Forging a stage to plunge into battle

George Orwell, Politics and the English Language:

Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech that you are used to seeing in print.

Strunk and White, The Elements of Style, from Section V, An approach to style:

Rule 18: Use figures of speech sparingly. … When you use metaphor, do not mix it up. That is, don’t start by calling something a swordfish and end by calling it an hourglass.

From the Front page of Sunday’s New York Times:

Senator Barack Obama won a commanding victory over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the South Carolina Democratic primary on Saturday, forging a coalition of support among black and white voters in a contest that sets the stage for a state-by-state fight for the party’s presidential nomination.

In a bitter campaign here infused with discussions of race, Mr. Obama’s convincing victory puts him on equal footing with Mrs. Clinton —with two wins each in early-voting states — and gives him fresh momentum as the contest plunges into a nationwide battle over the next 10 days.

Metaphor, figure or speech and cliche tally:

“commanding victory”
“forging a coalition”
“sets the stage”
“fight”
“equal footing”
“fresh momentum”
“plunges into battle”

Preparing for a departure

I’ve been preparing for my “Introduction to Writing for the Media” class, which runs for 10 weeks beginning the second week of January. (It’s listed as J-200 in the Portland Community College catalogue.)

I’ve taught the course under various titles for 12 or so years at a couple of campuses. Until now, I’ve stayed in lockstep with the regimented chapters of hefty, slog-it-out textbooks.

For next term, I’ve decided to break free of a text and sprint down a new path.

This time the required reading will be the Associated Press Stylebook (which I have required before), the classic “Elements of Style” by William Strunk and E.B. White (see earlier post), and a recent New York Times best seller “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath. The subtitle of the latter is “Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.”

I have two motives for changing. The first has to do with money. My students', not mine. The cost of the standard textbook is pushing $90. The three new required books can be had on-line or at Powell’s, used, for no more than $20 — total.

For community college students, the difference can be huge. I have had students who have waited four weeks into the term before they could scrounge up money to buy the text. By then they were lost.

More important than the stratospheric price of textbooks are several experiments I want to try.

For example, one calls for dissecting news stories. I’ve done some of this before, but this time I want the students to approach the stories almost as mechanical devices to be taken apart and reassembled. Not that I said "almost."

Working alone or in pairs, the students will be assigned their own news story to disassemble into facts and sources, listing them on a fact/source inventory sheet.

Then the students will swap fact sheets from the different stories broken down by other students. From one student or team’s inventory sheet another student or duo will reassemble the story — or a story, their story.

The final step will be comparing the new student-written story to the original, exploring questions that arise from the comparison. Here are just five:

• How do the leads (and hence the news judgment) differ?
• Did you find you wanted information that wasn’t listed on the fact sheet?
• Was that missing information in the original story?
• Are the sources reliable?
• What other sources would improve the story?

I also want to press students to come up with their own exercises. In a way, I want them to work for that $70 they’ve saved and to help create a better "text" and a better course.

Right now I’m trying to figure out exactly where “Made to Stick,” “The AP Stylebook” and “The Elements of Style” will fit in. I have a month to play with that part of the puzzle.

One other thing: I have recommended purchasing the essays of George Orwell, which should add no more than $3.50 to the cost of the “texts,” if that. Our PCC library has Orwell’s essays, which remain the gold standard of journalistic purpose, passion and conscience.

I may come back to my musings about this class on the blog. I want to offer an idea or two for your examination and criticism. If my sharing of ideas only results in self-examination and self-criticism, so be it.

Just knowing you are reading will steel me to the task.

Revisiting Strunk and White

Re-reading “The Elements of Style” is like visiting with an old friend after a long, long absence.

All the endearing qualities, all the old bonds, come rushing back.

And, with the passage of the years, there’s so much to talk about with authors William Strunk and E.B. White. So much to be reminded of. That includes their assurance that it’s all right to end a sentence with a preposition — especially if it saves you from writing, “So much of which to be reminded.”

The book reminded me of how much I’ve wanted to share with kindred spirits my revulsion for the ubiquitous “robust.” Whom better than Strunk and White?

If there was ever a “Bush-ite” word, it is “robust.” It almost comes branded with the black mark of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. The word is all posture and no substance. “Mission Accomplished” was, and is, “robust.”

What kind of bust has Iraq been? A RO-BUST!

So it was that Strunk and White singled out “thrust,” which displays its own phoney muscle-flexing. To quote from page 61 of the third edition: “This showy noun, suggestive of power, hinting of sex, is the darling of executives, politicos and speech writers. Use it sparingly. Save it for specific applications.”

Exactly, and likewise with “robust.”

“The Elements of Style” is one gem after another.

One of my favorite passages explains how Lincoln got away with “Four score and seven years ago.”

I mean, REALLY! Talk about over-written.

And yet he did it, and White in the book’s concluding section, titled “An Approach to Style,” nails down why.

Noting that Lincoln was “flirting with disaster” when he wrote the phrase, White continues:

The president could have got into his sentence with plain “eighty-seven” — a saving of two words and less of a strain on the listeners’ powers of multiplication. But Lincoln’s ear must have told him to go ahead with four score and seven. By doing so, he achieved cadence while skirting the edge of fanciness. Suppose he had blundered over the line and written, “In the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and seventy-six.” His speech would have sustained a heavy blow. Or suppose he had settled on “eighty-seven.” In that case he would have got into his introductory sentence too quickly; the timing would have been bad.”

Lincoln’s choice of a beginning ensured that, contrary to what he said that day, we will long remember his short speech at the hallowed Gettysburg battleground.

Strunk and White’s well-chosen words have the same effect. We will long remember “The Elements of Style.”