Month: December 2008

More Zinsser on Writing

William Zinsser, On Writing Well, 5th ed., Chapter 13:

1. "Use active verbs unless there is no comfortable way to get around a passive verb." A good rule of thumb.

2. "Passive-voice writers," Zinsser tells us, "prefer long words of Latin origin to short Anglo-Saxon words — which compounds their trouble and makes their sentences still more glutinous." (111) Here again we see that Zinsser has a hard time following his own advice. 'Glutinous' is from the Latin, glutinosus, and means having the quality of glue. Why didn't Zinsser just write 'gummy'?

My point is not that he should have written 'gummy,' but that he ought to reexamine his animus against words of Latin origin, an animus he shares with Orwell.  Brevity and Anglo-Saxonism are values, but there are competing values.

3. "Most adverbs are unnecessary." Yes. "Most adjectives are also unnecessary." Ditto. I would have preferred the quantifier, 'many,' but let's not quibble.

4. "Prune out the small words that qualify how you feel and how you think and what you saw: 'a bit,' 'a little,' 'sort of,' 'kind of,' 'rather,' 'quite,' 'very,' 'too,' 'pretty much,' 'in a sense,' and dozens more." (114) And while we are at it, prune 'out' from the sentence just quoted.

5. ". . . let's retire the pompous 'arguably.' Unarguably we don't need it." (114)

Here I must register my disapprobation. One man's pomposity is another's urbanity. I use 'arguably' to mean it is arguable that or it can be plausibly argued that. Employing this phrase, I signal my awareness that the issue in question is difficult and that intelligent people may well disagree. I indicate that I am a civilized fellow and not a rude dogmatist. Example: 'David Lewis' On the Plurality of Worlds is arguably the best work of analytic metaphysics to appear in English in the 1980s.' 'Arguably' softens an assertion in need of softening: there are no established criteria of good, better, best in philosophy. There is no call for dogmatism. But if I were engaged in polemic with a leftie, and needed to appear firm before an audience, then more bluntness and less urbanity would be in order.

The same goes for 'register my disapprobation.' I could have written, ' Here I must disagree.' If I were an engineer writing a technical report, I would cut to the chase and elide the ornate. But I'm not. Why should I not make use of my vocabulary? Should dancers execute only the simplest steps? Ought all buildings be Bauhaus?

"Style," said Schopenhauer, "is the physiognomy of the mind." I would add that we don't all have the minds of simpletons.

Zinsser on Writing

I found William Zinsser, On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction, 5th ed., in a discard bin  a while back for a quarter. A nice find and a good read. His politics are leftish, are they not? But I won't hold that against him. From what I have read, his advice is good. Like Orwell before him, he urges a style spare and stripped-down: "the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components." (p.7) But, like Orwell, he has trouble taking his own advice:

Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that's already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what — these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence.(p.7)

Suppose we rewrite the sentence in accordance with Zinsser's advice:

Every useless word, every word that could be shortened, every adverb whose meaning is already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what — these are the adulterants that weaken a sentence.

Without changing the thought at all, I took a sentence of 54 words and rewrote it in 39 words, saving 15 words. "Thousand and one" is useless filler and false precision, and "weaken the strength of" is pleonasm.

But the deeper issue is whether a lean style is always best. Why should every long word be traded in for a short one? It is a bit like demanding that one always dress in a purely functional way, stripping from one's apparel all ornamentation. That would get rid of all ties, especially those most precious of ties, the bow tie. Think of all the 'fashion accessories' the ladies would have to renounce.

I'm a sartorial functionalist myself, and wouldn't be caught dead in a bow tie or in suspenders. Formal attire for me is anything in excess of my 'loincloth.' But in my writing I compensate: I allow myself a modicum of elegance, a bit of leisurely strut and glide. I thumb my nose at editors and schoolmarms who think all prose must fit the same crabbed mold. I won't apologize for 'modicum' or 'sartorial' or for an allusion to Sartor Resartus; if the reader doesn't get it, that is his problem. Are we writing only for the culturally retarded?

And is it always wrong to use an adverb whose meaning is already in the verb? Mocking Al Franken, I may describe him as a 'lying liar' thus rubbing his nose in his own idiotic redundancy.

These quibbles notwithstanding, Zinsser's book promises both pleasure and instruction.

On Light

Today I preach on a text from Joseph Joubert:

Light. It is a fire that does not burn. (Notebooks, 21)

Just as the eyes are the most spiritual of the bodily organs, light is the most spiritual of physical phenomena. And there is no light like the lambent light of the desert. The low humidity, the sparseness of vegetation that even in its arboreal forms hugs the ground, the long, long vistas that draw the eye out to shimmering buttes and mesas — all of these contribute to the illusion that the light is alive. This light does not consume, like fire, but allows things to appear. It licks, like flames, but does not incinerate. ('Lambent' from Latin lambere, to lick.)

Extended Service Warranties

Conversation in the frigidarium one morning drifted onto the weighty topic of extended service warranties. A poolmate explained how a zealous salesman tried to sell her such a warranty on a filing cabinet! It occurred to me that even more absurd would be extended warranties on ball peen hammers and anvils. Or how about coffins?

"If in the first one hundred years of your subterranean repose you should ever experience any moisture or other intrusion due to a failure of the seals, just call our toll-free number conveniently stamped on the underside of the coffin lid, and a repairman will come to your gravesite, exhume your coffin, make necessary repairs, and restore everything to its original condition. All at no additional expense."

Against Subjective Existential Meaning

What is my life's point and purpose?  How silly to say, as many do, that it is wholly up to the individual to give it sense and purpose!  If I must give my life meaning, then it has no meaning prior to and independent of my giving it meaning, which is to say that it has no meaning, full stop.  Am I my own source?  Can I 'recuperate' every aspect of my facticity by acts of goal-positing?  If my life depends on me for its meaning, then it has no meaning.  To suppose that an otherwise meaningless existence can be made meaningful by subjective acts of meaning-bestowal is like supposing that one can pull oneself up by one's own bootstraps.

If, for whatever reason, one denies that human life possesses objective meaning, then one ought to have the intellectual honesty to maintain that it has no meaning, and not seek refuge in the shabby evasion of subjective meaning.

‘Madoff’ as Quasi-Aptronym

Unless you live in a cave you will by now have heard of Bernard Madoff and his Ponzi-scheme.  Interesting name he bears, quasi-aptronymic: he made off with his investors' money. The wealthy fools who lost everything have in part themselves to blame: they allowed their good sense to be suborned by greed and ill-placed trust.  Diversification is such a simple concept.  But it is not a matter of the intellectual grasp of a simple concept.  It is a moral matter. Appetites unruled will suborn the sharpest head.  Our financial and political and social decline is rooted in moral decline.

George Orwell’s Adaptation of 1 Corinthians 13

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not money, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not money, it profiteth me nothing. Money suffereth long, and it is kind; money envieth not; money vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. . . . And now abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these is money.

From Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Frontispiece, p. vii.

George Orwell on Good Writing

George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" (1946) is an essay all should read. As timely now as it was sixty two years ago, it is available in several anthologies and on-line here. Orwell lays down the following rules for good writing.

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never us a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. (A Collection of Essays, Harvest, 1981, p. 170)

On balance, this is excellent advice. Orwell's formulation of these rules, however, is excessively schoolmarmish, so much so that he himself cannot abide by them. Take (3) for example. It's a rule violated by its own formulation. Had Orwell followed his own advice, he would have deleted 'always.' Or consider this sentence near the beginning of his essay: "Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse." (p. 156) Surely, 'inevitably' is redundant. Or else 'must' is redundant. The sentence as Orwell wrote it, however, is not a bad sentence. My point is that his rules are too restrictive.

Now look at (5). This rule contradicts what he himself says on the preceding page. There (p. 169) he asks what his defence of the English language does not imply. One of the things it does not imply is "in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one…." This obviously contradicts rule (5).

At the root of the problem is the tendency most of have to reach for such universal quantifiers as 'all,' 'every,' 'no' and 'never' when strict accuracy demands something less ringing. If the great Orwell can fall into the trap, then we lesser mortals need to be especially careful. Good writing cannot be reduced to the application of rules. Rules are at best guidelines.

These quibbles aside, this essay is required reading.

Heights and Precipices: Quae Excelsa Videbantur, Praerupta Sunt

Seneca, Tranquillitate Animi, X, 5 (tr. Basore) counsels the chastening but not the extirpation of desire: 

. . . we must not send our desires upon a distant quest, but we should permit them to have access to what is near, since they do not endure to be shut up altogether. Leaving those things that either cannot be done, or can be done only with difficulty, let us pursue what lies near at hand and allures our hope, but let us be aware that they are all equally trivial, diverse outwardly in appearance, within alike vain. And let us not envy those who stand in higher places; where there are heights to be seen, there are precipices. (Emphasis added.)

I modified the last sentence of Basore's translation, substituting 'where there are heights to be seen' for 'where there appeared heights' which is bad English and appears to be a mistranslation from the Latin.

The Pleasure of Study and Old Age

The abuse of the physical frame by the young and seemingly immortal is a folly to be warned against but not prevented, a folly for which the pains of premature decrepitude are the just tax; whereas a youth spent cultivating the delights of study pays rich dividends as the years roll on. For, as Holbrook Jackson (The Anatomy of Bibliomania, 121 f.) maintains:

No labour in the world is like unto study, for no other labour is less dependent upon the rise and fall of bodily condition; and, although learning is not quickly got, there are ripe wits and scholarly capacities among men of all physical degrees, whilst for those of advancing years study is of unsurpassed advantage, both for enjoyment and as a preventative of mental decay. Old men retain their intellects well enough, said Cicero, then on the full tide of his own vigorous old age, if only they keep their minds active and fully employed; [De Senectate, 22, tr. E. S. Shuckburgh, 38] and Dr. Johnson holds the same opinion: There must be a diseased mind, he said, where there is a failure of memory at seventy. [Life, ed. Hill, iii, 191] Cato (so Cicero tells us) was a tireless student in old age; when past sixty he composed the seventh book of his Origins, collected and revised his speeches, wrote a treatise on augural, pontifical, and civil law, and studied Greek to keep his memory in working order; he held that such studies were the training grounds of the mind, and prophylactics against consciousness of old age. [Op. cit. 61-62]

The indefatigable Mr. Jackson continues in this vein for another closely printed page, most interestingly, but most taxingly for your humble transcriber.

On Toleration: With a Little Help from Kolakowski

1. Toleration is the touchstone of classical liberalism, and there is no denying its value. Our doxastic predicament requires it of us. We have beliefs galore but precious little knowledge, especially as regards the large and enduring questions. Lacking knowledge, we must inquire. For that we need freedom of inquiry, and a social and political environment in which inquiry is, if not encouraged, at least allowed. But people who are convinced that they have the truth would stop us. "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." (Human All-Too-Human #483) This is typical Nietzschean exaggeration, but there is a sound point at its core: People who are convinced that they have the truth will not inquire whether it really is the truth. Worse, they will tend to impose their 'truth' on us and prevent our inquiry into truth. Many of them will not hesitate to suppress and murder their opponents.

My first point, then, is that toleration is a good because truth is a good. We must tolerate a diversity of views, and the people who maintain them, because we lack the truth and must find it, and to do so we must search. But we cannot search if we are under threat from fanatics and the intolerant. Freedom of inquiry and freedom of expression are important because truth is important.

Continue reading “On Toleration: With a Little Help from Kolakowski”