And if you're looking for a rationale from Strunk and White that will solve a multitude of writing ills in one fell swoop, I give you this simple dictum from Will Strunk: Omit needless words.
Let that be your guiding principle for all serious writing, and you will rarely go astray.
Excellent point, Oberon! One that I would do well to be conscious of at all times...
It's funny... a lot of people find Joyce, particularly in certain spots of
Ulysses and, of course, the infamous
Finnegan's Wake, to be quite prolix and highfalutin. But he always maintained that he was very exact in his choice of words and strove to never use more words than necessary for what he was describing. That he was describing complex emotions and situations ended up requiring more verbiage than some felt comfortable with.
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There's a great story, possibly apocryphal, about Joyce's writing process.
He'd often write for six, eight, ten hours in the day, fixed immovably in front of his typewriter or notebook. One day, he met a friend in the evening and was relaxing after a particularly grueling workday.
The friend asked, "So, how'd the writing go?"
"Oh, excellently! Excellently! I really got a lot done today. I'm very pleased."
"Ah, really? That's wonderful. How much did you get written?"
"A sentence. Seven words," came the matter-of-fact reply.
The friend was a bit flabbergasted and, with a moment to adjust, he queried, "I see! That... uhm... was it so very difficult for you to find the right words?"
Joyce replied simply, "Not at all. I had them from the very beginning. It was determining the right order that was so tough."
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