Kyle's Style Rule Essay

There are many ways for a writer to make their writing easier to read. Most of them are tricks known to good writers that the reader hardly notices, but improve the flow of writing greatly. I found one rule that allows for great improvements in writing with little work: using positive statements.

Here is my interpretation of this rule:

Positive Statements
Using positive form in statements makes writing more concise and easy to read. Avoid using the word "not" to evade concise statements.

Examples:

Bad - Jerry was not likely to read the newspaper.

Good - Jerry rarely reads the newspaper.

Why My Interpretation?

This rule was not hard for me to come up with. This rule was easy to come up with. The second sentence sounds better.

I decided to change this rule slightly because, while the rule remains true to Strunk and White's use of it. I think that their reasons for using it could be altered. Strunk and White state that this rule “Avoids tame, colorless, hesitating, noncommittal language (19) which is true. But I think they could have taken this a step further. They focus on using the positive because it sounds better to the reader, but don't talk enough about how it makes the writing more clear. Their reasoning makes the rule more confusing.

Using positive form in a statement simply sounds better. If a writer is frequently using negative statements such as, “Barry was not an honest person,” it can cause a reader to get caught up on the sentence. If a reader stumbles on a sentence in their reading because of negative wording. then they might lose track of what the writing was trying to say. Simply saying, “Barry was dishonest,” takes care of this problem and makes the statement much more to the point. It's much harder to stumble on, “Barry was dishonest,” so it is a much better sentence.

In Joseph Williams' Style: Toward Clarity and Grace, Williams says, “Some sentences and paragraphs enjoy all the virtues of grammatical clarity yet remain wordy and graceless.” (115) This can easily be applied to the rule on positives versus negatives. The positive uses less words and is more concise. This is one of the things to look for as a writer trying to make writing less wordy.

The less reading that it takes to understand the point, the better. Williams say that expressing ideas concisely is imperative, and to, “compress what you mean into the fewest words.” (115) He is obviously a fan of any style rule that is going to eliminate useless language. Strunk and White don't mention eliminating needless words, and instead focus on eliminating certain types of words. While they are right, they make no mention of concise, shorter sentences are better. They focus on the weakness of negative words.

Williams takes the rule even further than I do in saying that, “this advice does not apply to those sentences that raise an issue by contradicting or denying some point that we intend to correct.” (131) This quote does not only explain an exception to my rule. It is an example of the exception itself. What he means is that there are times when a negative phrase sets a sentence up to be refuted by the following statement. It is not improper to use a negative when saying something like, “elephants are not only fast runners, they are good swimmers too.” Here the negative is needed to make the sentences more interesting than just saying, “Elephants are fast runners and they are good swimmers.”

While this rule will not drastically change a person's writing, it will definitely help writers who are on the wordy side. When looking at a piece of writing I did for a class last year I found two instances in which I had used negative form when positive would have been stronger sentences. While this wouldn't have given the paper a major boost, it would have made that part of the paper easier to read. If this had been a published work, and not just a simple paper for a class, I would be kicking myself for the errors. One of the sentences that I had messed up was, “The blood drive was a way for Christie to stop feeling like he wasn't giving back.” This sentence could have been changed to, “The blood drive was a way for Christie to give back.” It still gets the point across, but eliminates a lot of unnecessary words.

Overall I think that Strunk and White's rule is a good one, but I think that it can be changed so that it's reasoning can be more understood. They simply fail to explain that eliminating negative words not only creates stronger sentences, but makes writing more concise and to the point. Adding to their explanation would make it much easier to understand and to apply to writing. When using less words is discussed alongside using positive phrases, it becomes a very applicable style rule.

Works Cited:

White, E.B. and William Strunk. The Elements of Style. New York: Longman, 2000.

Williams, Joseph. Style: Toward Clarity and Grace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995