THE ELEMENTS AND THE QUALITIES OF STYLE.
DURING the past ten years I have been chiefly occupied in teaching, to undergraduates of Harvard College, the principles of English Composition. In the course of that time I have been asked a great many questions concerning the art, mostly by friends who found themselves writing for publication. Widely different as these inquiries have naturally been, they have possessed in common one trait sufficiently marked to place them, in my memory, in a single group: almost without exception, they have concerned themselves with matters of detail. Is this word or that admissible? Why, in a piece of writing I once published, did I permit myself to use the apparently commercial phrase "at any rate"? Are not words of Saxon origin invariably preferable to all others? Should sentences be long or short? These random memories are sufficient examples of many hundreds of inquiries.
They have in common, as I have just said, the trait of concerning themselves almost wholly with matters of detail. They have too another trait: generally, if not invariably, they involve a tacit assumption that any given case must be either right or wrong.