THE ELEMENTS OF THEOLOGICAL STYLE

Starting Points

Adapted from Chapter 10 of Writing Theology Well: A Rhetoricfor Theological and Biblical Writers, Lucretia B. Yaghjian

WHAT IS WRITING STYLE?

Your writing style is comprised of the linguistic choices you make when you put words, sentences, and paragraphs together – in other words, style is simply how you write what you write.

WHAT INFLUENCES WRITING STYLE?

• The language in which you learn to write• The culture in/for which you write• The profession in/for which you write• Your “personal” command of language

LEVELS OF STYLE IN CLASSICAL AND CONTEMPORY RHETORIC

• High/Grand style – highly literate, formal, poetic writing

• Middle/Mixed style – descriptive, narrative, more personal writing

• Low/Plain style – clear, concise, didactic,academic writing

CHARACTERISTICS OF PLAIN STYLE FOR THEOLOGICAL WRITERS

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.” Strunk and White, The Elements of Style

WHAT IS THEOLOGICAL PLAIN STYLE?

• Plain style articulates a structure that readers can follow.

• Plain style unfolds its structure in co-herent paragraphs that begin with “topic sentences” or “transitional sentences.”

• Plain style invites the writer to “write naturally,” but to stay out of the way.

HOW SHALL I WRITE PLAIN STYLE?

• Plain style prefers the active to the passive voice.

• Plain style favors specific, concrete lan-guage over abstract, generalized language.

• Plain style uses nouns and verbs before adjectives, adverbs and “fancy words.”

• Plain style “omits unnecessary words.”

HOW DOES YOUR PLAIN STYLE WRITE?

• Plain style prefers positive assertions to indefinite negative statements.

• Plain style avoids overstatements, qualifiers and figures of speech.

• Plain style expresses similar ideas in similar grammatical form.

• Plain style keeps modifiers close to the words that they modify.

THEOLOGICAL PLAIN STYLE PLEASE!

• Plain style keeps verb tenses consistent.• Plain style places the emphatic words of a

sentence at the end or beginning.• Plain style at its best is not “drab,” but

“elegant.”• Plain style uses inclusive language

(except when quoting sources).

WRITING PLAIN STYLE WELL IN A NUTSHELL with GEORGE ORWELL

• Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech that you typically see in print.

• Never use a long word if a short one will do.• If it is possible to cut a word out, do it!• Never use the passive (voice) when you can

use the active (voice).• Never use a foreign phrase, scientific word, or

“jargon” if you can avoid doing so.• Break any of these rules sooner than say

something “outright barbarous”!

LAST BUT NOT LEAST. . . .

· Plain style encourages rewriting and revision to get it right (let’s try that again . . .).

· Plain style rewrites and revises to get it right!

CONCLUDING REFLECTION:WHAT WOULD ORWELL SAY ABOUT YOUR

THEOLOGICAL WRITING STYLE?• Please reread the previously written

paper that you have chosen as representative of your own writing style. On the basis of this presentation and your reading of Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language,” write a brief stylistic critique of your paper in the light of Strunk and White’s and Orwell’s suggestions. Which of these have you found most helpful?