Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 5 · column 2 of 7 · from the scan, no model involved
nous reservations about a style that is developed, like a recipe for meatloaf, from experimentation and prototypes. My thought is that such a style must always seem affected.
•I have said it before and will say it again. Style is not ketchup. It is not something that can be squirted onto a piece of writing after a first draft is done. The writer who carefully inserts “ain’t” in place of “isn’t,” or deliberately writes that something made little difference “to my friend and I,” is condescending to his peasants. He is dumbing down.
This kind of folksiness is the hat on the donkey. It is unlike the editing we do for clarity’s sake. I was writing a few weeks ago about proposals in Congress to pursue the Iran-contra defendants. I started to call it an otiose endeavor and instantly abandoned “otiose” in favor of “futile.”
This wasn’t dumbing down. It had nothing to do with “style.” Few of my readers include “otiose” in their working vocabularies, and though I like occasionally to stretch them just. . .a. . .little, this didn’t seem the right moment.
To the writer, a beautiful word is as tempting as a puddle to a 2-yearold. We have to splash in it. Ordinarily the temptation ought to be resisted. Are we writing to
94.2%