toga. And this, despite the greatness of their models.
Here are a few sentences taken at random from the pile of MSS. waiting
attention here in my office:--
[Sidenote: Instances of Antiquated Expressions]
"Let us ponder awhile at the shrine of Nature." This is from an article
on "A Country Walk," written by a High School teacher. Now, would she
have said that, personally, either to a friend or to a class, if they
were going out for a country walk? Of course not! You see at once how
antiquated and stilted it is when you subject it to the test of natural,
present-day requirements.
In another MS. I read, "King Sol was seeking his couch in the west." Why
not have said, "The sun was setting"?
"He was her senior by some two summers," writes a would-be novelist, in
describing hero and heroine. Why "some" two summers, I wonder? And
would it not be more straightforward to say, "He was two years older
than she"?
"They were of respectable parentage, though poor and hard-working
withal." Needless to say this occurs in a story of rustic life. Why is
it that the amateur so often describes the cottager in this "poor but
pious" strain?
"We saw ahead of us her home--to wit, a rose-grown, yellow-washed
cottage." And a very pretty home it was, no doubt; but why spoil it by
the introduction of "to wit"?
"He was indeed a meet lover for such an up-to-date girl." The word
"meet" is not merely antiquated and unsuited to a story of present-day
life; it seems particularly out of place when used in close connection
with so modern a term as "up-to-date." The two expressions are centuries
apart, and both should not have been included in the same sentence.
One MS. says, "I would fain tell you of the devious ways in which the
poor girl strove to earn an honest livelihood and keep penury at bay;
but, alas! dear reader, space does not avail." On the whole, one is
thankful that it didn't avail, all things considered!
In a letter accompanying another MS. the author explains, "You won't
find any slang in _my_ writing. I revel in the rich sonority of the
English language." That is all right; but some people confuse "rich
sonority" with artificiality. A word may be richness itself if rightly
applied, but if used in a wrong connection, or employed in an affected
or unnatural manner, it will lose all its richness and become merely
old-fashioned, or else absurd.
I have not the space to spare for further instances, but I notice one
phrase that is curiously popular with the beginner, who frequently lets
you know the name of some character in these words, "Mary Jones, for
such was her name----" etc. I cannot understand what is the charm of
that expression, "for such was her name"; but it is one of the amateurs'
many stand-bys.
Common sense will tell you that the surest way to gain a good modern
style is to read good modern stuff.
[Sidenote: And now for a Remedy]
Begin with a special study of the Editorials in the best type of
newspapers. This is reading that I strongly advocate for the amateur in
order to counteract archaic tendencies; though I wish emphatically to
point out that by the "Leading Articles" I do not mean the average
"Woman's Gossip," or whatever other name is given to the column of
inanities that is devoted to feminine topics; for in some newspapers
this is about as futile and feeble, and as badly written as it is
possible for a newspaper column to be.
Unfortunately, the average person does not read the best part of the
newspaper. He, and more particularly she, reads the headlines, skims the
news, and runs the eye over anything that specially appeals, looks down
the Births, Marriages and Deaths, and not much more. But this will not
improve anyone's English.
Take a paper like the _Spectator_. Here you have modern journalistic
writing at its best. Read the Leading Articles carefully each week. Read
also the paragraphs summarising the news on the opening pages.
Read aloud, if you can; this will help to impress phrases and sentences
on your mind. Observe how clear and concise and straightforward is the
style. Of course, the articles will vary; they are not all written by
the same pen; but those that follow immediately after the news
paragraphs are always worth the student's attention. You will notice
that the writer has something definite to say, and he says it plainly,
in a way that is instantly understood. The words used will be to the
point; there will be a good choice of language, yet never an
unnecessary piling on of words. You may, or may not, agree with
everything that is said; but that is not of paramount importance at the
moment, as in this case you are reading in order to acquire a clear,
easy style of writing rather than to gain special information.
Nevertheless, you will be enlarging your mental outlook considerably.
In the same way, study the Editorials in any of the daily or weekly
papers of high standing and reputation, avoiding the papers of the
"sensational snippet" order. You will soon get to recognise whether the
style is good or poor.
The _British Weekly_ (London) is celebrated for its literary quality. It
will be a gain if you read regularly the article on the front page, and
"The Correspondence of Claudius Clear," which is a feature every week.
This is to start you on a course of reading that will give modernity to
your style, and help to rid you of the antiquated expressions and
mannerisms that are so noticeable in amateur work.
Mere "newspaper reading" may seem to you a disappointing beginning to
the programme. "The newspaper is read by everybody every day," you may
tell me, "and what has it done for their style?"
But I am not advocating that type of "newspaper reading." This isn't a
question of reading some murder case, or imbibing the exhilarating
information that some one met Mrs. Blank on Fifth Avenue the other day,
and she looked sweet in a pale blue hat.
Leave all that part of the paper severely alone. Study the Editorials as
you would study a book, since the writings of first-class journalists
are excellent models for the amateur, a fact that is curiously
overlooked by the student. Read a fixed amount each day, instead of
relying on a haphazard picking up of a paper and a careless glance over
its contents. Then, as a useful exercise, take the subject-matter of a
paragraph, or an article, and see how _you_ would have treated it; try
if you can improve on it (after all, most things in this world can be
improved upon if the right person does the improving). You will be
surprised to find how interesting a study this will become in a very
little while.
Do not misunderstand me: I am not advocating newspaper reading _in
place_ of classical works, but as a necessary and valuable addition to a
writer's literary studies.
The Need for Enlarging the Vocabulary
Equal in importance to the cultivation of a modern style in writing, is
the necessity for having a wide selection of words at your command, and
a keen sense of their value. Some people think the chief thing in
writing is to have ideas in one's head. Ideas are essential, but they
are not everything. Your brain may be crammed full of the most wonderful
ideas, but they will be useless if they get no farther than your brain.
It is one thing to see things yourself, and quite another to be able to
make an absent person see them.
It is one thing to receive impressions in your own mind from your
surroundings, or as the product of imagination, and quite another to
record those impressions in black and white.
Tens of thousands of people are conscious of vivid mental pictures, for
one who is able to reproduce them in such a form that they become vivid
pictures to others. And one reason for the inability of the majority to
express their thoughts in writing is the paucity of their vocabulary,
and their lack of the power to put words together in a convincing and
accurate manner.
Girls often write to me, "I think such wonderful things in my brain; I'm
sure I could write a book, if only people would give me a little
encouragement," or, "if only I had time."
But if they had all the encouragement and all the time in the world,
they could not transfer those wonderful thoughts from their brain to
paper unless they had practice, the right words at their command, and
the experience that comes from hard regular working at the subject.
What people do not realise is this: wonderful thoughts are surging
through thousands of brains. They are fairly common _inside_ people's
heads; the difficulty is in getting them out of the head--as most of us
soon find out when we start to write! I shall refer to this later on.
If you wish to write down your thoughts--no matter whether they are
concerned with the emotions, or religion, or nature, or cookery--you
must employ words; and the more subtle, or elevated, or complex the
subject-matter of your thoughts, the greater need will there be for a
wide choice of words, in order to express exactly the various grades
and shades of meaning that will be involved.
If your vocabulary be small--_i.e._ if you only know the average words
used by the average person--there is every chance that your writings
will be flat and colourless, and no more interesting, or exciting, or
instructive, or entertaining than the ordinary conversation of the
average person.
Hence the necessity for enlarging your vocabulary, so that you have the
utmost variety to choose from in the way of suitable words, expressive
words, and beautiful words, (this last the modern amateur is apt to
overlook).
[Sidenote: The Average Person's Vocabulary is Meagre]
The smallness of the vocabulary used by the average person to-day is
partly due to the mass of feeble reading-matter with which the country
was flooded in the years immediately preceding the War.
In addition to this, life had become very easy for the majority of folk
in recent times; money was supposed to be life's sole requisite. Work of
all kinds was "put out" as much as possible; we shirked physical labour;
lessons were made as easy as they could be; games were played for us by
professionals while we looked on; effort of every sort was distasteful
to us. It has been said, that as a nation we were becoming flabby and
inert, and were fast drifting into an exceedingly lazy, commonplace
mental attitude. We boasted that we couldn't think (even though with
many this was merely a pose); we seemed quite proud of ourselves when we
proclaimed our indifference to all serious reading, and our inability to
understand anything.
That pre-War period, given over to money-worship, not only curtailed our
choice of words by its all-pervading tendency to mind-laziness, but it
had its vulgarising effect upon our language, just as it had upon our
dress, our mode of living, and our amusements.
[Sidenote: The dull Monotony of English Slang]
Not only did we cease to take the trouble to speak correctly, but we
almost ceased to be lucid! We made one word--slang or otherwise--do duty
in scores of places where its introduction was either senseless or
idiotic, rather than exert our minds to find the correct word for each
occasion. Many people appeared to think that the use of slang was not
only "smart," but quite clever; whereas nothing more surely indicates a
poor order of intelligence.
My chief objection to a constant use of slang is not because it is
outside the pale of classical English, but because it is so ineffective
and feeble.
As a rule, slang words and phrases are, in the main, pointless and weak,
for the simple reason that we use one word for every occasion when it
happens to be the craze; and before long it comes to means nothing at
all, even if it chanced to mean anything at the start--which it seldom
does.
Our grandmothers objected to their own set using slang on the ground
that it was "unladylike." The modern girl smiles at the term. "Who
desires to be 'ladylike'?" inquires the advanced young person of to-day.
Yet our grandmothers were right fundamentally; with their generation,
the word "lady" implied a woman of education, intelligence, and
refinement. The user of slang is the person who lacks these
qualifications; she has neither the wit nor the knowledge to employ a
better and more expressive selection of words.
[Sidenote: Slang indicates Ignorance]
Slang indicates, not advanced ideas, but ignorance--any parrot can
repeat an expression, it takes a clever person always to use the right
word.
Many people who constantly employ any word that happens to be current,
do not really know what they are saying, neither do they attach any
weight to their words; they merely repeat some inanity, because they
have not the brains to say anything more intelligent, or they are too
indolent to use what brains they have.
Notice how a set of big schoolgirls will, at one time, use the word
"putrid," let us say, and apply it to everything, from a broken
shoe-lace to examinations. And women will call everything "dinkie," or
"ducky," or something equally enlightening and artistic, working the
word all day long until it is ousted by another senseless expression.
What power of comparison has a girl, such as one I met recently, who, in
the course of ten minutes described a hat as "awf'ly niffy," a man as
"awf'ly sweet," a mountain as "awf'ly rippin'," and another girl as an
"awful cat"?
What does it all amount to, this perversion of legitimate words or
introduction of meaningless ones? Nothing--actually nothing. That is the
pity of it. If these "ornaments of conversation" enabled one to grasp a
point better, to see things more clearly, or to arrive at a conclusion
more rapidly, I, for one, would gladly welcome them, as I welcome
anything that will save time and labour. But, unfortunately, they only
tend to dwarf the intelligence and to lessen the value of our speech.
I have enlarged on the undesirability of slang, because many amateurs
think it will give brilliance, or smartness, or up-to-date-ness to their
work. But it doesn't. It obscures rather than brightens; it tends to
monotony instead of smartness. The beginner will be wise to avoid it,
unless it is required legitimately in recording the conversation of a
slangy person.
[Sidenote: Some Books that will Enlarge your Vocabulary]
To enlarge your selection of words, you must read books of the
essay type rather than fiction, as these usually give the widest
range of English. Two authors stand out above all others in this
connection--Ruskin and R.L. Stevenson. Both men had an extraordinary
instinct for the right word on all occasions--the word that expressed
exactly the idea each wished to convey.
Read some of Stevenson's essays slowly and carefully. Don't gobble them!
You want to impress the words, and the connection in which they are
used, on your mind. It is an effort to most of us to read slowly in
these hustling times; yet nothing but deliberate, careful reading will
serve to teach the correct use of words and their approximate values.
And I need not remind you to look up in a dictionary the meaning of any
word that is new to you.
Ruskin's _Sesame and Lilies_ you will have read many times, I hope; if
not, get it as soon as ever you can. His _Poetry of Architecture_ will
make a useful study; also _Queen of the Air_ and _Praeterita_ (his own
biography). His larger works, while containing innumerable passages of
great beauty, are so often overweighted with technical details and
principles of art (some quite out-of-date now) that they become tedious
at times. Yet there is so much in all of his writings to enlarge your
working-list of words, that you will benefit by reading any of his
books.
Among present-day writers I particularly recommend Sir A. Quiller-Couch,
Dr. Charles W. Eliot; Dr. A.C. Benson, Dr. Edmund Gosse, Coulson
Kernahan, and Augustine Birrell, whose volumes of essays will not only
enlarge your vocabulary, but will prove particularly instructive in
suggesting the right placing of words, and in giving you a correct
feeling for their value.
Of course this does not exhaust the list of authors with commendable
vocabularies; but it gives you something to start on.
[Sidenote: It is the Value of a Word, not Its Unusuality, that Counts]
Notice that the writers I have suggested do not necessarily use
extraordinary words, or uncommon words, or very long-syllabled words,
or ponderous and learned words. One great charm of their writings lies
in the fact that they invariably use the word that is exactly right, the
word that conveys better than any other word the thought or sensation
they wished to convey. Sometimes it is an unusual word; sometimes it is
a familiar word used in an unfamiliar connection; but in most cases you
feel that the word used could not have been bettered--it sums up
precisely, and conveys to your mind instantly, the thought that was in
the author's mind.
Many amateurs fall into the error of thinking that an uncommon word, or
a long word, or a word with an imposing sound, gives style to their
writings, and they despise the simple words, considering them
common-place. I heard an old clergyman in a small country church explain
to the congregation, in the course of a sermon, that the words "mixed
multitude" meant "an heterogeneous conglomeration"; but I think his
rustic audience understood the simple Bible words better than they did
his explanatory notes.
I remember seeing an examination paper, wherein a student had
paraphrased the line--
"The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,"
as, "The bellowing cattle are meandering tardily over the neglected,
untilled meadow land."
This is an instance of the wrong word being used in nearly every case;
and as a complete sentence it would have been difficult to construct
anything, on the same lines, that conveyed less the feeling Gray wished
to convey when he wrote the poem!
Good writing is not dependent upon long or ornate or unusual words; it
is the outcome of a constant use of the right word--the word that best
conveys the author's idea.
If there be a choice between a complex word and a simple word, use the
simple one.
Remember that the object of writing is not the covering of so much blank
paper, nor the stringing together of syllables; it is the transference
from the author's brain to other people's brains of certain thoughts and
situations and sensations. And the best writing is that which conveys,
by the simplest and most direct means, the clearest reproduction of the
author's ideas.
The Charm of Musical Language
There is a very special and distinct charm about literature that is
musical to the ear--words that are euphonious, phrases that are
rhythmic, sentences that rise and fall with definite cadence.
Unfortunately, the twentieth century, so far, has been primarily
concerned with the making of noise rather than music. Even before the
War, we lived in a welter of hideous jarring sound, to which every
single department of life has added its quota. Outdoors the vehicles
honk and rattle and roar; in business life the clack and whirr of
machinery drowns all else; in the home doors are banged, voices are
raised to a raucous pitch, children are permitted to shout and clatter
about at all times and seasons--indeed, it is the exception rather than
the rule, nowadays, to find a quiet-mannered, well-ordered household.
When Strauss put together his sound monstrosities, which he misnamed
music, he was only echoing the general noise-chaos that had taken
possession of the universe, permeating art and literature no less than
everyday life. The nightmares of the cubists and futurists were merely
undisciplined blatancy and harshness rendered in colour instead of in
sound, and were further demonstrations of the crudity to which a nation
is bound to revert when it wilfully discards the finer things of the
soul in a mad pursuit of money.