Style by Editor | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 12, 1882

Style.

By Editor

Excellent advice is proffered to young writers in the following extract from Good Words. The editor says, "Style of composition, though to some persons it comes naturally, does not come to all. When I was young, an older and more experienced writer once said to me:—

‘Never use two adjectives where one will do; never use an adjective at all where a noun will do. Avoid italics, notes of exclamation, foreign words and quotations. Put full stops instead of colons; make your sentences as short and clear as you possibly can, and whenever you think you have written a particularly fine sentence, cut it out.’

More valuable advice could not be given to any young author. It strikes at the root of that slip-shod literature of which we find so much nowadays, even in writers of genius. To these latter, indeed, it is a greater temptation; their rapid, easy pen runs on as the fancy strikes."