Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose
These days, discussions of writing style are generally limited to superficialities such as serial commas and approved abbreviations. It's a pity. While consistency in writing does make for more pleasant reading, no amount of rule-abiding can mask poorly wrought prose. In Clear and Simple As the Truth, Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner argue that "writing is an intellectual activity, not a bundle of skills. " The first half of their book is a probing examination of classic style, the form popularized by 17th-century French prose writers such as Descartes, Pascal, and Madame de Sévigné and best typified contemporarily by much of the writing in the pre-1985 New Yorker. The authors liken classic style to those theorems in mathematics valued for being "brief, efficient, clear, elegant, and pure. " The classic sentence appears effortless, "as if it could have been written in no other way, " and while "the writer may speak with a technical mastery not possessed by the reader . . . his attitude is always that the reader lacks this mastery only accidentally. " While one can hardly hope to distill the essence of classic style into a sentence, Thomas and Turner describe it most succinctly as expression that is "clear and simple as the truth, but no clearer or simpler. " The second half of the book is a "museum" of classic prose, by Thomas Jefferson, Descartes, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Richard Feynman, Oscar Wilde, Philip Larkin, and many others, accompanied by commentary from the authors. Author(s): Francis-Noël Thomas Mark Turner. Binding Paperback. Publisher(s): Princeton University Press. Label: Princeton University Press.
| Fabricant: | Princeton University Press |
| Numéro de la pièce: | |
| Prix le plus bas (CAD): | 121,24 $ |
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| Auteur : | Francis-Noel Thomas |
| Format : | Paperback |
| Marque : | Princeton University Press |
| Title : | Title C-E |
