Simple and Direct
Originally posted 13 September 2017.
I am beginning my refresher course in writing by reading Jacques Barzun’s 1975 Simple and Direct. On the flyleaf of the book, I inscribed my name “Lyman W. Grant, Jr.,” so I am guessing I purchased the book within a few years of it publication. I dropped the “Junior” in the early eighties, and I quit writing my name in books about that time also. There came a time when books passed through my library too quickly for me to claim ownership too tightly.
However, I have kept this book for several reasons. First, as will become very clear as I continue to write this blog, I have strong attachment to the generation of academics and public intellectuals that preceded me. As Ronald Reagan had his version of an idyllic 1950s, I have mine, and I hold on to it tightly. Barzun was a member of that generation of scholars, who were brilliant without being stuffy. They knew their specialties well, but they read widely. Second, once upon a time, I actually used the book as a supplement in classes, typing out and photocopying Barzun’s 20 principles of good writing. Third, I think I always knew that someday I would need to return to it.
I have just begun rereading this book, so I will write only about the first chapter, “Diction, or Which Words to Use.” This chapter troubles me, actually. It is not that I disagree in any meaningful way with his first five principles.
1. Have a point and make it by means of the best word.
2. Weed out the jargon.
3. Look for all fancy wordings and get rid of them.
4. Make sure you know not only the meaning but the bearing of the words you use.
5. Consult your second thoughts about slang, euphemisms, and “what everybody says,” so as to make your diction entirely your own choice.
I do believe that I believe in the general goal of “Simple and Direct,” which I understand to be something like this: write so that your reader can understand what you mean, and write so that your reader is thinking about your meaning, rather than your so-called “style.” Barzun represents a distinctly democratic form of intellectual rigor. Be smart; be accurate; but don’t be a show off; don’t hide your meaning; and don’t lie. If it is worth saying, it is worth saying so everyone can understand you.
However, two points trouble me, and for different reasons. First, I feel inadequate to live up to Barzun’s advice to know, really know, the meaning and “bearing” of all my words. I am quite aware that one of my greatest weaknesses as a speaker of the English language is my ignorance of the nuances of many words. I just don’t spend enough time in a dictionary. For instance, recently a reader of one of my poems pointed out the difference between “bussed” and “bused” and which I actually meant. Another friend noted that when I said a plane “circled the runway and returned to the hanger” that I meant “taxied.” I am a friggin’ sixty-four old English teacher; I should know these things by now!
Second, I think that often I don’t want to restrict my use of jargon, slang, euphemism, and other fancy and non-fancy wordings. I mean, I could argue that when I toss into a sentence one of these forbidden words that I have done so consciously and deliberately. Barzun might judge that I have done so mistakenly or ineffectively. I am sure this will come up in later posts, but I believe that a rich and varied register produces interesting reading. It can add humor and surprise to otherwise familiar ideas.
I know I am making a little too much of this second point. Barzun does not recommend smooth, dull prose. Mostly, he wants us to avoid writing thoughtless, misguided sentences, like the following:
This month the Association will take a quantum leap into the world of tomorrow.
Progress toward regional integration in the earlier period was the result of the perception of rewards from unity and the absence of divisive factors.
We labeldate our bread for freshness insurance.
A complete physical is compulsive for all new employees.
Those heartrending letters let you see the seamy streak of his life.
I am all for that. Curses upon cliché, jargon, and nominalizations!
Barzun concludes this chapter with advice that I have often offered in classes—not remembering that I was repeating his lessons. In English, we don’t actually have synonyms. We have groups of words with similar meanings, but “All carry different loads of information or implication, and skill in writing (once the rudiments are mastered) consists in having at command” all these words and “a sense of their fitness” (39).
I will conclude with this: Above, I used the word “deliberately,” which, I think, we all know. But did you know that in its roots, the Latin word contains “libra,” as in “scales”? I think of paintings of a woman holding scales representing the zodiac sign of Libra. So in “deliberating,” one is weighing, measuring, balancing, not just "thinking," “working it out.” I didn’t know that. I do now. One bit at a time, I keep learning.