Composing with AI

Defining Style

Chapter four of Corbett’s Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student was so well received that it was published on its own as Style and Statement (1999). The style exercises contained within the chapter provide a progymnasmata of sorts focused on analyzing and developing writerly style. The style exercises provide a way for writers to see just how professional writers vary their prose style by employing a wealth of syntactic and lexical structures, but they also reveal that professional writers do so with constraint rather than wild flourishes.

One challenge of writing style is that it’s misunderstood. As Corbett and Connors (1999) note, the classical rhetoricians did not dictate certain style, “the dress of thought,” the “tinsel draped over the bare branches of the Christmas tree” (p. 338) because that matter is Plato’s bad rhetoric, that which soothes the body and not the soul. In the classic sense, discourse is bound by “matter and form” (p. 338) so an effective discourse will thoroughly examine and present a topic shaped for a certain audience. As Corbett and Connors explain, etymology offers insight into the classical function of style. They explain that elocutio, one of the five canons of rhetoric, refers to employing rhetorical devices, figures of speech, imitation, and grammatical competence. Lexis, the Greek word for style, can refer to the act of speaking but is also the root word of lexicon. Logos, like lexis refers to word, but also thought, so style derives from a unification of thought, word, and speaking (p. 337).

Just as rhetoric is a noun and a verb, style is a noun and a verb that refers to the act of responding to an exigence by exploring the topic, formulating an opinion, and delivering that opinion in a fitting way to an audience. Just as Rhetoric students in nineteenth-century America may have studied the style of Joseph Addison in Rhetoric 1a, imitated style in Rhetoric 1b, and practiced their own style in Rhetoric 1c (J. Brereton, 1996), contemporary students can develop a style their own by examining, analyzing, and imitating style. A writing teacher cannot ask a student to write with style without explaining the underlying form of certain styles.

While it’s important to note that good rhetoric does not rely upon good style, and good style does not rely upon good grammar, Strunk and White’s (1979) The Elements of Style begins with 11 grammar rules and contains 14 section titles that begin with either “Do Not” (10) or “Avoid” (4). Likewise, Joseph M. Williams opens Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace with an assault on a sentence of academese 2000). Confusing. Nonetheless, Strunk and White do make the case that writing and thinking are linked and that a pleasing style will help seeds of information sprout in the minds of readers (p. 70) and Williams reminds readers of the adage, “Write for others as you would have others write for you” (p. 220).

Nora Bacon (2019) importantly refers to style as, “the unique voice that distinguishes one voice from another” (p. 6) just as N. Scott Momaday wrote The Man Made of Words, a reflection on how his identity as Kiowa is shaped by his efforts to preserve Kiowa legends. Bacon advises writers to write in a way that is authentic to them, as does Williams (2000). With that advice, Bacon challenges the popular notion that academic writing must be tepid or plain. Writers can simultaneously write with clarity and flair, with concision and wit (p. 15-16). To a similar aim, Erasmus ([1512] 1978) wrote 195 variations of the sentence, “Your letter delighted me greatly” in Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style (De duplici copia verborum ac rerum commentarii duo).