Writing styles, then and now

[BaalChatzaf]

Here is an interesting exercise. Take a look at an English grammar and style book for school children written in the late 19th century or early 20th. For examples, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuffey_Readers. What do you notice? You will see long paragraphs made up of complex sentences loaded with dependent clauses up the Ying Yang. Such constructs were able to express complex ideas. And these meaty works were not just for the intellectual elite either. They were used for ordinary school children, the children of clerks, mechanics and day laborers. Now contrast this with the crap you see in the early grades of the public school. Fraking Dick, Jane and Spot. And even in the magazines and newspapers the paragraphs are short. If I have to blame someone, I blame Ernest Hemmingway who made short paragraphs literarily acceptable. Once you see Why Johny can't read, you will see Why Johny can't think.

George Orwell showed us where dumbed down language can lead. Newspeak. Newspeak or quack-talk is incapable of supporting any complex intellectual constructs. Taken to its extreme humanity can be reduced to grunting brutes. And now to make things worse we have texting. Because handphone and padd screens are so small, we must resort to abbreviations and acronyms. IMHO that is fatal to our intellects FAPP. But that is just an opinion. YMMV.

Bring back McGuffey!

Ba'al Chatzaf

[georgedonnelly]

Good point on the readers but I think the abbreviations in some cases require some extra mental agility to use. So I don't think they're as negative an indicator as you make them out to be.

The dumbing down of the schools is one reason I'm considering homeschooling my boy (now 2 yo).

[Philip Coates]

In the earliest grades you do need to start with "See Spot Run. Run, Spot, Run" type of constructions. Then you quickly build step by step with more complex constructions. Just like mathematics, grammar and syntax are heirarchical. You go from simple to complex, teaching arithmetic with whole numbers first until its mastered before introducing fractions and decimals.

[georgedonnelly]

Sure but if what it was like 20 years ago is any measure of what it's like today, OP is right, it's dumbed down. For example, overly-dumbed down tests always put my reading level 3-4 years ahead of my actual grade in the middle school years. And I was bored by the reading assignments in school. One data point but I think OP is on-target.

[syrakusos]

In the earliest grades you do need to start with "See Spot Run. Run, Spot, Run" ...

A In ADAM'S Fall

We sinned all.

B Heaven to find;

The Bible Mind.

C Christ crucify'd

For sinners dy'd.

D The Deluge drown'd

The Earth around.

E ELIJAH hid

By Ravens fed.

...

W Whales in the Sea,

GOD's Voice obey.

X XERXES did die,

And so must I.

Y While youth do chear

Death may be near.

Z ZACCHEUS he

Did climb the Tree

Our Lord to see.

Of course, the people who learned from that only created the United States, and the people who saw Spot run include Al Gore and the rest of us who make the world what it is today.

My mother was born in 1931. She had no aspiration but to be a mother and housewife. She had two years of Latin in public school... a year of algebra... a year of geometry...

When I completed an associate's degree in 2007, I took an extra class in College Algebra... without a calculator (which everyone else had) and without a textbook. The only major problem I missed most credit on (got partial) was linear regression for ten points. I memorized the formula and worked a few points, but ran out of time. I got an A in the class. In high school (1064-1967) I had five semesters of Algebra, three of Geometry, one of Trig and one of calculus. I had five years of German. That was 1967. SATs had peaked in 1965. After a decade of decline the SATs were "redesigned" and scores improved.

About 1990-1992, my old college newspaper editor found me online. We laughed about the news. We knew where to find Bosnia-Herzegovina and Zagreb and Montenegro.

McGuffey's Readers were sold by the John Birch Society when I was in YAF in 1965.

I am with Bob on this.

Words of one Syllable.

Age all ape are Babe beef best bold Cat cake crown cup Deaf

dead dry dull Eat ear eggs eyes Face feet fish foul Gate good grass great Hand hat head heart Ice ink isle jobb Kick kind kneel know Lamb lame land long Made mole moon mouth Name night noise noon Oak once one ounce Pain pair pence pound Quart queen quick quilt Rain raise rose run Saint sage salt said Take talk time throat Vain vice vile view Way wait waste would

http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/nep/1777/index.htm

You get what you expect.

Orwell is alive and well on Objectivist websites (or at least O'Brien is) where some people want soundbite replies to tough questions. They want short, memorizable truths. It is not even 1984; it is Animal Farm.

ARI baaa-aad

TAS goood.

All Objectivists are rational.

Some Objectivists are more rational than others.

Edited June 2, 2008 by Michael E. Marotta

[Brant Gaede]

Good point on the readers but I think the abbreviations in some cases require some extra mental agility to use. So I don't think they're as negative an indicator as you make them out to be.

The dumbing down of the schools is one reason I'm considering homeschooling my boy (now 2 yo).

Consider the program available from The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. It is used by over 50,000 families. The student needs a computer and laser printer. The parent does not teach; the student teaches himself through high school including calculus. Some rather expensive math books will have to be purchased. The student will also need a quiet, private place to work. Dr. Arthur Robinson, who with his late wife, created this, is the publisher of Access to Energy which was published by my late friend Petr Beckmann from 1973-1993, successfully home-schooled all his children.

--Brant

[syrakusos]

... I blame Ernest Hemmingway ...

In point of fact, I just spent the better part of a calendar year, three academic semesters, with journal articles. There is a world of difference in writing styles before and after 1960. One professor identified Hemmingway in particular as the cause. The short sentence rules.

I confess the same sin. I offer an excuse. My technical writing changed after I read William Gibson's Neuromancer. Sentences got shorter. I eliminated all repetition and repeating and redundancy. My justification for the encapsulation of complex processes in bulleted lists was the cost of downtime, conveniently approximated as a million dollars per hour; when the assembly line is down, and an engineer grabs the user manual, no one is looking for a literary experience. I became an acolyte of Strunk and White. Never use a longer word when a shorter word will do. Use active voice: good writing is not achieved by passive voice. Tell don't show. I had the list of rules from the back of the book xeroxed and posted in my cubie. A decade earlier, I had seen the same at the desk of Linda Tannehill, the real author of The Market for Liberty.

Moreover, another significant change in academic journals was the inclusion of citation. Admittedly, a bibliography of 40 sources for a 20-page thesis is excessive. Nevertheless, in the previous generation (1920-1960), authors made assertions without validation. An article might claim that most people are illitierate and that assertion would stand, nay, float without support, on the strength of the author's job title.

The preceding to the contrary notwithstanding, it is possible to develop an idea and to cite one's sources, without Spot running.

In conclusion, allow me to tell the story of a colleague at a robotics firm who completed a master's. Writing his thesis, he loaded Right Writer on his Macintosh, a stand-alone program much like the Spell Check With Grammar Checker report we all know from Windows. He used it in reverse, making his thesis almost incomprehensible. He got the degree.

Finally, speaking of Spell Check's Reading Level report, the Declaration of Independence reads at Grade 50 and the Sermon on the Mount reads at Grade 2. That explains a lot.

[Brant Gaede]

In the earliest grades you do need to start with "See Spot Run. Run, Spot, Run" type of constructions. Then you quickly build step by step with more complex constructions. Just like mathematics, grammar and syntax are heirarchical. You go from simple to complex, teaching arithmetic with whole numbers first until its mastered before introducing fractions and decimals.

I don't know about this "See Spot Run" crap. I taught myself to read by reading the Classic Comic comic books in the early 1950s at my local drugstore. I also read all those horror comics that were subsequently driven off the market. My favorite had the bad guy being tossed out of an airplane and landing on the Four Corners Monument where four states meet at one point. SPLAT! Each state contended for jurisdiction--over the body? A decade later in college (1964), on an anthropology field trip, I visited the monument and lay down on it spread-eagled on my face with one limb in each state. The professor, Robert Euler, said to my archeologist brother-in-law along for the trip: "Alan, do you know that guy?" "No, I never saw him before in my life."

--Brant

[Dragonfly]

Tsk, tsk. Today people even don't know how to spell "Hemingway".

[georgedonnelly]

Hemingway wrote in a condensed way, not condensed as in Reader's Digest but as in dense. It's possible to roll right through his works - and gain nothing from it.

But if you give it time you see that it requires a lot of brain work. It's like a puzzle. You have to infer a lot. You have to read it a few times, or, at least, you gain something new from it each time you read it.

Hemingway wrote clearly in order to communicate effectively. You don't need to use passive voice and big words to do that. If you want to compare writing and architecture, you'll find Hemingway closer to steel and glass minimalist towers, and the passive voice big-worders closer to ornate, stumpy blobs of mixed-up styles. ;)

So I don't think it's right to blame Hemingway. Blame teacher's unions and the Dept of Education (easy targets). ;)

[Barbara Branden]

George "Hemingway wrote in a condensed way, not condensed as in Reader's Digest but as in dense. It's possible to roll right through his works - and gain nothing from it.

"But if you give it time you see that it requires a lot of brain work. It's like a puzzle. You have to infer a lot. You have to read it a few times, or, at least, you gain something new from it each time you read it.

"Hemingway wrote clearly in order to communicate effectively."

When you're writing in a condensed way, your writing doesn't have to be flat and colorless. Writing can be simple, direct, and straightforward but still have power and cadence and passion. Good poetry is necessarily highly condensed, (and dense) but at its best very beautiful. My objection to Hemingway is that, with few exceptions that I've found, his writing has very little evocative power, that it's colorless and passionless -- and not a single line of his has remained with me. (This is probably not objective, but I always have the sense that he's hiding behind his writing, that he's being careful not to reveal himself by any stylistic or literary projection of a unique and definite self.)

Barbara

[georgedonnelly]

There is a story of his called "Big Two-Hearted River" that will always stand out in my mind for the vividness both of the natural setting and the emotions that it evoked in my mind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Two-Hearted_River

I think you're right, his lines don't seem to stay with one, but I find the emotions evoked by the stories do. "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is another unforgettable one for me.

I find his writing to be largely about pain, misery, sadness, destruction of the good and the innocent and heroic but hopeless resistance against those. I read about everything of his when I was in college - and since then nothing.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Strangely enough, the work by Hemingway that has stayed alive in my memory is one he did not finish or polish: Islands in the Stream. The episode with the kid learning how to deep-sea fish, catching his first big one and struggling with it (and it finally escapes him) is etched deeply in my mind. I get pleasure from it, too, despite the constant drinking. The guys are always going back down to refresh their drinks while the poor kid cannot let go of the rod and gets blisters and sunburn. Even when I had my drinking chops, I would have been totally plastered if I drank that much.

I think I respond to the symbolism of the fish representing the meaning of life. The kid said at the end something to the effect that he doesn't mind so much that the fish got away. Just so long as he knows he is alive and the fish is alive and out there somewhere, everything is OK. I like that thought.

Michael

[Mike11]

Surprised no one has brought up the idiot box.

Since we all know that argument I'll say it one more time for emphasis -

Television.

[Philip Coates]

I haven't read (or don't recall) enough of Hemingway to generalize about him with certainty, but I do remember the short story "The Killers" and the novellete "The Old Man and the Sea", a staple of middle school to high school lit classes everywhere. The latter is not about pain, misery, and failure but about a rather admirable old man and his absolute determination to land a giant fish.

The downside is that I was a bit unsure of my skills the first time I ever set foot in a class as a literature teacher, so I chose this book over The Scarlet Pimpernel and Tom Sawyer and Animal Farm (all of which I taught later the same year.) I chose it because we had copious chapter by chapter teaching notes and discussion topics and questions to throw out. Big mistake: it became like trying to inflate a sardine into a giant tuna. The story, if I recall, is told with so much damping down of emotional affect and color that it became tedious, trying to find new aspects of story, character, style, implications and connections. Almost as tiring to discuss class after class as it was for the old man, arm and brain-weary on the flat ocean trying to deal with that recalcitrant fish.

It almost turned the whole class off on literature and I had to win them back. (There were some good things about the story, but I’d have to go back and reread it to figure them out or recapture them. I remember thinking “if only this were half as long or if the damn fish got a hernia after the first four hours...”)

Barbara's point about H. hiding - or suppressing or eliminating emotionality or a self - sort of rings true, but I'd have to go back and reread TK and TOMATS to see if I can see that there. (I think I may have also read The Snows of Kilimanjaro” but it seems to have been wiped clean from my memory banks by a malevolent painful cosmic or comic force or by long sleepless days and nights out on the open ocean in a leaky boat.)

[Newberry]

"If you want to compare writing and architecture, you'll find Hemingway closer to steel and glass minimalist towers..."

I agree, based on the little I know of Hemingway.

I have only read one Hemingway, Farewell to Arms. After this thread I want to read it again. I remember feeling an almost unbearable tension build up to the taking off the bandaging on his wounded leg. The tension reminds me of Spielberg's The Color Purple when the wife was shaving her husband with a straight edge--we know she is was at her breaking point, and we expected her to slit his throat. It also reminds me of Sibelius 2nd Symphony, clean, spartan, yet a definite momentum going on. I also recall that Hemingway's style was descriptive, and fact driven. I found his style to be very fresh and focused. What I didn't enjoy was that I didn't care for the people.

But in some ways I think Hemingway's style very close to Rand's; cut out the adjectives and "just the facts maam."

Barbara wrote:

(This is probably not objective, but I always have the sense that he's hiding behind his writing, that he's being careful not to reveal himself by any stylistic or literary projection of a unique and definite self.)

I think differently about this, again I am not a writer--but it always seems to me that an artist is expressing who they are--I simply take that at face value. I have met a few people who have expressed to me how they think I should have developed or chosen a content for a painting...and I have also been fascinated that others don't think like me. I remember that shocking truth as as a teenager. "Gosh, they really think different." But, people are different and that shows up in their art as well.

Edited June 2, 2008 by Newberry

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

But in some ways I think Hemingway's style very close to Rand's; cut out the adjectives and "just the facts maam."

Michael,

Say what?

Rand cut out adjectives?

Is that what you really meant to say?

Michael

[Newberry]

But in some ways I think Hemingway's style very close to Rand's; cut out the adjectives and "just the facts maam."

Michael,

Say what?

Rand cut out adjectives?

Is that what you really meant to say?

Michael

Sure. There are some Rand comments about cutting out the adjectives for Atlas (don't remember where I read it)--don't tell people how wonderful, great, fantastic, heroic someone is, but show them to do great things, and by what they say.

I remember some detective novel, not by my esteemed Agatha C, in which the author was telling us that the butler was the classic type in the great tradition of butlers. But all the man did was ask: "Anything else sir?" ;) I was ready to heave the $#*%)^_ book against the wall.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael,

Like the saying goes, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. In this case, the flesh is Rand's urge to adjectivize. (How's that for a word?) When an adjective is not present in Atlas, you can be sure a comparison or three or seven to something symbolic is. I like Randall Wallace's term, "long waterfalls of words and descriptions." (He is one of the screenwriters who adapted Atlas to the movie version.)

I see no similarity of style between Rand and Hemingway at all. She went for overkill. He went for understatement. Both were brilliant.

Incidentally, one of the funniest characters in all drama I have ever seen anywhere was in a Brazilian play, a comedy of errors called Meno Male by Juca de Oliveira. (The title is in Italian because the main character is Italian.)

It is a comedy of errors involving a politician and cab driver and the cab driver's underage daughter who looks older than she is. (You can imagine the confusion and ripe possibilities for misunderstandings.)

When I saw the play, in the politician's office there was a butler dressed in formal clothes and white gloves who always came on stage with an elaborate tray of silver dishes to serve coffee. This looks like what to us would be a silver teapot, saucers, cups, cream, sugar, spoons, etc., but very fancy. In Brazil, there is a habit of taking a small 2 minute break several times a day to be served a shot of coffee in a small cup (it is very strong), but rarely is there such an elaborate set as the butler had.

While the characters were getting upset, giving their one-liners, developing the plot intrigues, etc. this butler would slowly and calmly walk to one person and offer him a cup of coffee. He would not say a word, but the character would be in the heat of a discussion. The butler would wait silently for a nice long interval and be completely ignored. Then, after waiting, he would calmly take his leave and go to another character and offer him a cup of coffee and likewise wait and get ignored. After going through all the characters on stage, he would look around and simply leave, always very calmly. He never got to serve anybody. After a decent interval (and return from change of scene), he would enter again and go through the whole routine again. This kept up until the end of the play and by the last act, all he had to do was come onstage and the audience was in tears. He never opened his mouth and he was not a part of the story, but I think he stole the show.

That was certainly economy of dialog.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

Sure. There are some Rand comments about cutting out the adjectives for Atlas (don't remember where I read it)--don't tell people how wonderful, great, fantastic, heroic someone is, but show them to do great things, and by what they say.

You're probably mixing up a comment Barbara made with something Ayn said.

Barbara makes a quip -- I've heard or read her say this several times -- that her method is to never use one adjective where several will suit. Her editor when she was writing Passion kept watch on adjective proliferation -- among other helpful assists. ;-)

Ellen

___

[georgedonnelly]

In comparison to writers who are verbose and almost incomprehensibly indirect, Hemingway and Rand's writing styles are similar in that they communicate clearly and without unnecessary words, but I wouldn't say she cuts out words.

Put another way, they both have a healthy respect for plot.

[Brant Gaede]

Sure. There are some Rand comments about cutting out the adjectives for Atlas (don't remember where I read it)--don't tell people how wonderful, great, fantastic, heroic someone is, but show them to do great things, and by what they say.

You're probably mixing up a comment Barbara made with something Ayn said.

Barbara makes a quip -- I've heard or read her say this several times -- that her method is to never use one adjective where several will suit. Her editor when she was writing Passion kept watch on adjective proliferation -- among other helpful assists. ;-)

AR said it. Somewhere in The Journals of Ayn Rand, probably in her notes when writing Atlas. I read it just a couple of days ago. Can't be bothered to find it again.

--Brant

[Ellen Stuttle]

You're probably mixing up a comment Barbara made with something Ayn said.

Barbara makes a quip -- I've heard or read her say this several times -- that her method is to never use one adjective where several will suit. Her editor when she was writing Passion kept watch on adjective proliferation -- among other helpful assists. ;-)

AR said it. Somewhere in The Journals of Ayn Rand, probably in her notes when writing Atlas. I read it just a couple of days ago. Can't be bothered to find it again.

--Brant

AR said just that quip? So you're saying that BB stole it from AR?

I'd like to see the exact quote of what you read AR as saying.

(Notice, my comment was that I think MN is mixing up something BB said with something AR said. AR spoke of showing instead of telling. But BB has more than a few times made a quip about her, BB's, use of adjectives.)

Ellen

___

Edited June 3, 2008 by Ellen Stuttle

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I just did a search of the CD-ROM on adjective and adjectives. Barbara did not get her comment from Rand, although Rand had some very interesting things to say about adjectives. I will post a list later.

btw - There were only two places where Rand compared facts to adjectives, one where she said an act illustrates more than a thousand adjectives and in another when she was gushing about Mickey Spillane's style, saying he used facts instead of adjectives.

Stay tuned. More is coming.

Michael

[Newberry]

You're probably mixing up a comment Barbara made with something Ayn said.

Barbara makes a quip -- I've heard or read her say this several times -- that her method is to never use one adjective where several will suit. Her editor when she was writing Passion kept watch on adjective proliferation -- among other helpful assists. ;-)

AR said it. Somewhere in The Journals of Ayn Rand, probably in her notes when writing Atlas. I read it just a couple of days ago. Can't be bothered to find it again.

--Brant

AR said just that quip? So you're saying that BB stole it from AR?

I'd like to see the exact quote of what you read AR as saying.

(Notice, my comment was that I think MN is mixing up something BB said with something AR said. AR spoke of showing instead of telling. But BB has more than a few times made a quip about her, BB's, use of adjectives.)

Ellen

___

Ellen,

You are getting me into trouble. ;)

No, I am for sure not referring to Barbara. It's a theme of Rand's about sticking to the facts and the sparingly use of adjectives. Michael is right, it is explicit in The Romantic Manifesto about Spillane. Michael will probably cut and paste it out of his DVD. Last paragraph, page 95 RM paperback. But I remembering something from many years ago, maybe the transcribed book on fiction writing? But it was a note to herself about being very careful about the adjectives.

I find it a very interesting discussion. And I enjoy being the reader of different styles, and trying to figure why some writers touch me deeper than others.

Michael