Writing Style and its Audience.
Writing style
manuals are used as either a reference by those writers who need to quickly
brush up on the different elements of style to improve their writing, or
style manuals are used by those writers who develop the discipline needed
to perfect their craft. Both The Elements of Style by Strunk and White
and Style: Toward Clarity and Grace by Joseph Williams are credible style
manuals. The Strunk and White manual tends to be more of a guide or
reference for those students revising their papers. The structure of
the book is set up to thumb through finding the answer to the problem with
ease. There are clear spaces between the problems and examples. It
addresses the elementary rules of usage, principles of composition, and an
approach to style with out much detail.
Meanwhile, the Williams manual, though, digs deeper.
It does deal with the same types of problems Strunk and White present; Williams
raises the questions why are these rules here and when are the applicable.
Through a more detail account of what could happen if someone decides to
write, William’s raises altogether new issues that Strunk and White left
out, like, audience. Each manual is written for a different audience,
and it seems that one of the main issues that Williams addresses is that
the writer should be consciously writing with the given audience in
mind. In the Williams manual, there is a section in the index where
the audience or reader is directly addressed. The Strunk and White
books index doesn’t have an audience or reader section.
But, Strunk and White somewhat implies what Williams is saying. What
makes a writers style is the writers intended audience: “In this final chapter,
we approach style in its broader meaning: style in the sense of what is distinguished
and distinguishing” (Strunk and White 66). Strunk and White then
proceeds to number off what is distinguished and distinguishing. Each
numbered heading pertains to a certain type of writing and a certain audience,
for example, the section headed “Write a way that comes naturally”(Strunk
and White 70). With ideas like “[use] phrases that come readily to
hand…,” and “the use of language begins with imitation…take pains to admire
what is good,” this sections applies more to creative writing (Strunk and
White 70). Perhaps, the audience would be someone looking for a light
prose to read. On the other hand, the section “work from
a suitable design,” seems to apply more to a technical type of writing.
It indirectly implies that audience has an effect in the structure you chose
to write: “Before beginning to compose something, gauge the nature and extent
of the enterprise…”(Strunk and White 70-71).
Maybe, the reason Strunk and White dance around the topic of audience is
because of the audience they had in mind when writing The Elements of Style.
The audience member is using the book as a quick guide to either refresh
ones memory, or to get the basics down for a beginning writer.
Williams goes further by directly addressing the different
types of writing that comes out of the different types of audiences one would
write for. In Chapter two in the section about “The institutional Passive”,
Williams states, “Certainly, scholars in different field s write in different
ways. And in all fields, some scholarly writers and editors resolutely
avoid the first person everywhere. But if they claim that all good
academic writing in all fields must always be impersonally third person,
always passive, they are wrong”(Williams 40). He then proceeds on explaining
why, but, more importantly, he is making the point that writing for different
audiences calls for different rules. For example, a psychology student
newly writing in the field would more likely use a book directly pertaining
to writing in psychology instead of the Williams book.
In the examples Williams uses to make his points, he directly
deals with the issue of audience. For example, in the chapter on cohesion,
he uses “The Gettysburg Address” to show how Lincoln benefited by keeping
his audience in mind when constructing his design. Williams states,
“Lincoln assigned responsibility to his audience. By systematically
topicalizing we to make himself and his audience the agents of the crucial
actions, Lincoln made them one with the founding fathers and with the men
who fought and died at Gettysburg…he tacitly invites his listeners to join…in
making the great sacrifices the living had still to make to preserve the
Union”(Williams 61). As mentioned in the earlier paragraph, there is
a time and place for passive and active voice. Here, it is the audience
that is the deciding factor.
In chapter four, Williams addresses another issue concerning
audience. The writer has to keep in mind how knowledgeable the reader
or audience is in topic of the piece of writing. The section
“Nuances of Emphasis” starts out saying “When we write highly technical prose,
we often write to an audience that understands as ell as we do-or better-the
complex terminology, the background, the habits of mind tat workers in the
field have to control”(Williams 73). He then deals with the issue of
a non expert audience. Williams places an importance on the writer to place
new terms towards the end of the sentence: “ In some cases, a writer can
manipulate the stress of sentences in ways that encourage us to respond not
to what is new, but to what we should take as new, what we should take as
familiar”(Williams 76).
In each chapter, Williams advises his readers with examples
of the various rules he holds important in writing style. Through each
of these rules, he makes the point that the reader is key factor. It
is the audience that Williams had in mind when writing Toward Clarity and
Grace that alters what he says from what Strunk and White say. Williams
audience is those writers who are seeking out some fundamental ideas of writing,
those who look for a philosophy behind what is written. The audience
is those writers that are beyond just writing for a class or need a brush
up on some basic grammar like those of Strunk and White.
Ultimately, Williams and Strunk and White agree that a
major factor of good style is the writer’s ability to cater to a given audience.
They both touch on the idea that it is not what is said in the community
that is being written to but what goes unspoken, what is understood.
These unspoken understandings can be the defining factor of what makes up
certain communities. It places those groups in different areas in society
as a whole. But, again, Williams goes into further detail than Strunk
and White about the ideologies of social or even scholarly groups.
At the very end of the Strunk and White guide, it goes on to basically say
that good style is not the rules you know, but it is who you are by having
the ability to manipulate “the attitudes of mind”(Strunk and White 84).
Meanwhile, Williams distinctly defines what Strunk and
White are getting at: “We signal that we are members of a community in
what we say and how we say it. But a more certain sign of our socialization
is in what we don’t say, in what we take for granted as part of a shared
but rarely articulated body of knowledge and values”(Williams 121).
This “body of knowledge and values” is the “attitudes of mind” that Strunk
and White speak of.
Williams and Strunk and White come to the same conclusion
that good style and good writing is not only grammar rules but an awareness
of the audience and it’s understood phenomenon. What separates
the two style manuals is the audience that each book is intended for.
William’s manual gives the impression that yes everyone can write and do
it fairly well, but it takes discipline and a certain knack to be better
than fairly well, which Strunk and White slightly hints at on the page of
the book. But when it comes to writing, any type, those who break the
rules are far more interesting. To go even further, those who don’t
even know the rules could do something far more great than those who do.
(why am I going to school) But there is a credibility in knowing the
rules or basic ideals/ideas as to what good writing is.
Works Cited
Strunk, William Jr., and E.B
White. The Elements of Style. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000.
Williams, Joseph M. Style:Towards Clarity and Grace. Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1990.
