Writing syle ... exactly what is it?

Your writing style is your unique writer's voice -- and flaws here are the hardest things of all to find and correct, because these are most often "spoken language" traits, "habits of speech." They pass over into the written word, where they don't belong, and where they glare off the page sounding clumsy, awkward, or just plain weird.

There is no five-minute fix for this point of copy editing, but many years ago a slim little book was written, Elements of Style. In 1918, William Strunk Jr., an English professor, attempted to touch down on every essential element and explain it with examples. In the following 90 years, the work has been revised several times; it was released into the public domain in 1995, and at the time of this writing you can buy it on paper (Macmillan, New York), or download it as an ebook.

Stay on this page, and a little further down, we'll lift the cover and take a peek into Strunk's slim volume.

Some errors of style are colloquialisms, or regionalisms — slang terms from a geographical area which don't mean much, a hundred miles away. For instance:

A "buttie" and a "sarnie" are the same thing. A sandwich. But only in the UK. "Miffed" means annoyed, so long as you're in the US. "Chuntering" is a cross between grumbling and chattering ... in the UK. "Chooks and snags and keks" are chickens and sausages and eggs ... so long as you're in Australia. "Pollies" could be parrots or politicians, depending on where you are. "Singlets and beanies" are undershirts and woollen hats ... in Australia. "Sourdoughs and Cheechakos" are terms making perfect sense, in Alaska! "Pootling" is a verb meaning "to drive slowly" or wander about at leisure ... in London.

So, watch out for colloquialisms and regionalisms in your narrative. You can use them in dialog, where they're important in the development of your character's unique voice. So long as the meaning is either contextually clear, or you make it clear, this is the place to use colloquialisms. It's when they escape into the narrative that the problem begins!

However, most errors of style that come out at the copy editing stage are speech patterns which don't work on paper. A good example of this is the passive voice. In speech, you can get away with using the passive voice; it sounds absolutely normal: "Insufficient time is being spent on the problem," is perfectly normal in speech.

However, agents, editors and publishers want the active voice, virtually to the exclusion of all else. In the active voice you would say, "The problem is being neglected."

Look at these examples of active and passive; sort them out and see the way to navigate through these rapids:

Passive:
The river was being progressively polluted by farming along both banks.
Active:
Farmer along both banks of the river were progressively polluting it.

Passive:
The little boy was brought to school by his father.
Active:
The man brought his little boy to school.

Passive:
The book had been read by a thousand students.
Active:
A thousand students had read the book.

Passive:
The intruder was mauled by three guard dogs.
Active:
Three guard dogs mauled the intruder.

Passive:
Maureen was made a fool of by Uncle Arthur.
Active:
Uncle Arthur made a fool of Maureen.

Here's the trick: look for the verb. (Above, the verbs are bring read, maul, make, and "progressively pollute.") Look for who performs the verb. Reword the sentence to make sure that the subject is actually performing the verb:

Passive: The cat was rescued by two young girls.
Verb: rescue.
The girls performed the rescue, not the cat!
The verb was performed ON the cat -- he was rescued!
Therefore,
Active: Two young girls rescued the cat.

Editors are quite strict about this point. It's usually active voice or the rejection pile.

Watch out particularly for catch phrases. For instance, "A fine performance was given by all concerned," sounds fine in your ear, but on paper, editors want to see the active voice: "All concerned delivered fine performances."

Copy editing is the time to be thorough, and meticulous ... and to know the rules.

Another excellent example of an error of style is to overindulge in "wordiness." When we're speaking, our speech patterns govern how we talk, describe things, relate other conversations, and, again, we can get away with almost anything. However, in text, wordiness soon becomes apparent. Your copy editing will be an interesting experience for some time, as you discover how to weed passages like this:

I was told by one of the teachers that Roger is a much better than average student with a fairly good attitude toward the other children in the class, and, in reality, the only area in which his behavior is below-par would have to be his hobby, which — it would be absolutely accurate to say — is inclined to make rather a mess.

Try this:

Roger's teacher says he is a good student who responds well to classmates, though his hobby makes a mess.

The simplest rule is: never use five words to say what you can say in three! (Editors and agents can spot this at a glance, and they will know (or think) your work is padded out to make a short story much longer. Some magazines pay by the word, and even though its only 3c or 5c per word, if you can sprawl the story out over an extra thousand words, you just picked up another fifty dollars! Expect strict editing from magazines that pay by the word, for obvious reasons.)

Literally hundreds of bad speech habits shadow every word we speak aloud, and none of them matters because the spoken word vanishes into the ether. The trouble starts when they're written down. They come back to haunt us. For this reason, political speeches are written long ahead of time, by professional speech writers!

Having said all this, it is also very important to find your own unique "voice" as a writer, and hang onto it. If 250 different writers were to obey every rule of the little book Elements of Style, they would sound almost identical.

This might be fine for academic writing -- but not for fiction, where it's a writer's unique treatment of words, sentences, dialog, narrative, discription, that go together to make successful fiction happen. We don't want or need romances, westerns, historicals and science fiction to all sound alike!

Copy editing is a process in which you must use your judgement. Don't get so wordy that editors and agents constantly reject you ... at the same time, don't let adherence to the Elements of Style strangle out either your voice or your creativity.

At times in this area of copy editing, it will be as if you're walking on a tightrope. When you begin to feel overwhelmed, STOP. Instead of editing yourself to death, or rewriting for the tenth time, go for a walk. Put on some music. Make coffee (apple tea will also get your brain going). Put your feet up. Pick up a couple of dozen books by other writers, in your genre, if you're writing in a niche. READ. See how other writers express themselves by flipping through the books and touching down on a paragraph here and there. You're not looking at the story or the character development, or the descriptive narrative. You're looking at the flow of words.

And some of the time, you're going to see thoroughly sloppy writing. Best-selling writers are allowed to break the rules. When you're breaking into the industry at the bottom, you have to know what the rules are, and play by them. However, if you pick up a dozen books and read a few pages here and there, you'll see some extremely good writing, as well as dross.

Be analytical. Try to key, or focus, on what these writers are doing that works, and works well. See if you can get into the habit of writing concisely. If not, fall back on copy editing to prune, or weed, sentences which are too wordy. The more you do this, the easier it will become. Eventually, you'll be able to do it without even thinking about it.

Errors in style ... the Elements of Style ... is an absolutely vast subject. An in-depth study would take a whole book, and indeed, entire books have been devoted to this topic. Copy editing, as a job, involves knowing most of the rules and making personal judgements: where do you conform to the rulebook? Where do you diverge, to protect your unique writing style?


William Strunk Jr.'s Elements of Style is the skinny volume we recommend. In the space of around 110pp, he looks are every imaginable awkward use of the language and, through the means of examples, smooths out the wrinkles.

Here's an example:

Keep related words together.

The position of the words in a sentence is the principal means of showing their relationship. The writer must therefore, so far as possible, bring together the words, and groups of words, that are related in thought, and keep apart those which are not so related.

The subject of a sentence and the principal verb should not, as a rule, be separated by a phrase or clause that can be transferred to the beginning.

Poor
Wordsworth, in the fifth book of The Excursion, gives a minute description of this church.

Better
In the fifth book of The Excursion, Wordsworth gives a minute description of this church.

Poor
Cast iron, when treated in a Bessemer converter, is changed into steel.

Better
By treatment in a Bessemer converter, cast iron is changed into steel.

The objection is that the interposed phrase or clause needlessly interrupts the natural order of the main clause. This objection, however, does not usually hold when the order is interrupted only by a relative clause or by an expression in apposition. Nor does it hold in periodic sentences in which the interruption is a deliberately used means of creating suspense (see examples under Rule 18).

The relative pronoun should come, as a rule, immediately after its antecedent.

Poor
There was a look in his eye that boded mischief.

Better
In his eye was a look that boded mischief.

Poor
He wrote three articles about his adventures in Spain, which were published in Harper's Magazine.

Better
He published in Harper's Magazine three articles about his adventures in Spain.

Poor
This is a portrait of Benjamin Harrison, grandson of William Henry Harrison, who became President in 1889.

Better
This is a portrait of Benjamin Harrison, grandson of William Henry Harrison. He became President in 1889.

If the antecedent consists of a group of words, the relative comes at the end of the group, unless this would cause ambiguity.

Poor
A proposal to amend the Sherman Act, which has been variously judged

Better
A proposal, which has been variously judged, to amend the Sherman Act

Poor
The grandson of William Henry Harrison, who

Better
William Henry Harrison's grandson, Benjamin Harrison, who

Modifiers should come, if possible next to the word they modify. If several expressions modify the same word, they should be so arranged that no wrong relation is suggested.

Poor
All the members were not present.

Better
Not all the members were present.

Poor
He only found two mistakes.

Better
He found only two mistakes.

Poor
Major R. E. Joyce will give a lecture on Tuesday evening in Bailey Hall, to which the public is invited, on "My Experiences in Mesopotamia" at eight P. M.

Better
On Tuesday evening at eight P. M., Major R. E. Joyce will give in Bailey Hall a lecture on "My Experiences in Mesopotamia." The public is invited.

...and so on! The book is very "dense," meaning Strunk doesn't waffle on. He jumps directly from one sin to another, deals with each in a minimum of words and proceeds to the next. The book is invaluable if you're still in the stage where you're learning to analyze the language ... perhaps trying to figure our which combination of words is actually correct. If you're "playing by ear," this is the book for you.

You can actually download it: Click here to do just that! However, a book is so nice to have on the shelf, and you can also order it from Amazon.com, using the button to your left.

If Elements of Style sounds too dense -- too hard -- then by all means stay on this blog and check out a number of other posts. We're covering the same ground, but we're doing it with a coffee in one hand and a cookie in the other...!

Here are some more posts which will help you work out what Style is all about, and get it under control:

Being wordy: how much is too much?!

Is B following A, and Z following Y ...?! Are you sure?!

Is there an echo in here?!

Writing with consistency

Writing with absolute clarity

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Is B following A, and Z following Y ...?! Are you sure?!

Nonsequiteur: the narrative "doesn't follow."

In the course of your copy editing, you'll come across several places in your material where, when you were writing, your mind went off at a tangent to the material. The flow of your narrative gives a hiccups, or trips. At the time, you didn't notice it, but reading the text back, days or weeks later, you do. Time to fix it.

"Nonsequiteur" is Latin, and it literally means "out of sequence," or "not sequential." When something is out of line, it should pop out of the narrative at you, begging to be fixed. Like this:

"Jack was late arriving in Innishfree, but the lady's umbrella was bright scarlet."
"Simon took a great vacation in Delaware, and Mandy's grandfather has a dog called Jock."
"Maud went shopping, and the Pope's car is white."
"The kids fed the ducks, but Qantas is laying off more staff."
"Summer came in early that year; my bedroom walls are pale green."
"Jeff should attend more lectures; he's been missing a lot of sleep." (!)
Like a great snake, the river curved through the hills, and the movie that night was made in 1966."
The chiropractor fixed Joe's back yesterday, but the cat is still asleep on the couch."

Some nonsequiteurs can be hilarious, like the one which seems to say Jeff ought to be in the lecture hall more to catch up on his missed sleep! Copy editing will find these errors, if you're vigilant.

Nonsequiteurs can easily happen if your let your sentences get long and rambling, and especially if they begin to suffer from "run on syndrome." A run on sentence is a sentence where several separate sentences have been glued together with commas, colons, dashes and conjunctions (and, but, therefore, because, as, when, while, however, though, then, after which, throughout which ...!)

Here are some beauties -- to demonstrate what NOT to do! In the excerpt below, each paragraph is a single sentence. Mel Keegan wrote this piece as a joke -- and it takes an extremely talented writer to pull this off. The sentences actually scan and make sense, while being longer than some of the chapters in the Iliad! Take a deep breath:

Once upon a time, on the third moon of the planet Katzenensis IV, there lived a handsome prince who lived in a castle that could have used a lick or two of paint, but wasn't likely to get it because 1) the atmosphere outside the castle was corrosive and 2) the prince's family were so poor that they couldn't afford the nanotech paint that would survive point 1.

The prince's name was Garbenunkelwassam, but everyone called him "Gar" for short, because the atmosphere on Katzenensis IV was so thin and ratty that long before you got finished with saying "Garbenunkelwassam," you'd have run out of blood oxygen, turned blue and fallen flat on your face, which would be an extremely back thing to do on Katzenensis IV, because the ground was even more corrosive than the air, and if you paddled around barefoot (or did a faceplant), your feet (or face) would be turned to protoplasmic goo in 8.7 seconds flat.

One day, Prince Gar was eating his poor, simple breakfast of beetroot marmalade on black-bread toast (which is a staple dish on his home world, where bacon and eggs, pancakes and maple syrup, waffles and sausages, and boiled eggs and perfectly percolated coffee, and golden brown buttered toast with lashings of freshly churned butter, were all things which people read about in travel brochures for other worlds, but never expect to taste for themselves, on account of being no poor and so isolated on this idiotic little moon).

(Would you like to read the rest of the story?! It was done as a "picture challenge" and is posted as a comment on a blog:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=33321650&postID=7178529278178363177&isPopup=true

Enjoy the story, and the joke ... just don't write like this! Mel's piece is the perfect illustration of what NOT to do. Hats off to a particularly talented writer.)

As a general rule, in your copy editing be on the lookout for sentences which are hard for you to read, even though you wrote them yourself. If you're losing the thread yourself, how will readers keep up with you? Especially readers to whom English is their second or third language! The rule of thumb is: write for your readers, and take pity on 'em!

Writing with absolute clarity

One of the first things an editor or publisher will be looking for in your submission is clarity of writing style.

Conversely ... one of the first things that'll win you a rejection slip is ambiguity!

If your readers have no idea what the heck you mean in a certain passage, you're being ambiguous. When you're editing for yourself, correcting these passages is the toughest of copy editing jobs, because it stands to reason that you always know what you mean. This is where friends and beta readers are indispensable. Ask them to tell you when they just, plain lost the thread of what you were saying. Change the wording so they do understand.

If you're using the right words; and if you've got a lasso on the "killer pronouns" (covered in the basic grammar series of post); and if your sentences are not long and rambling, and hard to follow (covered in the same post-series), you should be pretty darned readable.

It can be difficult to figure out why someone just can't understand what you meant. Have them tell you what they think you meant, and work backwards from there. Copy editing, in this instance, is like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. You become a detective, tracking down the reason something makes no sense.

For instance, you might have used a word the reader doesn't understand. You can look upon them contemptuously for not having a good vocabulary ... but this was a potential customer. If your friend or relative who's beta reading for you doesn't known what dystopian and existential and punctilious mean, it's a safe bet that a significant percentage of the readers in the bookshop don't know, either. The trick is to write with flair and style -- not strangling your style or suffocating your formidable vocabulary -- but at the same time remembering that if you hope to earn royalties, readers have to 1) buy the book, 2) understand and enjoy it, and 3) be eager to buy your next book.

If you're not writing for readers, go ahead and be as clever as you like. If you're writing for academia, you can safely assume they know what you're talking about! Of you're writing for the general marketplace, remember that the average reader of the English language is only reading at something like a Grade 8 or 9 level:

Literacy in America
On average, Americans have about 12.5 years of education. However, people read several grades lower than their highest educational achievement, so the average reading level for adult Americans is actually somewhere around eighth or ninth grade. Literacy skills vary widely, so you cannot assume that materials that work in one place or situation will be acceptable in another. They also vary by age and socioeconomic status: people in Medicaid programs tend to read at the fifth grade level or lower and literacy skills for those 65 and older are substantially lower than those for the population as a whole.

In the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS), which reports functional literacy in five levels, nearly half of the adults scored in the lowest two levels of literacy. However, 44 percent of people 65 and older scored in the lowest level, and over two thirds of welfare recipients scored in the lowest two levels. According to researchers, the materials in quality reports typically require literacy skills at Level 5.

Select for information on the findings of the National Adult Literacy Survey.
From http://www.talkingquality.gov/docs/section3/3_4.htm

If you're hoping to give up the day job and live on your royalties by writing for a niche or genre, it's a good idea to get to know who's reading your work. Also, read your competition! Don't "write down" to the reader, but without a doubt, you must write to be understood. If the reader can't understand you, they'll count the financial investment in your first book as a waste, will dump it at the nearest book-swap, and won't buy your next one.

Another area when you can be difficult to understand is in delicate subject matter, where you're trying to use euphemisms. Too many euphemistic terms, too many poetic, flowery sentences used to get around some sizzling (or gross) scenes, and anyone's writing can jump off the tracks. If the material is so gross, or so sizzling ... does it belong on the page? Credit your readers with imagination, and use the copy editing experience to make the final decisions on what "makes the cut" and what doesn't. Also, bear in mind, no one actually needs to have the physical act of love spelled out in every last detail; we've all known how it goes since about the age of seven! If you're uncomfortable with the material, do what writers used to do in the days before steamy fiction was acceptable. Leave two blank lines and cut to the next scene! Every reader knows exactly what happened during those blank lines, and you can duck the subject neatly, and hence avoid being so foggy and vague, readers were confused. Copy editing is the time to make this artistic decision.

Similarly, you must decide what level of violence you want to include. being realistic is one thing, but violence can go way over the top, and again, you're wading knee-deep in euphemisms. Same story: use your copy editing process to decide what's going to land on the page and what gets cut.

Occasionally, you'll discover (all writers do!) that when you come back to something you wrote six months ago, and read it back, YOU have no idea, none at all, what you meant in a particular passage. It's the strangest feeling, to be reading your own novel and lose the thread. If you were knitting, they would say you had dropped a stitch. Now, you can only look at the material directly before the problem, and directly after, see if you can infer the meaning ... and if you can't, put a line through the paragraph that went wool-gathering. You might need to construct bridging material to close the narrative back up. You can also discover perfect flow, with the woolly paragraph(s) deleted. You're doing the copy editing here ... you're in charge!