Style
Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci Lectorem delectando pariter que
monendo
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Introduction
In technical writing the fundamental task is to deliver information clearly. This
focuses on the content of the text. This is accomplished, as previous
discussion has indicated, by a well designed and executed structure.
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Structured writing is clear writing. While clear writing delivers information
effectively and at the same time brings its own joy to the reader, it can be made
even more enjoyable by a good style.
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Style is the choreography for prose.
Style and content were contrasted by a comparison with directions to a
traveller. When we give directions to a traveller the directions themselves tell
the traveller how to get to their destination.
But as well as telling the traveller
how to get to the destination, you can embellish your directions, and so
enhance the joy of their journey by pointing out places of interest. This
comparison explains style by contrasting it with content –
the directions are
the content and the embellishments are the style. You can make writing more
enjoyable to read by the way you write. In short, style is the way something is
said rather than what is said (although matters of structure often merge into
matters of style). It addresses the reader's senses. Directions to a traveller
stated in good style put a spring in his step.
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Horace Ars Poetica 343. This translates “A writer has done the complete task
when he blends the content with style, equally instructing and delighting the
reader”. In expanded form this cryptic phrase also means learning with a flourish,
knowledge with elegance, information with flow, teaching with relish, business
with pleasure, or information with style.
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Chapter 3 General Structure of a Text, Chapter 4 Legal Structure of
a Text
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See Markensis (1994)
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Posner (1995), Klinck (1987). Cuddon (1984) in A Dictionary of
Literary Terms
defines style in the following way: “The characteristic
manner of expression in prose or verse; how a particular writer says
things. The analysis and assessment of style involves
examination of a
writer’s choice of words, his figures of speech, the devices (rhetorical and
otherwise), the shape of his sentences (whether they be loose or periodic),
the shape of his paragraphs –
indeed, of every conceivable aspect of his
language and the way in which he uses it. Style defies complete analysis
or definition (Remy du Gourmont put the matter tersely when he said
that defining style was like trying to put a sack of flour in a thimble)
because it is the tone and ‘voice’ of the writer himself; as peculiar to him
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