Writing Style

Any one who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid.

Henry W. Fowler and Francis G. Fowler, The King's English, Ware, 1931, p. 11

“I think him [/sc/. James Mill] nearly the most wonderful prose-writer in our language.”

“That do not I,” says Morton. “I approve the matter of his treatises exceedingly, but the style seems to me detestable.”

“Oh!,” says Eustace, “I cannot separate matter and style… My reason for delighting in his book is, that it gives such a fixedness and reality to all that was most vaguely brilliant in my speculations—it converts dreams into demonstrations.”

Frederick Maurice, Eustace Conway: Or, The Brother and Sister; a Novel, London, 1834

What is to be deprecated is the notion that one can improve one’s style by using stylish words, or that important occasions necessarily demand important words.

H. W. Fowler and Ernest Gowers, A dictionary of modern English usage, Oxford, 1965, p. 717