THE ART OF EDITING SPLENDID STYLE Editing seminar

THE ART OF EDITING SPLENDID STYLE Editing seminar series for HDR candidates and advisors 2014 Dr Liz Tynan Senior Lecturer and Co-ordinator Research Student Academic Support JCU Graduate Research School

A stylish Gallic thought • Style is a simple way of saying complicated things Jean Cocteau, French writer and film director

Honing style • Style must be consciously adopted to suit your material, in this case the fruits of research. • We must make many stylistic choices - this is an art, not a science. • Academic style is, to a certain extent, imposed upon us. We must work with it and make it our own.

Your style should aid… • Clarity (the work is always 100 per cent clear in meaning); • Persuasiveness (the reader can accept the research findings because they are based on strong evidence and critical thinking); and • Quality (the work is eloquent and polished).

Avoiding unbearable boredom • “…a style, like a person, may be perfectly correct, yet perfectly boring or unbearable. ” • F L Lucas, English literary critic, poet, novelist, playwright, political polemicist, and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge

The first rule of academic style • Good academic style must be clear. • And how is clarity to be acquired? Mainly by taking trouble and by writing to serve people rather than impress them. • F L Lucas

Lucas didn’t equivocate • “Most obscurity is an unmixed, and unnecessary, evil. ” • “…trouble may spring from being, not too fond of one’s own ideas, but too unsure of them”. • F L Lucas

The style that Orwell hated • “On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side, the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity? ”

Orwell said… • “…if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which it occurs. ” • The piece of writing features abstractions, convoluted grammar and unhelpful rhetorical questions. Overall, as Orwell points out, its main characteristic is lack of meaning. • If your style obscures meaning, then it is bad style.

Bad academic style • “It is clear that much additional work will be required before a complete understanding…. ” • “It has long been known that…. ” • “In today’s modern society, it is believed that…” • “In the global community, we think that…. ”

Specific not vague • Say precisely, for example, what additional work might be needed to completely understand the issue. • There is no such thing as a “global community”. Probe what you actually mean, and find a form of words that matches meaning. • Other forms of imprecision: “…last year…” or “…a few years ago…” or “…in the past century…”, or “…next year…”

Swarms of squid • Occasionally, I recognise what I call the squid technique: the author is doubtful about his facts or his reasoning and retreats behind a protective cloud of ink. Doug Savile, quoted in Kirkman

Cut to improve understanding • When you remove words in a considered manner, you are really testing your own knowledge base. • You can only cut words with certainty if you know precisely what needs to be said.

Clicheville • Old hat… • By the same token… • …this day and age… • International icon…. • …by the wayside… • …window dressing… • …dawn of time… • …groundbreaking…. (or its incorrect version “pathbreaking”)

Get rid of “freeloaders” • Good academic style features well-structured, clear sentences that link information in unambiguous ways. • Underline the words in the sentences you are editing that carry actual information. • When you look at the words that are not underlined, see how many freeloaders are there.

Verbal obstacle course • Good academic style is not be overly complex. • Extremely complex grammar is poor style and creates an obstacle course for the reader.

Try this for size (and notice how much is inside brackets – poor style) • “Total presence breaks on the univocal predication of the exterior absolute the absolute existent (of that of which it is not possible to univocally predicate an outside, while the equivocal predication of the outside of the absolute exterior is possible of that of which the reality so predicated is not the reality, viz. , of the dark/of the self, the identity of which is not outside the absolute identity of the outside, which is to say that the equivocal predication of identity is possible of the self-identity which is not identity, while identity is univocally predicated of the limit to the darkness, of the limit of the reality of the self). ” [110 words] • D. G. Leahy, Foundation: Matter the Body Itself, 1996

Consistency • You must aim not to cause your readers irritation and confusion through inconsistency of usage. • Like static on your television, inconsistent style can have readers throwing things at the walls.

Aust Eng vs. US Eng • Standard Australian English and American English have many stylistic differences: • Colour/color • Travelling/traveling • Organise/organize • Centre/center • Aluminium/aluminum • Sulphur/sulfur

Discipline and precision • Consistent style imposes a discipline that should run through all your writing and editing activities. • Consistency helps you demonstrate precision not only with writing but with facts and thought. • On some level, your reader is noticing your attention to detail (some take it more seriously than others).

Referencing style • Each discipline has its own preferred – or demanded – referencing style. • Along with the conventions of formal referencing, a range of stylistic considerations come as part of the package.

Formality • Formal language is more likely to be both durable and well-understood. • Ensure that colloquialisms, slang, vernacular and other manifestations of more casual style are eliminated. • You will also be editing out emotive terms or attempts to persuade by hectoring.

Example of non-formal writing …and therefore bad academic style • Genetically modified food is the greatest threat facing the world today. Scientists have shown that GMFs cause cancer. You should realise that the natural threat of GMF will cause devastation among existing plants, wiping out species. As a consequence the animals who live on those plants will die off or will have their genes changed so that they will morph into monsters. Some bacteria and viruses will be changed and there will be no drugs available to combat them and so devastating new diseases will wipe out millions of people. The food companies have already put GMF on the supermarket shelves, without labelling it to increase their profits and not consider the people who have been subjected to eating it for ages. I say the government must ban GMF before it is too late.

Which person? • First person • I/We conducted research on the World Bank’s policies. • Third person • The researcher studied the World Bank’s policies OR • Research was conducted on the World Bank’s policies. • (The latter shows that person can be related to voice…. )

Which voice? • Active: Researchers collected data on the behaviour of children. • Passive: Data on the behaviour of children was collected by researchers.

Arguments on both sides • Disciplines that insist upon either first or third person are adamant about the correctness of their chosen person, but this is not a correctness issue. • Some argue that third person makes a piece of writing more “objective”. • The other side argues that true objectivity is impossible and it is better to be honest about who exactly is making the assertions.

Tense tensions • A common editing task involves making the verbal tenses of a piece of writing consistent. • The editor must be strict and have a firm of idea of what the dominant tense in the piece of writing should be. • Some theses or papers are all in the past tense, some are in the present and some dabble in the future tense. • As a general rule, keep to either the past or the present, and be consistent. Avoid the future tense.

Contractual obligations Academic style tends to forbid contractions: • isn’t • can’t • wouldn’t • couldn’t

Splitting infinitives • Some people maintain that the demand not to split infinitives is an arbitrary, meaningless rule. • Others think that splitting an infinitive is always poor writing. • Most editors concede that sometimes, for grace and clarity, you may need to split an infinitive.

Not split and split • The most famous infinitive (not split) is found in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “To be or not to be”. • The world’s most famous split infinitive comes from Star Trek, in which the denizens of the Starship Enterprise vowed “to boldly go where no man has gone before”.

The case for splitting • H. W. Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) defends splitting the infinitive in certain cases. • Fowler says that sometimes, to match the natural rhythms of English, it is better to split an infinitive than to slavishly keep it intact.

Ending with a preposition • This issue is just as controversial as the split infinitive. • There are many dissenters. • Winston Churchill famously mocked someone who criticised him for ending with a preposition with the line: • “That is something up with which I will not put. ”

Examples • That is the laboratory I work in. [“That is the laboratory in which I work. ”] • Who did you give the data to? [“To whom did you give the data? ”]

So say Strunk and White • Years ago, students were warned not to end a sentence with a preposition; time, of course, has softened that rigid decree. Not only is the preposition acceptable at the end, sometimes it is more effective in that spot than anywhere else. ‘A claw hammer, not an axe, was the tool he murdered her with. ’ This is preferable to ‘A claw hammer, not an axe, was the tool with which he murdered her. ’ Why? Because it sounds more violent, more like murder.

Metaphors are great

Mixed metaphors not so much • No society, no community, can place its house in such a condition that it is always on a rock, oscillating between solvency and insolvency. What I have to do is to see that our house is built upon a solid foundation, never allowing the possibility of the Society’s lifeblood being sapped. Quoted by H W Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage

And again… • Over all, many experts conclude, advanced climate research in the United States is fragmented among an alphabet soup of agencies, strained by inadequate computing power and starved for the basic measurements of real-world conditions that are needed to improve simulations. • New York Times, 11 June 2001

Please, no…. • “It’s not rocket surgery. ” • “I can see the carrot at the end of the tunnel. ”

Develop a style guide • Apart from the pleasing consistency it will bring to your work, a style guide is useful to give to advisors and external editors who are reviewing your text. • A style guide also focuses the attention of both student and advisor on the elements of style.

Some possible elements • Standard Australian spelling: colour not color; travelling not traveling; centre not center • Use –ise, not –ize, for example. recognise, organise. • No fullstops in Dr, Ms, Mr, QC, etc. • Amid not amidst, while not whilst, among not amongst. • All right not alright • Number style: One to nine (in words); then 10, 11, 12…. (in numerals) • Sentences should not begin with a numeral • Use a comma between numbers greater than 999 – i. e. 1, 000, 100, 000, etc

Continued… • For millions of dollars, use $10 million • Per cent, not percent or % (in text) • For Australian dollars, $A 100. For American dollars $US 100 • Use “km” for both singular and plural forms of kilometre. Eg. “The site was one km from the coast” and “The site was 10 km from the coast”. • Likewise for the abbreviations of millimetre, kilogram, metre, etc

A closing thought • Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style. • Jonathan Swift, Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist