On Writing as Style and Entering a Conversation

Lisa Blankenship

The letter I have written today is longer than usual because I lacked the time to make it shorter. ~Blaise Pascal, Lettres provinciales (“Provincial letters”), 1656–7

How would you describe your style as a writer? Have you ever thought about having a style (or styles) in your writing? You may have a strong sense of your style in clothing or in the way you present yourself to the world, but what about the “you” that comes through in your writing? Is there a strong sense of your “voice” as a writer, and what does that mean exactly? Can we have different voices or styles in our writing just like we present ourselves differently in the clothes we wear to work versus those we wear out with friends? Or in the way we talk to our mother or grandmother versus how we communicate with our closest friends? You wouldn’t, for example, text your grandmother using the same emojis and language that you use for your friends (or maybe you would; if so, I want to meet your grandmother).

Writing is a way of expressing our style(s), but different rhetorical situations or contexts for writing have different requirements that can seem like unwritten codes we have to figure out. “Academic style” is really the expectations of groups of scholars in various academic disciplines. For example, humanities scholars use MLA style (Modern Language Association), and social scientists use APA style (American Psychological Association). These style guides reflect the values of the leaders in those disciplines. APA style asks writers to include the year a work of scholarship was published in the in-text citation because social science research relies more on timeliness than, say, scholarship on Shakespeare. Biologists write differently in their academic papers, journals, and books than humanities professors. Sociologists have different ways of seeing the world and ask different questions than economists. Learning to write in college really is about learning the various styles and values of people in various discourse communities, including academic disciplines.

As you may have discovered with some degree of consternation, academics often write in ways that are less, well, exciting than writing meant for the larger public. Why is this? Part of the reason may be that academics see their primary audience as other academics, and other academics often don’t want a warm up or humor or engaging prose; in fact, they might see this kind of writing as inappropriate for academic contexts, the main purpose of which is to inform audiences of peers in their discipline of their research and to make a persuasive case that it has merit and is furthering a body of knowledge. The difficulty in writing in college stems at least partly from the fact that you’re trying as a student (and as a new student in most of your cases) to write for an audience (your professor) who seems to know the answer beforehand, and has been writing about the topics you’re studying for what probably seems to you like forever. This kind of “reach” in your writing (for any of us) is difficult, and it’s why I encourage my students to identify an audience for their papers who is not me.

For example, for the book I’m writing now, I often imagine a particular person in my head when I’m writing—a fellow scholar in my field for whom I have a great deal of respect but who also is approachable and I think (or I hope) values what I have to say. This sense of a particular audience helps me keep my writing focused and my style a bit more relaxed and what some would call “more real.” Sometimes, when I sense the need to be really honest in my writing and to write for a broader audience than people in my field of writing studies, the audience in my head as I write is Jon Stewart (or, to use an example maybe closer to home for you, his successor Trevor Noah). When my students tell me their audience is “the universe” or “everyone,” I often wonder how I would begin to talk to or write to such an awesome figure. I can barely articulate a sentence in the presence of someone I admire a great deal, let alone impress them with my greater knowledge (which, given the odds, probably wouldn’t work).

We write for all sorts of purposes and audiences, and we use conventions that fit those contexts. We do this quite naturally all the time. So what are the special conventions of writing in college? Why is it important to know there are conventions, or the way something usually is done? Because if you don’t know about the conventions you have less power over them. If you know the rules you have more power to break them and even to change them. If you break the rules without knowing them or don’t break them on purpose, it can take away from your ethos, or credibility, as a writer and even as a person unfortunately. Knowing the style of a certain group and being able to fit into that style gives you a kind of power the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu referred to as cultural capital.

So how does this relate to your writing style and to grammar? The piece in this collection on “Clutter” and style by William Zinsser, a journalist and famous writing teacher best known for his book On Writing Well from which this excerpt is taken, emphasizes saying more with fewer words. If your main goal as a writer is to reach the word count in an essay, you’re probably less likely to cut out what the writer and writing teacher Richard Lanham called “the lard factor,” or what I like to call “words that do little.” Editing your writing so that it says more with less is a hard thing to do, but it’s a great skill to have. Saying more in less space is a great asset for people who are successful writers in business.

As valuable as concision is in writing, however, I’m a firm believer that no one wants to be bored or talked down to, so I encourage my students to “love their audience.” That is: be honest with them, talk straight to them, believe in yourself and what you have to say, and realize that doing so is a risk, especially as you are just entering a room and joining the conversation, and especially if you’re crashing the party, or are being made to feel that way.

My advice to you is this: take your writing seriously and practice different styles (notice the styles of writers you like and try theirs on for size, something I do with my students almost every semester). I hope you feel at least a bit inspired this semester to write about something you care about in a way that reflects the many voices and styles you use in your life, and I hope you gain enough confidence to take risks, revise, and make your writing even stronger.