How to write well

Classic notes on familiar style from a master of the English language

It is not easy to write a familiar style. Many people mistake a familiar for a vulgar style, and suppose that to write without affectation is to write at random. On the contrary, there is nothing that requires more precision, and, if I may so say, purity of expression, than the style I am speaking of. It utterly rejects not only all unmeaning pomp, but all low, cant phrases, and loose, unconnected, slipshod allusions. It is not to take the first word that offers, but the best word in common use; it is not to throw words together in any combinations we please, but to follow and avail ourselves of the true idiom of the language.

To write a genuine familiar or truly English style, is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic, and oratorical flourishes. Or, to give another illustration, to write naturally is the same thing in regard to common conversation as to read naturally is in regard to common speech.

It does not follow that it is an easy thing to give the true accent and inflection to the words you utter, because you do not attempt to rise above the level of ordinary life and colloquial speaking. You do not assume, indeed, the solemnity of the pulpit, or the tone of stage-declamation; neither are you at liberty to gabble on at a venture, without emphasis or discretion, or to resort to vulgar dialect or clownish pronunciation. You must steer a middle course. You are tied down to a given and appropriate articulation, which is determined by the habitual associations between sense and sound, and which you can only hit by entering into the author's meaning as you must find the proper words and style to express yourself by fixing your thoughts on the subject you have to write about.

Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express: it is not so to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it out of eight or 10 words equally common, equally intelligible, with nearly equal pretensions, it is a matter of some nicety and discrimination to pick out the very one the preferableness of which is scarcely perceptible, but decisive. A word may be a fine-sounding word, of an unusual length, and very imposing from its learning and novelty, and yet in the connection in which it is introduced may be quite pointless and irrelevant.

It is not pomp or pretension, but the adaptation of the expression to the idea, that clenches a writer's meaning: - as it is not the size or glossiness of the materials, but their being fitted each to its place, that gives strength to the arch; or as the pegs and nails are as necessary to the support of the building as the larger timbers, and more so than the mere shewy, unsubstantial ornaments. The florid style is the reverse of the familiar. The last is employed as an unvarnished medium to convey ideas; the first is resorted to as a spangled veil to conceal the want of them. Rouge high enough, and never mind the natural complexion. The vulgar, who are not in the secret, will admire the look of preternatural health and vigour; and the fashionable, who regard only appearances, will be delighted with the imposition. Keep to your sounding generalities, your tinkling phrases, and all will be well. Swell out an unmeaning truism to a perfect tympany of style. A thought, a distinction is the rock on which all this brittle cargo of verbiage splits at once.

Such writers have merely verbal imaginations, that retain nothing but words. Nothing more is meant by them than meets the ear: they understand or mean nothing more than meets their eye. The web and texture of the universe, and of the heart of man, is a mystery to them: they have no faculty that strikes a chord in unison with it. They cannot get beyond the daubings of fancy, the varnish of sentiment. Objects are not linked to feelings, words to things, but images revolve in splendid mockery, words represent themselves in their strange rhapsodies.

With a sovereign contempt for what is familiar and natural, they are the slaves of vulgar affectation - of a routine of high-flown phrases. Scorning to imitate realities, they are unable to invent anything, to strike one original idea. They are not copyists of nature, it is true; but they are the poorest of all plagiarists, the plagiarists of words.

 Extracted from The Nonesuch Library edition of Hazlitt's Selected Essays. The Guardian is supporting a move to replace the lost memorial stone from Hazlitt's grave in St Anne's churchyard in Soho, London. Contributions may be sent to Hazlitt Memorial Fund, c/o Rose de Paeztron, Office of the Readers' Editor, The Guardian, 119, Farringdon Road, London, EC1R 3ER. Please include your address so that acknowledgment can be made. The total cost could be about £20,000. Guardian readers have already contributed about £7,000. Committee members include Melvyn Bragg, Michael Foot, AC Grayling, Andrew Motion, Tom Paulin and Duncan Wu. Ian Mayes's column returns next week.