Five Virtues of Style I. Correctness — Follow correc

Five Virtues of Style
    Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to our series on Classical Rhetoric. Today we’re continuing our five-part segment on the Five Canons of Rhetoric. So far we’ve covered the canons of invention and arrangement. Today we’re discussing the canon of style, particularly on the five virtues of style.
    Let’s begin with the first virtue, correctness. Correctness means speaking or writing in accordance with the rules and norms of one’s language. An effective communicator uses words correctly and follows the rules of grammar and syntax. Why? First, correct usage ensures clear and precise communication. And second, correctly using language establishes credibility with an audience because it indicates the speaker or writer is well-educated, understands the nuances of language, and pays attention to details. When someone catches language mistakes in a speech or piece of text, the thought often arises, “If the author can’t even follow the basic rules of grammar or even take the time and effort to review them, why should I trust what he has to say?” When you’re attempting to persuade others, try to avoid anything that would distract your audience from your argument. Don’t give them a reason to discredit you by being lazy with correct grammar and usage.
     Coming up is the second virtue, clarity. It’s hard to be persuasive when people can’t even understand what you’re trying to say. Clear and simple writing ensures that your message never gets lost between you and your audience. Remember: smart writing is simple writing.
    Clear and simple writing is actually quite difficult to do. It requires you to think hard about your topic, get at its core, and then put that core in terms that your audience can understand. Here are a few tips on writing and speaking with greater clarity.
    Firstly, write or speak something an 8th grader can understand. If an 8th grader can understand your speech or article, then chances are an adult of average education can too. Practice this by taking complex legal/ethical issues or scientific theories and writing a short blurb that could be put in an 8th grade textbook.
    Secondly, use strong verbs. Avoid is, are, was, were, be, being, been. So instead of saying “Diane was killed by Jim,” say “Jim killed Diane.” It’s shorter, clearer, and punchier. Whenever I edit my writing, I always do a ctrl+f for those verbs and see if I can replace them with stronger verbs. Although sometimes you can’t do so without the sentence sounding worse than before.
    Thirdly, keep average sentence length to about 20 words. Sentence length is one of the biggest factors in determining how easy it is to understand what you’re saying or writing. Ideas can get lost in super long sentences. While you should avoid really long sentences as much as possible, you don’t want all your sentences to be just five words each either. That makes your writing and speaking sound choppy and rushed. Shoot for an average of about 20 words a sentence. And mix sentences of varying lengths together.
    The third virtue of style is evidence. We’re not using “evidence” in the sense of facts you provide to prove a logical argument. For classical rhetoricians, the quality of evidence was a way to measure how well language reached the emotions of an audience through vivid description. Remember that most people are persuaded more by emotion than by logic.  One of the best ways to elicit an emotional response from people is to appeal to their physical senses by using vivid descriptions. For example, let’s say you’re making the case to your state legislator that your state needs to devote more funds towards fighting childhood hunger.  Instead of starting your speech or letter by spouting off a bunch of dry facts, it would be more persuasive to tell a story of a specific child who’s a victim of hunger. In your story, describe the conditions this child is living in—the smells, the sights, the sounds. Describe the pangs of hunger that gnaw on his stomach every night while he lies crying softly, curled in ball on a urine-soaked mattress. Who wouldn’t want to help this kid? That’s the quality of evidence in action.
     Now let’s turn to the fourth virtue of style, propriety.  Propriety is the quality of style concerned with selecting words that fit with the subject matter of your speech and ensuring they’re appropriate for your audience and for the occasion. Simply put, propriety means saying the right thing, at the right place, at the right time. A common rhetorical event where you see the quality of propriety flagrantly violated is the best man speech at a wedding. I can’t count how many of these speeches I’ve witnessed where the best man says something that makes everyone in the room cringe. You’d think it’d be common sense, but a wedding toast in front of a groom’s new wife and her family isn’t an appropriate place to talk about the groom’s past relationships or a night of drunken debauchery you had with him back in your college days. You might think it’s funny, but a wedding reception isn’t the place for that sort of humour. It’d be fine at a roast, but not a toast.
    The last one to be mentioned is ornateness.  Ornateness involves making your speech or text interesting to listen to or read by using figures of speech and manipulating the sound and rhythm of words. Classical rhetoricians focused on incorporating different figures of speech to decorate their speeches. Here are a few that I particularly enjoy using.
     The first one is Antanaclasis. It means repetition of a word in two different senses. For example: “If we don’t hang together, we’ll hang separately.” Benjamin Franklin said.
    The second one is simile. It is an explicit comparison, often employing “like” or “as.” John Steinbeck in his book The Grapes of Wrath wrote: “The full green hills are round and soft as breasts.”
     Finally, metaphor. It means a comparison made by equating one thing with another, showing that two unlike things have something in common. Our most familiar example might be this sentence: “A mighty fortress is our God.”
    OK. I have outlined the five virtues of style for you. Remember the correctness, clarity, evidence, propriety and ornateness of the style. When you write a speech or produce a text, remember to follow these five virtues.