The King's English

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1. sleepydogAug 2022
   The King’s English by Henry and Francis Fowler
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2. combatentropyMar 2020
   I would say never use either. Strive to be plain. By plain, I mean both clear and unpretentious. This kind of writing doesn't have to sound informal.

   This advice is not my own. It is ancient, and you could say it is the gist of books like The King's English by the brothers Fowler (1906), The Elements of Style by Strunk and White (1959), On Writing Well by William Zinsser (1976), and The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker (2014).

   Bureaucratic language to me means wordiness, vagueness, and indirection. Conversational is often wordy too and likewise short on substance. But while bureaucratic sounds like it came from a robot, conversational puts the writer too much in the spotlight.

   The reader comes to a piece of writing to learn something. The purpose of writing is to help the reader, as quickly and clearly as possible. The techniques in the books I mentioned, or on plainlanguage.gov, are meant to help you do just that.

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3. hgaNov 2016
   Along that vein, The King's English. First edition 110 year ago (and therefore beyond copyright), last in 1931, so it's officially out of date, but well written and opinionated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King's_English
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4. krappJul 2014
   Blasphemy's a funny thing, it's assumed to be objectively definable because it presupposes the offense of a deity whose nature and will can be comprehended, yet it depends entirely on the culture and politics of the time. At one time, merely owning a Bible printed in the King's English was the vilest of offenses. Yet I doubt one could find many modern Christians who would condemn their ability to read their own Bibles as a clear heresy, and submit themselves to the stake forthwith for a proper burning.

   I would even go so far as to submit that blasphemy is a part of the natural evolutionary process of any religion, as each generation comes to terms with the outdated assumptions and propaganda of the prior order. What did Jesus mean when he (supposedly) said the Sabbath was meant to serve man, instead of man to serve the Sabbath? I suspect that some people take religion way too seriously and need to lighten up.

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5. puneeSep 2012
   Another good reference, although less advertising oriented, The King's English, by H.W. Fowler, insists on solid principles:

     Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched.
     Prefer the concrete word to the abstract.
     Prefer the single word to the circumlocution.
     Prefer the short word to the long.
     Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.
   

   Freely available here: http://www.bartleby.com/116/
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6. combatentropyMay 2020
   > its chief effect is to make people insecure about their writing

   That's the opposite of its effect on me.

   > The book's message is, "Here are the rules. You will have to break them to write well. But you aren't good enough to know when."

   I discerned no such put-down.

   > In fact the rules are not rules anywhere but in the imagination of White and his acolytes. No admired writer of English knows them, never mind obeys them.

   The gist of the book is the same as other books, such as The King's English, On Writing Well, and A Sense of Style. Stephen King praises the book in his own book, On Writing. I've also read a few articles on writing that say the same basic thing.

   The gist of these books is to write in service of the reader (as opposed to your ego) and to work hard at it (as opposed to being lazy and just "letting it all hang out" from the first draft), as it is a craft, like carpentry. Specifically, try to avoid wasting words, try to use the best word at each point, and try to order your words (and sentences and paragraphs) in the best way for the reader's understanding.

   There are some minor rules and preferences that perhaps Geoff Pullum is pouncing on, something like, "A clever horse is a good-natured one, not an ingenious one." I can see clearly that that is an archaism and take it for what it's worth. After all, the book is about 100 years old. But any writer should know that when you get down to that level of resolution, the detail shifts a bit in the quantum foam. Things on that level vary a bit from one decade to another, from one region to another. And language is like a craft, in that there are some rules that can be followed 90% of time, but it is not mathematics. You cannot distill a formula. I see Geoff Pullum taking it as black and white, but English does not submit to such simplification.

   Perhaps Strunk was more black and white, but White seems a bit looser, and I think their combination balances each other out nicely. It reminds me that no rule is absolute. However, for the vast majority of writers, they would benefit from at least trying to follow a lot of them!

   > The book presents a profoundly ignorant picture ofthe English language. You cannot become a good writer shackled to Strunk and White.

   For 80% of the writing I read in books, magazines, articles, etc., they suffer from the kinds of problems addressed in the Elements of Style. There may be other kinds of problems in a minority of writing, but far and away most writing suffers heavily from wordiness, vagueness, clumsy construction. I won't fault someone for incorrectly calling a horse "clever," but now I see why most writing tires me out so much --- and I can rewrite it in my head to be clearer.

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