After a lifetime of writing and editing prose, Jacques Barzun has set down his view of the best ways to improve one’s style. His discussions of diction, syntax, tone, meaning, composition, and revision guide the reader through the technique of making the written word clear and agreeable to read. Exercises, model passages both literary and casual, and hundreds of amusing examples of usage gone wrong show how to choose the right path to self-expression in forceful and distinctive words. ~ Product Description • Rare is the book that causes one to consider — ponder? appraise? examine? inspect? contemplate? — one’s every word. Simple & Direct, a classic text on the craft of writing by the educator Jacques Barzun, does so — with style. His object, says Barzun, is "to resensitize the mind to words." Do not use a word unless you know both its meaning and its connotations, its "quality" and its "atmosphere," and the ways in which it joins with other words. Barzun is an exacting taskmaster, railing against abstractions, "fancy" wordings, contemporary slang (which "prey[s] upon the vocabulary rather than nourish[es] it"), misprints ("it is rudeness to let them appear"), and the like. He bemoans what he sees as "a fury at work in the people to make war on hyphens," and he loathes those new words, such as condominium, that have been "cobbled together out of shavings and leftovers." Still, no stodgy codger he. Barzun merely asks that you "have a point and make it by means of the best word." If that means splitting an infinitive or substituting a "which" for a "that," so be it. Just be sure that the decision to do so is conscious and informed. Once you’ve found the right word, you can move on to writing sentences and then leaning them against one another until they form paragraphs. Only when you’ve gotten it all down, says Barzun, should you allow yourself the pleasure of revision. "Unlike the sculptor," he says, "the writer can start carving and enjoying himself only after he has dug the marble out of his own head." ~ Jane Steinberg

Table of Contents

• • Note to the Fourth Edition    ix
  • Preface    xi
  • Introduction    3
• I.    Diction, or Which Words to Use    13
  • Time Out for Good Reading I: Working and Thinking on the Waterfront    53
• II.    Linking, or What to Put Next    57
  • Time Out for Good Reading II: Aristotle on Detective Fiction    104
• III.    Tone and Tune, or What Impression Will It Make?    109
  • Time Out for Good Reading III: Language Defined    142
• IV.    Meaning, or What Do I Want to Say?    145
  • Time Out for Good Reading IV: Hints for Sawing    181
• V.    Composition, or How Does It Hang Together?    187
  • Time Out for Good Reading V: The Law as Guarantee of Free Speech    221
• VI.    Revision, or What Have I Actually Said?    227
  • Time Out for Good Reading VI    252
  • Hints Toward Improving the Quoted Sentences    255
  • Index of Words, Topics, and Authors    259