I am someone who loves long, complex sentences. The 19th century was peak prose style for me. The Gettysburg Address is a fantastic bit of writing. The fiction of that time can be a joy.
But this style is hard to do well. The Emily Post example given above is readable, though not unusually inspired. It moves through a series of examples and exceptions in a faintly herky-jerky way. But the prose is well-enough fit to Emily Post’s goal. She is trying to introduce many of her readers to the manners of a different social class, and her choice of vocabulary and syntax are part of that. Her readers wish to appear refined, and thus, some fancy words will please them.
Contrast this with Alexis de Tocqueville’s De la Démocratie en Amérique from 1835. This is often considered an unusually good example of aristiocratic prose, at least among the sort of people who write academic introductions:
Parmi les objets nouveaux qui, pendant mon séjour aux États-Unis, ont attiré mon attention, aucun n’a plus vivement frappé mes regards que l’égalité des conditions. Je découvris sans peine l’influence prodigieuse qu’exerce ce premier fait sur la marche de la société ; il donne à l’esprit public une certaine direction, un certain tour aux lois ; aux gouvernants des maximes nouvelles, et des habitudes particulières aux gouvernés.
Bientôt je reconnus que ce même fait étend son influence fort au-delà des mœurs politiques et des lois, et qu’il n’obtient pas moins d’empire sur la société civile que sur le gouvernement : il crée des opinions, fait naître des sentiments, suggère des usages et modifie tout ce qu’il ne produit pas.
Ainsi donc, à mesure que j’étudiais la société américaine, je voyais de plus en plus, dans l’égalité des conditions, le fait générateur dont chaque fait particulier semblait descendre, et je le retrouvais sans cesse devant moi comme un point central où toutes mes observations venaient aboutir.
If you don’t read French, look at the length of the sentences and the punctuation. There is a great degree of parallelism here, and a pleasing rhythm. You could, if you wished to be overly cute about it, reformat much of this writing as a series of bulleted lists. But if you diagrammed the sentences, the structure would be quite clean. Tocqueville is a masterful writer, and here he wishes to convey two things: his own impeccable elite credentials, and his sincere enthusiasm for the egalitarian nature of American society. His goal is to maximize genuine reform in France, while minimizing elite decapitations. This is a subject of immediate interest to his readers.
But for every Alexis de Tocqueville, I could find you a hundred or a thousand writers who wrote needlessly convoluted slop. Long sentences are hard to do well. They demand an almost clockwork precision to remain truly clear.
Today, 19th-century prose is out of fashion. Multiple factors drove this change, including the influence of writers like Hemingway, a frustration with hopelessly convoluted prose, and a growing impatience on the part of readers drowning in oceans of text. And, yes, a vast increase in the portion of the population with a college education. And of course we explain the basics more than we did, because we are increasingly conscious of a broad audience with many odd gaps in their knowledge. Every skipped step risks losing a reader who might have benefited from an author’s thoughts. And some of our readers may even speak English as a second or third language. Even if they are extremely well educated in their native tongue, they may not realize that the “anthropology” department teaches very different things in the US than it does in Europe.
The modern style can be done well, though doing it truly well still demands considerable skill. Perhaps more interestingly, the modern style usually fails more gracefully. Simple sentences and bulleted lists usually succeed in conveying the author’s main points, even if the author is a mediocre writer.
And, yes, a vast increase in the portion of the population with a college education. And of course we explain the basics more than we did, because we are increasingly conscious of a broad audience with many odd gaps in their knowledge. Every skipped step risks losing a reader who might have benefited from an author’s thoughts. And some of our readers may even speak English as a second or third language.
If this is true, I wonder if the advent of AI will lead to prose in books that doesn’t have to do this anymore, because the reader-otherwise-left-behind can just ask AI if they end up confused about something.
I wonder if you missed the other differences, like the constant explanation to the reader of things they must already know. There have been plenty of writers throughout history known for their brevity who did not waste it explaining the obvious. I don’t mind short, simple sentences, though as the book I’m currently reading[[1]] suggests, the “brevity of Seneca and Tacitus” can be “too artificially epigrammatic”, and too much concision risks “sail[ing] down to posterity in an armada of nutshells.” I think a little wordiness, a little complexity gives writing a bit of room to breathe. Don’t write Gordian Knot sentences, but I think a little complexity is okay and basically doesn’t risk confusing a literate reader.
Yeah, I agree that the modern version of Ettiquite is worse, but that’s just because we don’t have very complicated ettiquite! They need to waste space here, because everyone already knows what a handshake is, and you need at most a one-sentence description. If you didn’t turn every sentence into a paragraph the book would quickly turn into a blog post.
The solution is not in fact to add more flowery prose or complicated sentences, its to write about something else.
I also don’t know whether those reading in 1922 would say the same thing. We read the 1922 version and think “Oh wow! So informative!”, but perhaps the girls forced to read the book at a 1922 finishing school were thinking the same thing, or maybe ettiquite in 1922 was just a lot more complicated than it is today (it is).
Perhaps, similarly to the hypothetical bored girl in finishing school, in 100 years the future will look at the modern version and think “So informative!”.
The solution is not in fact to add more flowery prose or complicated sentences, its to write about something else.
I would certainly never suggest this. You seem to be implying that good prose is independent of useful prose, but it’s not. Good prose isn’t just flowery and fancy, it is respectful of the reader and their time, and delivers a message clearly and in an entertaining way.
It seems like you’re acknowledging the 2022 version is a bloated waste of space, while also suggesting at the same time that actually it’s very informative, and that this is all just relative? I definitely do not believe this is all just relative, or that girls forced to read Emily Post in the 1920s would have thought the writing in the book was hollow. It’s clearly full of useful information. Not to mention wit and charm. I weep for the future of our species if women in 2122 would think the 2022 version was “so informative!”
I guess my point is that the fact the 2022 version sucks is predicted on my model from the fact that we just don’t use too much complicated etiquette anymore. The fact the sentences are hollow is a fact more about the subject being written, not the skill of the author.
Concretely, using the Wikipedia page for modern handshaking in the US I think gives better prose than the modern 2022 version of the etiquette guide
The handshake is commonly done upon meeting, greeting, parting, offering congratulations, expressing gratitude, or as a public sign of completing a business or diplomatic agreement. In sports, it is also done as a sign of good sportsmanship. Its purpose is to convey trust, respect, balance, and equality.[10] If it is done to form an agreement, the agreement is not official until the hands are parted.
[...]
In the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, a traditional handshake is firm, executed with the right hand, with good posture and eye contact. A handshake where both parties are standing up is deemed as good etiquette.
The more recent versions here just seem like better writing to me honestly. Short simple sentences which communicate a single idea are good.
If that makes them easy to read for the less literate, so much the better; they’re even easier to read for the more literate, no?
I am someone who loves long, complex sentences. The 19th century was peak prose style for me. The Gettysburg Address is a fantastic bit of writing. The fiction of that time can be a joy.
But this style is hard to do well. The Emily Post example given above is readable, though not unusually inspired. It moves through a series of examples and exceptions in a faintly herky-jerky way. But the prose is well-enough fit to Emily Post’s goal. She is trying to introduce many of her readers to the manners of a different social class, and her choice of vocabulary and syntax are part of that. Her readers wish to appear refined, and thus, some fancy words will please them.
Contrast this with Alexis de Tocqueville’s De la Démocratie en Amérique from 1835. This is often considered an unusually good example of aristiocratic prose, at least among the sort of people who write academic introductions:
If you don’t read French, look at the length of the sentences and the punctuation. There is a great degree of parallelism here, and a pleasing rhythm. You could, if you wished to be overly cute about it, reformat much of this writing as a series of bulleted lists. But if you diagrammed the sentences, the structure would be quite clean. Tocqueville is a masterful writer, and here he wishes to convey two things: his own impeccable elite credentials, and his sincere enthusiasm for the egalitarian nature of American society. His goal is to maximize genuine reform in France, while minimizing elite decapitations. This is a subject of immediate interest to his readers.
But for every Alexis de Tocqueville, I could find you a hundred or a thousand writers who wrote needlessly convoluted slop. Long sentences are hard to do well. They demand an almost clockwork precision to remain truly clear.
Today, 19th-century prose is out of fashion. Multiple factors drove this change, including the influence of writers like Hemingway, a frustration with hopelessly convoluted prose, and a growing impatience on the part of readers drowning in oceans of text. And, yes, a vast increase in the portion of the population with a college education. And of course we explain the basics more than we did, because we are increasingly conscious of a broad audience with many odd gaps in their knowledge. Every skipped step risks losing a reader who might have benefited from an author’s thoughts. And some of our readers may even speak English as a second or third language. Even if they are extremely well educated in their native tongue, they may not realize that the “anthropology” department teaches very different things in the US than it does in Europe.
The modern style can be done well, though doing it truly well still demands considerable skill. Perhaps more interestingly, the modern style usually fails more gracefully. Simple sentences and bulleted lists usually succeed in conveying the author’s main points, even if the author is a mediocre writer.
If this is true, I wonder if the advent of AI will lead to prose in books that doesn’t have to do this anymore, because the reader-otherwise-left-behind can just ask AI if they end up confused about something.
I wonder if you missed the other differences, like the constant explanation to the reader of things they must already know. There have been plenty of writers throughout history known for their brevity who did not waste it explaining the obvious. I don’t mind short, simple sentences, though as the book I’m currently reading [[1]] suggests, the “brevity of Seneca and Tacitus” can be “too artificially epigrammatic”, and too much concision risks “sail[ing] down to posterity in an armada of nutshells.” I think a little wordiness, a little complexity gives writing a bit of room to breathe. Don’t write Gordian Knot sentences, but I think a little complexity is okay and basically doesn’t risk confusing a literate reader.
Style, the Art of Writing Well by F. L. Lucas
Yeah, I agree that the modern version of Ettiquite is worse, but that’s just because we don’t have very complicated ettiquite! They need to waste space here, because everyone already knows what a handshake is, and you need at most a one-sentence description. If you didn’t turn every sentence into a paragraph the book would quickly turn into a blog post.
The solution is not in fact to add more flowery prose or complicated sentences, its to write about something else.
I also don’t know whether those reading in 1922 would say the same thing. We read the 1922 version and think “Oh wow! So informative!”, but perhaps the girls forced to read the book at a 1922 finishing school were thinking the same thing, or maybe ettiquite in 1922 was just a lot more complicated than it is today (it is).
Perhaps, similarly to the hypothetical bored girl in finishing school, in 100 years the future will look at the modern version and think “So informative!”.
I would certainly never suggest this. You seem to be implying that good prose is independent of useful prose, but it’s not. Good prose isn’t just flowery and fancy, it is respectful of the reader and their time, and delivers a message clearly and in an entertaining way.
It seems like you’re acknowledging the 2022 version is a bloated waste of space, while also suggesting at the same time that actually it’s very informative, and that this is all just relative? I definitely do not believe this is all just relative, or that girls forced to read Emily Post in the 1920s would have thought the writing in the book was hollow. It’s clearly full of useful information. Not to mention wit and charm. I weep for the future of our species if women in 2122 would think the 2022 version was “so informative!”
I guess my point is that the fact the 2022 version sucks is predicted on my model from the fact that we just don’t use too much complicated etiquette anymore. The fact the sentences are hollow is a fact more about the subject being written, not the skill of the author.
Concretely, using the Wikipedia page for modern handshaking in the US I think gives better prose than the modern 2022 version of the etiquette guide