Style Matters

Abstract

Style is distinct from correctness be cause it is concerned not with observing the conventions of a language, but with choosing among alternate sentence structures and word choices that are equally correct to produce graceful, clear writing. Nor is style a decorative overlay on the content of writing. Style is the very expression of content. The two can hardly be separated. Just as there is no such thing as a neutral dialect?everybody speaks a dialect, whether aware of it or not?there is no such thing as writing without style. Even technical documents, which are er roneously considered style-less, are written with style. Technical writers, just like novelists, essayists, and poets, make stylistic decisions?choosing pre cise words, deciding how much infor mation to put in a sentence, avoiding awkward repetitions of sounds. Style encompasses more than I can attempt to cover in this article. Besides word choice, figurative language, and sound, style also involves relationships among sentences and between the flow of information and the reader's expec tations. Although I will be touching on some of these aspects of style, I want to focus on the sentence. It is the easiest unit to work with and tells us most of what we need to know.