How to Write Powerful Prose

An essay by the author of 'Style'

F. L. Lucas

• Publisher: Harriman House
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780857192462
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Writing correct prose is one thing - writing powerful, persuasive prose quite another.F. L. Lucas, fellow of King's College, Cambridge and veteran of the Enigma team at Bletchley Park, wrote one of the 20th century's bestselling books on this second kind of writing. Lost for forty years, its dazzling and amusing advice is now back in print - and this eBook brings readers his brilliant essay on the same subject. A superbly condensed guide to the art of writing well, this eBook is the perfect introduction to the secrets of unforgettable English.

How to Write Powerful Prose

WHEN IT WAS suggested to Walt Whitman that one of his works should be bound in vellum, he was outraged – “Pshaw!” he snorted, “ – hangings, curtains, finger bowls, chinaware, Matthew Arnold!” And he might have been equally irritated by talk of style; for he boasted of “my barbaric yawp” – he would not be literary; his readers should touch not a book but a man. Yet Whitman took the pains to rewrite Leaves of Grass four times and his style is unmistakable. Samuel Butler maintained that writers who bothered about their style became unreadable but he bothered about his own. “Style” has got a bad name by growing associated with precious and superior persons who, like Oscar Wilde, spend a morning putting in a comma, and the afternoon (so he said) taking it out again. But such abuse of “style” is misuse of English. For the word means merely “a way of expressing oneself, in language, manner, or appearance”; or, secondly, “a good way of so expressing oneself” – as when one says, “Her behaviour never lacked style.”

Now there is no crime in expressing oneself (though to try to impress oneself on others easily grows revolting or ridiculous). Indeed one cannot help expressing oneself, unless one passes one’s life in a cupboard. Even the most rigid Communist, or Organization-man, is compelled by nature to have a unique voice, unique fingerprints, unique handwriting. Even the signatures of the letters on your breakfast table may reveal more than their writers guess. There are blustering signatures that swish across the page like cornstalks bowed before a tempest. There are cryptic signatures, like a scrabble of lightning across a cloud, suggesting that behind is a lofty divinity whom all must know, or an aloof divinity whom none is worthy to know (though, as this might be highly inconvenient, a docile typist sometimes interprets the mystery in a bracket underneath). There are impetuous squiggles implying that the author is a sort of strenuous Sputnik streaking round the globe every eighty minutes. There are florid signatures, all curlicues and danglements and flamboyance, like the youthful Disraeli (though these seem rather out of fashion). There are humble, humdrum signatures. And there are also, sometimes, signatures that are courteously clear, yet mindful of a certain simple grace and artistic economy – in short, of style.

Since, then, not one of us can put pen to paper, or even open his mouth, without giving something of himself away to shrewd observers, it seems mere common sense to give the matter a little thought. Yet it does not seem very common. Ladies may take infinite pains about having style in their clothes, but many of us remain curiously indifferent about having it in our words. How many women would dream of polishing not only their nails but also their tongues? They may play freely on that perilous little organ, but they cannot often be bothered to tune it. And how many men think of improving their talk as well as their golf handicap?

No doubt strong silent men, speaking only in gruff monosyllables, may despise “mere words.” No doubt the world does suffer from an endemic plague...