Grammar tips
Apr. 17th, 2008 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dickensI get e-mails from Oxford University Press on usage and grammar (I'm that kind of girl...)
The most recent amused me, so I need to share. It refers to 'inelegant variation', that is, when a writer attempts to avoid using the same word twice and ends up coming up with ridiculous synonyms like "elongated yellow fruit" for banana.
Here's the quote:
Inelegant Variation (2).
Today: "Elongated Yellow Fruit."
Perhaps the most famous example of inelegant variation is "elongated yellow fruit" as the second reference for "banana." Thus Charles W. Morton named "the elongated-yellow-fruit school of writing," citing examples such as "the numbered spheroids" for billiard balls, "the azure-whiskered wifeslayer " for Bluebeard, "hen-fruit safari" for an Easter-egg hunt, "succulent bivalves" for oysters, and "rubber-tired mastodon of the highway" for a truck.
"The Elongated Yellow Fruit," in A Slight Sense of Outrage 99, 99-102 (1955).
As Morton explains, this sin "lies somewhere between the cliche and the 'fine writing' so dreaded by teachers of English Composition. . . . It does bespeak an author who wishes to seem witty, knowledgeable, and versatile . . . . It can also bespeak an author who is merely pompous."
Ibid. at 100.
Other commentators have been less charitable -- e.g.: "The attempt to ring the changes on a word is often positively vicious."
Paul M. Fulcher, "These But the Trappings," in Foundations of English Style 189, 204 (Paul M. Fulcher ed., 1927).
There is even a book full of these things, in which a minister is "an old pulpit pounder," a prizefighter is "a braggart of the squared circle," and a vegetarian is "a confirmed spinach-addict."
See J.I. Rodale, The Sophisticated Synonym Book (1938).
The most recent amused me, so I need to share. It refers to 'inelegant variation', that is, when a writer attempts to avoid using the same word twice and ends up coming up with ridiculous synonyms like "elongated yellow fruit" for banana.
Here's the quote:
Inelegant Variation (2).
Today: "Elongated Yellow Fruit."
Perhaps the most famous example of inelegant variation is "elongated yellow fruit" as the second reference for "banana." Thus Charles W. Morton named "the elongated-yellow-fruit school of writing," citing examples such as "the numbered spheroids" for billiard balls, "the azure-whiskered wifeslayer " for Bluebeard, "hen-fruit safari" for an Easter-egg hunt, "succulent bivalves" for oysters, and "rubber-tired mastodon of the highway" for a truck.
"The Elongated Yellow Fruit," in A Slight Sense of Outrage 99, 99-102 (1955).
As Morton explains, this sin "lies somewhere between the cliche and the 'fine writing' so dreaded by teachers of English Composition. . . . It does bespeak an author who wishes to seem witty, knowledgeable, and versatile . . . . It can also bespeak an author who is merely pompous."
Ibid. at 100.
Other commentators have been less charitable -- e.g.: "The attempt to ring the changes on a word is often positively vicious."
Paul M. Fulcher, "These But the Trappings," in Foundations of English Style 189, 204 (Paul M. Fulcher ed., 1927).
There is even a book full of these things, in which a minister is "an old pulpit pounder," a prizefighter is "a braggart of the squared circle," and a vegetarian is "a confirmed spinach-addict."
See J.I. Rodale, The Sophisticated Synonym Book (1938).
