What Is Style?

The word style has two meanings to an editor, both of which must be kept in mind when working with a manuscript. The first type of style -- such as that set forth in The Chicago Manual of Style -- is the industrywide standards for the mechanics of written communication, the enforcement of which is the job of the copyeditor (definition 7, below). This is also known as house style or press style. The second type is the author's personal manner of literary expression (definition 1, below). The following quotations deal primarily with the latter.

style (stìl) noun*
1. The way in which something is said, done, expressed, or performed: a style of speech and writing. 2. The combination of distinctive features of literary or artistic expression, execution, or performance characterizing a particular person, group, school, or era. 3. Sort; type: a style of furniture. 4. A quality of imagination and individuality expressed in one's actions and tastes: does things with style. 5.a. A comfortable and elegant mode of existence: living in style. b. A mode of living: the style of the very rich. 6.a. The fashion of the moment, especially of dress; vogue. b. A particular fashion: the style of the 1920's. 7. A customary manner of presenting printed material, including usage, punctuation, spelling, typography, and arrangement. 8. A form of address; a title. 9. a. An implement used for etching or engraving. b. A slender, pointed writing instrument used by the ancients on wax tablets. 10. The needle of a phonograph. 11. The gnomon of a sundial. 12. Botany. The usually slender part of a pistil, situated between the ovary and the stigma. 13. Zoology. A slender, tubular, or bristlelike process: a cartilaginous style. 14. Medicine. A surgical probing instrument; a stylet. 15. Obsolete. A pen.

On Style...

Style is not neutral; it gives moral directions.

Martin Amis (b. 1949), British author
Novelists in Interview (ed. by John Haffenden, 1985)

The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it, and it will take people you have never heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who puts his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off.

Raymond Chandler (1888-1959), U.S. author
Letter, 7 March 1947 (published in Raymond Chandler Speaking, 1962)

What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist's presence makes itself felt above that of the model....With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul's style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies.

Jean Cocteau (1889-1963), French author, filmmaker
The Difficulty of Being, "De la Ligne" (1947)

Style is the image of character.

Edward Gibbon (1737-94), English historian
Memoirs of My Life, Introduction (1796; repr. as Autobiography, 1971)

To me style is just the outside of content, and content the inside of style, like the outside and the inside of the human body -- both go together, they can't be separated.

Jean-luc Godard (b. 1930), French filmmaker, author
Quoted in: Richard Roud, Godard, Introduction (1970; first published 1967)

I might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardnesses in first trying to make something that has not heretofore been made.

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), U.S. author
Interview in Paris Review (Flushing, N.Y., Spring 1958; repr. in Writers at Work, 2d series, ed. by George Plimpton, 1963

Style [is] the hallmark of a temperament stamped on the material in hand.

André Maurois (1885-1967), French author, critic
The Art of Writing, "The Writer's Craft," sct. 2 (1960)

Oh, never mind the fashion. When one has a style of one's own, it is always twenty times better.

Margaret Oliphant (1828-97), English novelist, historian
Miss Marjoribanks, in Miss Marjoribanks, ch. 31 (1866), fourth of Chronicles of Carlingford

A cultivated style would be like a mask. Everybody knows it's a mask, and sooner or later you must show yourself -- or at least, you show yourself as someone who could not afford to show himself, and so created something to hide behind....You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being.

Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980), U.S. short-story writer, novelist
Interview in Writers at Work, 2d series, ed. by George Plimpton, 1963

No good poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the writer thinks from books, convention and cliché, not from real life.

Ezra Pound (1885-1972), U.S. poet, critic
"Prologomena," in Poetry Review (London, Feb. 1912)

I do not much dislike the matter, but
The manner of his speech.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616), English dramatist, poet
Octavius Caesar, in Antony and Cleopatra, act 2, sc. 2

In the final analysis, "style" is art. And art is nothing more or less than various modes of stylized, dehumanized representation.

Susan Sontag (b. 1933), U.S. essayist
Against Interpretation, "On Style" (1966)

He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.

Walt Whitman (1819-92), U.S. poet
Song of Myself, sct. 47, in Leaves of Grass (1855)

While one should always study the method of a great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of an artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutely universal. The first is personality, which no one should copy; the second is perfection, which all should aim at.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Anglo-Irish playwright, author
Dramatic Review (London, 20 Feb. 1886)

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The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition is licensed from Houghton Mifflin Company. Copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

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The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations is licensed from Columbia University Press. Copyright © 1993 by Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

This page last updated on 23 December 2004.

© Copyright 1999 Elizabeth von Radics. All rights reserved.