The Art of Persuasion
Bridges, Linda & Rickenbacker, William F.
Bridges and William F. Rickenbackerwithout once mentioning Orwell's essay—propose to do something weird, something that Bridges and Rickenbacker (who purport to despise the rule against fancy words)...
...they don't say too much...
...follow the rules: not because they are handed down from on high, but because—conservatively speaking, and like all the other efforts at writing about writing, including efforts made by political liberals, The Art of Persuasion is a fundamentally conservative enterprise—the "rules" are merely crystallizations of the experience of the species: inductive generalizations, if you will, about what good writers do when they write...
...Well, yes—but wait...
...And the illustrations—of all that hedging among great writers and consummate stylists—are persuasive...
...And don't forget Bridges and Rickenbacker's rule against awkward alliterations like "the they...
...And notice how easy it is to fossilize each of those descriptive statements into an imperative rule: just drop the they in each...
...Bridges and William F. Rickenbackerwithout once mentioning Orwell's essay—propose to do something weird, something that Bridges and Rickenbacker (who purport to despise the rule against fancy words) would probably not object to being called "The Elucidation of the Sixth Rule of Orwell": If two generations of Americans have learned to write dull and undistinguished prose by applying a few rules from a book (Use short words...
...They have also confused their thesis, because the real point of this book is not that Strunk and White should be ignored (Bridges and Rickenbacker poke fun at the venerable Elements of Style, but the only rule they ignore is number nine in E.B...
...t seems that Bridges and Ricken- backer have perpetrated auxesis, if not hyperbole, in their prosopopoeia...
...they let the reader fill in gaps...
...How, forexample, do we "unlearn" (or for that matter, "break") a rule stated with Or-well's precise hedging: "Never use a long word where a short one will do...
...they know—in their bones, so to speak—that all language is metaphor...
...Or how about Orwell's "Never use the passive where you can use the active...
...Avoid foreign phrases...
...another generation can unlearn those rules and apply better ones...
...If I say, in the passive, "San Jose was founded in 1777," I project greater authority than if I say, in the active, "Somebody founded San Jose in 1777...
...I could use the active voice there, but Orwell's rule already implies that I'd better not if I don't want to sound like an idiot...
...Translation of the first sentence of this paragraph: Bridges and Rickenbacker have exaggerated the importance of their thesis by shooting down a straw man...
...White's concluding chapter: "Do not affect a breezy manner...
...B ut—really—most of the time, you need to skip the hedging and...
...They read abundantly in great literature...
...bone up on the prose of Albert Jay Nock or of Myles na Gopaleen, if you're not sure...
...they observe and pile up examples...
...Sometimes you need to write luxuriously lengthy sentences in pure spite of "the stripped-down manner of the twentieth century"—although Bridges and Rickenbacker could find few illustrations more THE ART OF PERSUASION: A NATIONAL REVIEW RHETORIC FOR WRITERS Linda Bridges and William F. Rickenbacker National Review Books/134 pages/$19.95 reviewed by JOHN R. DUNLAP 62 The American Spectator August 1992 recent than the prose of Woodrow Wilson and of Paul Elmer More...
...Most of those rules—all of Orwell's rules—are not really presented in the way suggested by the parenthetical exclamations shoved into that hefty hypothesis just quoted...
...CI...
...nope, the real point is that the hedging implied in the rules needs more attention...
...They do what Bridges and Rickenbacker do, or mention doing, in this stylish book on style...
...Make short sentences...
...Sometimes your syntax is better cast in the passive voice—the way I just did, you see, to secure a firmer rhythm in the placement of words...
...And if you don't know what the hell I just said, buy this book and check Chapter Five, on "The Tools of the Trade": an alphabetized compendium of the technical names for those tools—the terms you had to learn by heart in your Greek classes, remember...
...The rule already implies that if you have a reason to use a long Word, a short one won't do...
...they discriminate between a good dictionary (useful) and a thesaurus (not so useful...
...they fret over single words...
...Sometimes it works well to mix your levels of diction (I've been doing lots of that in this review...
...Surely Bridges and Rickenbacker have not themselves "unlearned" such a rule, since they champion the passive voice when they should...
...Use concrete terms...
Vol. 25 • August 1992 • No. 8
