Jargon means words and phrases which are frequently used within a profession or occupation. People using these words regularly are familiar with them, but to people outside that particular profession these words and phrases may be meaningless. This is something to be particularly careful about in your own writing.
In the advertising industry, for instance, you frequently hear such expressions as: insertions, copy, copy dates, lineage, display, coverage, bleed pages, format etc. These all have a specific meaning to an advertising person – but to somebody outside the advertising industry, who is not familiar with them, these words are largely meaningless.
So, as we have said earlier in the course, in your own writing try to hit the right note. If you are writing an article for a specialist magazine aimed at people who would already be expected to understand technical terms, then use them. Otherwise they may feel you are wasting time and insulting their intelligence. If a similar article is also suitable for a general interest magazine then fewer technical terms and more explanation would be required. Always tailor your writing style and level to your chosen market.
Foreign Words in English
Many expressions and words from Latin, French and other languages have been introduced into English. These include, among others, chauffeur, tête-a-tête, bric-a-brac, coup d'état, pro-rata and many more.
Our advice is never use such words just to impress your reader. You are writing in English; so always look first to the English language for your vocabulary. Also, if you use foreign words you do run the risk that your reader will not understand what you mean and this is not good policy. But, if a foreign expression conveys a certain shade of meaning which you need and are unable to produce by using an English expression, then by all means use it – it might just add that certain je ne sais quoi!
Adjectives
These should be used sparingly. Too many can spoil the effect and result in flowery language or purple prose (over-written, ornate prose which slows the pace of your story). Too many adjectives are particularly undesirable when used to describe emotions:
He looked sadly on the tragic scene, pity welling in him for the beautiful, forlorn young maiden, stretched pale and lifeless on the cold, windswept shore.
Any budding writer would be proud of writing that. Or would they? Try this instead:
He looked down with pity at the pale girl stretched lifeless on the sand at his feet.
It is shorter but has every bit as much impact – and far less padding.
DH Lawrence once said: I would compel a young writer to put down 500 words without using a single adjective.
Too many adjectives can turn pathos into bathos (something rather ridiculous or absurd) and destroy the intended effect. Always be selective in your use of adjectives. Consider the effect you wish to create and then choose your words carefully, ensuring that they convey the exact shade of meaning or emotion. If you are not satisfied, work on it until you have found exactly what you want.
Similes and Metaphors can enhance your work provided they are not used too often. A simile is a rhetorical figure of speech where one thing is directly compared to another. For example:
His relatives surrounded the sick man's bed like vultures hovering over their prey.
There can be a temptation to use similes rather than try to describe a scene as you see it in your mind's eye. An original, dynamic description may be harder to write, but it is usually worth it.
Some similes have become clichés through over-use. As the novelist, Eva Hanagan, says:
The bed-linen may indeed be white as snow, but you really must find some other phrase to convey its appearance.
So, use similes with discretion.
A metaphor is the application of a descriptive phrase to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. You are not comparing (as in a simile) but are asserting that one thing is another. For example, he had a heart of stone, or her eyes were vast pools of hatred and contempt. Again, metaphors should be used sparingly, but when they are used well they can add variety, colour and life to your writing.
As we draw to the end of our coverage of style we feel that the following is a good point to bear in mind. Many new writers worry too much about style. It acquires a kind of mystique for them, and consequently they try too hard to impress, so their writing becomes self-conscious and stilted. Some people, who have total control of our wonderful language, produce flowing sentences which, however beautifully constructed, would force the average reader to give up! Remember, this type of style is no longer fashionable. So, just express yourself clearly, in plain English. There is no mystique.
Having stated this, it must be pointed out that different styles in writing are used by various publications. The choice of market for an article or story dictates the writing style used in the work. For example, the style used in The Times Literary Supplement and The Spectator is very different from that in People's Friend or Bella. You will have to vary your style and approach to suit that of your chosen market. This is explained more fully in later modules. But remember that today the majority of newspapers and popular-type publications use an informal, conversational style instead of a more formal one.
To a large extent the publication at which you are aiming will determine your style, so versatility is needed. Always experiment with words. Learn to manipulate them so that you are in control. If you are the master you can change style at will.
Before we end this section on style, though, let's look at some examples – both fiction and non-fiction. As you go through these think back to what we have said over the last few pages.
To start with, compare these two articles on the same subject. The first one appeared in The Sun, the second in The Independent. The topic is out of date but the point we are trying to make about the difference in style between two very different newspapers is certainly still relevant.
PIT BULLS
RSPCA Warn of Wild Dogs
By George Pascoe-Watson and Simon Walters
KILLER packs of pit bull terriers will bring terror to the streets when the Government orders the dogs' slaughter, the RSPCA said last night.
The animal experts warned that owners will turn their savage pets loose rather than hand them over to be put down.
But Home Secretary Kenneth Baker made it clear that anyone letting the dogs roam wild would face jail.
He told MPs: "Abandoning the dogs would be an act of criminal irresponsibility.
"It will be a criminal offence to permit a banned dog to stray.
"Anyone who does so will risk going to prison and will thoroughly deserve it."
Mr Baker made his threat amid a growing revolt by owners, who say they would never surrender their animals.
Havoc
The RSPCA painted a nightmare image of hungry pit bull terriers breeding in the wild and hunting food in towns and cities.
They pointed out that it happened in Ohio after the U.S. state imposed a similar ban.
Dog-catchers lost control of the vicious roaming packs.
RSPCA spokeswoman Liz Cooke said: "There are 10,000 of these dogs in Britain.
"But just a small percentage of those turned free could create havoc.
"Owners who cannot face having the dogs put down will simply turn them loose in the country or in the back streets.
"There will be packs of hungry, frightened pit bulls on the loose - a terrifying prospect."
The Government is ready to fork out £1million by giving each owner £100 to hand over his dog.
Mr Baker brushed aside claims that some pit bull terriers can be safe.
He said: "All pit bulls go mad. It is just a countdown to madness from the first 12 months.
"They are totally unpredictable. That is what marks them out from other dogs.
"They are completely friendly and docile one minute and complete killers the next."
Picket
A law banning the dogs will be rushed through the Commons by July.
Officials hope to rid Britain of every pit bull before the end of the year.
The move follows an attack on a six-year-old girl in Bradford, Yorks, whose ribs were crushed by a pit bull terrier.
Some MPs had doubts about the measure.
Tory Sir John Wheeler, chairman of the Commons all-party home affairs group, said: "It could be very difficult to implement.
"Laws drawn up hastily are often a bad idea."
Mr Baker rejected calls to include Britain's 100,000 rottweilers in the ban, claiming they were not bred for fighting.
But laws to muzzle all dangerous dogs and tougher fines for irresponsible owners are on the cards.
Pit bull owner Anthony Hawkins picketed the Commons yesterday in protest that his dogs Floyd and Mizzi did not deserve to die.
"They are my children," said Mr Hawkins, from Poplar, East London.
"I would send them abroad to save them rather than put them down.
"They have never attacked anybody and anybody can stroke them."
Another owner, printer Ashley Rees, 19, vowed: "I will never let my dog be put down."
Ashley, of Hastings, East Sussex said, his pet Sunny "is as gentle as a lamb and part of the family."
Harmless
He added: "I would be devastated to lose him. They would have to kill me before killing the dog."
Trucker John Davis, of Rainham, Essex, claimed his pit bull Kass "is absolutely harmless."
Mr Davis, 47, said: "I can't believe I would be made to put him down.
"I am responsible but will stand in the way of anyone who tries to get my dog from me.
"My pit bull is never allowed to run loose so why should it be condemned to death?"
Reproduced by kind permission of The Sun.
You will notice that the paragraphs are very short – all of them are only one sentence long. Sentence length is average, varying between 15 and 25 words.
Most sentences follow the basic subject + predicate form which makes for easy reading. Language is informal and very understandable but certainly not slangy. The quotations from different people add interest and variety. Notice that the title is of the shock/horror variety which certainly attracts the readers' attention.
Baker sets out action on vicious dogs
OWNERS OF pit bull terriers who simply abandon their dogs rather than get them destroyed would risk being sent to prison, Kenneth Baker, the Home Secretary, told the Commons yesterday after announcing action to deal with vicious breeds.
There will be legislation in this session of parliament to ban the breeding and ownership of pit bull terriers and other dogs bred especially for fighting, including the Japanese Tosa which can weigh up to 17 stone.
Mr Baker said he had been advised that a neutered fighting dog could be just as vicious. Though he would be ready to consider further evidence from the veterinary profession, if neutering would not be effective then banned breeds would have to be put down.
"It is essential to rid the country of the danger from such dogs," he said. The Government also propose tougher penalties for the owners of any breeds who fail to keep their dogs safely under control in public. Courts could have power to order muzzling.
But Mr Baker set himself firmly against a scheme of dog registration advocated by the opposition parties. Roy Hattersley, Labour's home affairs spokesman, said a national registration scheme would be good for the welfare of dogs as well as for the protection of human beings.
Raising the issue of compensation, Alan Williams (Lab, Swansea W) said fighting dogs were often owned by "people of an irresponsible disposition". If just 10 per cent of owners were to decide to abandon their dogs rather than have them destroyed there would be 1,000 pit bulls loose on the streets.
Mr Baker said abandoning the dogs would be "an act of criminal irresponsibility". He was therefore making it a criminal offence to permit a banned dog to stray.
"Those who act in this way would risk going to prison and would thoroughly deserve it."
He told MPs the Government was considering compensation for owners who brought their dogs forward within a limited period. Discussions with the RSPCA indicated the level of compensation for a fighting dog which had its fighting value removed should be £20 to £25.
Mr Hatterlsey said: "Virtually all authorities on care and control of dogs insist that protection and prohibition will not successfully work without the introduction of a national registration scheme.
It would be good for the welfare of dogs because it would reduce the number of dogs that are bought casually and abandoned callously."
Though he promised Labour's support on banning fighting breeds, he described the Home Secretary's statement as "disappointingly vague" and asked why rottweilers were not to be prohibited.
"They are often advertised as possessing an aggressive temperament and in the past years they have been responsible for a number of vicious attacks." He challenged Mr Baker to allow a free vote if an attempt was made to introduce a dog registration scheme into the proposed legislation. Last October more than 50 Tories rebelled on the issue when a move to introduce a compulsory national register failed by just 274 votes to 271.
Robert Maclennan, for the Liberal Democrats, also thought the statement "vague" and said it betrayed the Government's "unwillingness to tackle the problem of dangerous dogs at root". He pointed out that of the 465 cases of serious dog attacks in London last year, only 111 were by American pit bull terriers.
Mr Baker said rottweilers had not been included in the ban because they were not bred to fight and kill.
Rejecting a registration scheme, he told MPs it would not have prevented the attack on Rucksana Khan last weekend.
"If that dog had been registered for £5 and had a computer number on its collar, I don't believe that would have prevented it in any way, shape or form from attacking that little girl.
"The argument for a registration scheme is that it identifies the owner with the dog. In all the recent incidents, the identification of the owner has not been the problem."
STEPHEN GOODWIN Parliamentary Correspondent
Reproduced by kind permission of The Independent.
Comparing this with the previous article you will see that both paragraphs and sentences are longer. Some sentences contain as many as 36 words but because they are well punctuated and well constructed they are still easy to read and understand. But look at the different language level. Compare paragraph two of the first article with paragraph six of the second:
turn their savage pets loose/abandon their dogs hand them over to be put down/have them destroyed and later: ready to fork out/was considering compensation
As you can see from this, there are two levels of written English which are considered acceptable: formal and informal. The latter is often more emotive, being the language of the people. But, both are good in the right circumstances. You may be called upon to write both in your career as a freelance and this is why we advise you to try to be versatile and also to do your market research carefully.
Here are some more examples, but this time from books rather than newspapers. The first one is from DH Lawrence's Sons and Lovers.
It was very still. The tree was tall and straggling. It had thrown its briers over a hawthorn-bush, and its long streamers trailed thick right down to the grass, splashing the darkness everywhere with great split stars, pure white. In bosses of ivory and in large splashed stars the roses gleamed on the darkness of foliage and stems and grass. Paul and Miriam stood close together, silent, and watched. Point after point the steady roses shone out of them, seeming to kindle something in their souls. The dusk came like smoke around, and still did not put out the roses.
Paul looked into Miriam's eyes. She was pale and expectant with wonder, her lips were parted, and her dark eyes lay open to him. His look seemed to travel down into her. Her soul quivered. It was the communion she wanted. He turned aside, as if pained. He turned to the bush.
'They seem as if they walk like butterflies, and shake themselves,' he said.
She looked at her roses. They were white, some incurved and holy, others expanded in an ecstasy. The tree was dark as a shadow. She lifted her hand impulsively to the flowers; she went forward and touched them in worship.
'Let us go,' he said.
There was a cool scent of ivory roses – a white, virgin scent. Something made him feel anxious and imprisoned. The two walked in silence.
This is a beautifully crafted description – the roses seeming like stars in the dusk and then later being made to take on Miriam's own characteristics of purity and passion. At the same time Lawrence shows us rather than having to tell us the fundamental difference in temperament between Paul and Miriam which will eventually part them. Notice the contrasting sentence lengths which give the piece its pace, varying from dreamy to brittle.
Moving on to non-fiction, look at this piece from George Orwell's Down the Mine written in 1937.
When you go down a coal-mine it is important to try and get to the coal face when the 'fillers' are at work. This is not easy, because when the mine is working visitors are a nuisance and are not encouraged, but if you go at any other time it is possible to come away with a totally wrong impression. On a Sunday, for instance, a mine seems almost peaceful. The time to go there is when the machines are roaring and the air is black with coal dust, and when you can actually see what the miners have to do. At those times the place is like hell, or at any rate like my own mental picture of hell. Most of the things one imagines in hell are there – heat, noise, confusion, darkness, foul air, and, above all, unbearably cramped space. Everything except the fire, for there is no fire down there except the feeble beams of Davy lamps and electric torches which scarcely penetrate the clouds of coal dust.
It is good, solid description. There is no excessive use of adjectives or striving for effect but it is brought to life for the reader by the comparison with hell near the end and the brief intrusion of the author's own voice: At those times the place is like hell, or at any rate like my own mental picture of hell.
You could do far worse than adopt an uncluttered, economical style like this when writing non-fiction. It was written in the first half of the twentieth century but is still fresh and modern.
Now we come more up to date. The first piece is by Peter Mayle who won the British Book Awards prize for 'Travel Writer of the Year' with his book A Year in Provence.
By midday, all that remained to do was to fit the carpet under a wooden batten at the threshold of the room. It was while Jean-Pierre was drilling the holes to screw in the batten that he went through the hot water pipe which ran under the floor, and a jet of water rose in a small and picturesque fountain, framed by the doorway.
We cut off the water supply, rolled back the sodden carpet, and called Monsieur Menicucci. After a year of alarms and emergencies, I knew his number off by heart, and I knew what his first words would be.
'Oh là là.' He meditated in silence for a moment. 'The floor will have to be broken so that I can solder the pipe. You had better warn Madame. There will be a little dust.'
Madame was out buying food. She was expecting to return to a bedroom, bathroom and dressing room that were dry, clean and carpeted. She would be surprised. I advised Jean-Pierre to go home for medical reasons. She would probably want to kill him.
Again note the humorous tone of the piece – yet the author makes the writing seem so effortless. He is a natural raconteur, able to convert this skill into prose.
Apart from Oh là là there is no attempt to reproduce a French accent but the speech patterns used convey beautifully the flavour of French speech. This is noticeable throughout the book.
In the final paragraph the sentences are very terse. This speeds up the pace, giving the impression of the author trying to hurry the offending carpet layer out of the house before his wife's return and the possibility of bloodshed.
Our last example comes from Sue Townsend's novel The Queen and I:
Jack Barker's denim shirt sleeves were rolled to the elbow. His already handsome features had been further enhanced by subtle touches of colour. His accent combined the flattened vowels of the north with the crisper intonation of the south.
He knew his smile was good; he used it often. He had alarmed his civil servants by telling them that he intended to write his own speeches and it was his own speech that he was reading now on the autocue. Even to his own ears it sounded stilted and ridiculous.
The Yeoman of the Silver Plate scrutinised Jack Barker, the new Prime Minister.
Very nice, he thought. Smaller than he looked on the telly, but very nice. Clothes a bit Top Man and shoes a bit Freeman Hardyish, but a good, fine-boned face, adorable eyes – violet, and lavish eyelashes like spider's legs.
This is a clever piece of multi-layer, multi-character description.
On the surface it is telling us all about Jack Barker being unsophisticated and a bit of an innocent, but really it says much more about the Yeoman of the Silver Plate and his attitudes – not only is he camp and fancies the new Prime Minister, but he's a terrible snob as well.
This is characterisation taken to an art form. It shows just what you can do with a few well-chosen images.
You may not be able to pen word portraits as ingenious and excellent as these (certainly not at first), but you can use the same general principles to make your characters fresh, lively and memorable.
In Conclusion
That brings us to the end of our section on style. Do take time away from your writing to study how others do it and to learn from them.
As you go through the course, especially when you come to the fiction modules, you will find that we have recommended a variety of authors you should read and study.
Look at the words they use and how they manipulate them; the way in which they construct their sentences. If they achieve effects you like then try to decide how they have done it so that you, too, can have a go. Never stop trying to learn and improve. As we have said earlier, don't model your style on one particular author. Take the best from many and then mould your ideas into something coherent and clear that is yours. Then maybe one day, you too will have a style that commands admiration. It's the only way to develop your own identity as a writer.
In Book 2 we start to show you how to use your writing skills to construct saleable work – planning and arranging your material so that you produce features and articles that should impress any editor.
AWARD WINNING WRITER Christina Jones, Oxfordshire
'So far, I have had eighteen novels published. The Writers Bureau helped make this possible for me. Within six months of enrolling on my course I was having work commissioned by editors and I still work regularly for magazines.'
Christina studied The Writers Bureau Comprehensive Creative Writing Course.
Click the image below to play Christina's comments!
