Style

In Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style, Virginia Tufte presents — and comments on — more than a thousand excellent sentences chosen from the works of authors in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The sentences come from an extensive search to identify some of the ways professional writers use the generous resources of the English language.

The book displays the sentences in fourteen chapters, each one organized around a syntactic concept-short sentences, noun phrases, verb phrases, appositives, parallelism, for example. It thus provides a systematic, comprehensive range of models for aspiring writers.

...To write is to bring structure to ideas, information, feelings. Here are many creative strategies, in a unique book that is informed, affirming, lively, and of lasting value.

Style is an expression of the interest you take in the making of every sentence.
It emerges, almost without intent, from your engagement with each sentence.
It's the discoveries you make in the making of the prose itself.

Where ambiguity rules, there is no "style"—or anything else worth having.

Pursue clarity instead.
In the pursuit of clarity, style reveals itself.

It has long been understood that striving for originality as an end in itself is the mark of an inferior artist. The personal style of a good artist is never something that has been deliberately cultivated and forced but something that has appeared unsought as inevitably as the personal style of a man's handwriting.

But since artists of note are seen to have a distinct personal style, no artist can hope to make a reputation in a competitive society unless he too can show a distinctive style which easily differentiates his work from that of other artists and draws attention to it. Therefore artists of little capability or uncertain vocation will take great care to make their work look 'different', whereas those with any certainty in them will know that their work cannot help but look different from that of other people any more than signatures can.

It is worth reflecting that the fact of the unmistakable individuality of each man's signature is one foundation of modern commerce everywhere. To establish the individuality of it one need not write it vertically up the page in letters two inches high. And yet there are only twenty six letters, and everyone else uses them too.

What keeps me busy in my classes is trying to help my students learn how to think. They say, "Rob holds his hands like this...," and they don't know that the reason I hold my hands like this is not to make myself look that way. The end result is not to hold the gun that way; holding the gun that way is the end result of doing something else.

…The more general issue is that a person who doesn't understand the thing they're trying to copy will end up copying unimportant superficial aspects of what somebody else is doing and miss the fundamentals that drive the superficial aspects. This even happens when there are very detailed instructions. Although watching what other people do can accelerate learning, especially for beginners who have no idea what to do, there isn't a shortcut to understanding something deeply enough to facilitate doing it well that can be summed up in simple rules, like "omit needless words".

This book is intended for all who feel in need of some first orientation in a strange and fascinating field.

The lesson is simply: consider power dynamics.

Consider “ARRANGEMENT” or discordance not just to be “individual”, but about communication that some spaces are JUST YOURS.

Never allow your furniture to dominate you, but equally, ensure it is not simply generic: personalization is crucial, as a humanization tactic. (We admit we didn’t really get into that.)

Understand that control can be nice for you to feel some sense of authority in this wild world, and the EXECUTIVE WORLD has honed this approach for decades.

Launch Tweet:

Each article deconstructs a piece of writing from an iconic writer. The goal is to give you X-Ray vision into what makes sentences and paragraphs come alive (so that you can improve at your craft).

Every example has an analysis of why the writing works. Analytical often means dry. But instead of going technical, we’ve gone technicolor. There are text-explainers, summary graphics, and videos that come together to make the writing instruction lively and multi-dimensional.

It’s a place where you can discover how great writing comes together. Where we lift up the hood and see the mechanics in action. It isn’t about giving you a set of rules to follow. It’s about showing the diversity of ways writers approach their craft, so you can develop your own style.

I think the whostyle makes a few arguments. Among them:

• Text is more than a string of character codes. Its design matters, typography and layout alike; these things support (or subvert!) its affect, argument, and more.
• The web should be more colorful and chaotic, along nearly every dimension. The past five years have brought a flood of new capabilities, hugely expressive — let’s use them!
• Quoting is touchy, and anything you can do to cushion it with respect and hospitality is a plus.

A city block on Passeig de Gràcia in the Eixample district of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The block is noted for having buildings by four of Barcelona's most important Modernista architects, Lluís Domènech i Montaner, Antoni Gaudí, Josep Puig i Cadafalch and Enric Sagnier, in close proximity. As the four architects' styles were very different, the buildings clash with each other and the neighboring buildings.

I’m very conscious of whether I am affording a feature or styling it. It’s important to distinguish because they look the same from a distance.

...Affording a capability and styling it are both important. But it’s essential to know which one you are doing at a given time. Style is a matter of taste. Capability and clarity are not. They are more objective. That person standing at the edge of the chasm cares more about accomplishing their task than the details of the decor.

The modern farmhouse, nestled in the country’s affluent suburbs and exurbs, has nothing to do with the actual business of farming anything besides Instagram likes.

Contemporary architects are, however, increasingly engaging with ornamentation. The zenith was Grayson Perry and Charles Holland of FAT’s fairytale House for Essex (p64), but it does not serve as an indicator because the involvement of an artist has allowed an enhanced engagement with ornament until it surpasses mere decoration and becomes embodied in the architecture in a way that architects do not allow themselves to do. Think of FAT’s old work: the ornament is all contained within a surface - a facade - which allowed them to separate out the (Modernist) architecture from the (kitsch) superficiality of the elevation. Like Venturi before them, their ornament allowed them to have their ornamentally iced cake - and eat the Minimal Modernist sponge underneath.

Admittedly, though, however alert and aware I felt, I was probably more aware of the effects the lecture seemed to be having on me than of the lecture itself, much of which was over my head, and yet was almost impossible to look away from or not feel stirred by. This was partly due to the substitute's presentation, which was rapid, organized, undramatic, and dry in the way of people who know that what they are saying is too valuable in its own right to cheapen with concern about delivery or 'connecting' with the students. In other words, the presentation had a kind of zealous integrity that manifested not as style but as the lack of it. I felt that I suddenly, for the first time, understood the meaning of my father's term 'no-nonsense', and why it was a term of approval.

By the time of Camera Lucida, Barthes's ornate sentences, with all their colons and semicolons, italics, hyphens, ellipses, and parentheses, came quite naturally to him. Where one might remember particular scenes or sentences in a novel, with Barthes the focus narrows to favorite deployments or permutations of punctuation.

...The moment when Barthes, remembering his dead mother's ivory powder box, adds, almost inaudibly, "(I loved the sound of its lid)" is intensely moving and just as expressive of the supple intimacy of his own style. It also reminds us that, for all his extravagancies, there is something understated about Barthes. Everything about the prose is so personalized that even the printed page seems handwritten with a favorite pen.

In a world rife with unsolicited messages, typography must often draw attention to itself before it will be read. Yet in order to be read, it must relinquish the attention it has drawn. Typography with anything to say therefore aspired to a kind of statuesque transparency. Its other traditional goal is durability: not immunity to change, but a clear superiority to fashion. Typography at its best is a visual form of language linking timelessness and time.

Vintage models blended in, new ones stand out.

When photography pioneers used Leicas, the cameras weighed 200-300g—perfect for discreet shooting. Modern Leicas tip the scales at over 700g and cost around $10,000. Hardly inconspicuous under any aspect.

This reminds me of how Apple stopped making the iPhone mini and now sells bulkier, pricier models. Leica's rangefinder cameras have also forgotten their original goals.

...Leicas take beautiful photos, but a heavy status symbol seems at odds with the heritage of street shooting candid shots. Like you don't need a Pro phone to be a professional at anything except doomscrolling, or like Hemingway didn't write his novels with a Mont Blanc, you also don't need a Leica to take great pictures. Especially now, especially for street photography.

That's what many brands now do: they sell you a status symbol, but not the ability to have fun and get better at a craft.

A related problem is that Barthes's thought is inseparable from the elegance and cunning with which it is formulated. Style, as Martin Amis rightly insists, "is not something grapples on to regular prose; it is intrinsic to perception." In The Pleasure of the Text—a useful guide, naturally, to his own work—Barthes had asked, "What if knowledge itself were delicious?" The corollary is: What if that knowledge were robbed of all that made it so tasty? ...To copy out and formalize Barthes's argument is not simply to diminish it, but to rob it of so many subtleties as to misrepresent it entirely (all in the name of representing it more clearly and rigorously).

It is a concept based not on the classification of various physical features of architecture and urban design but on the problem-solving process itself. We have seen that the final outcome of a design process is strongly determined by at least three aspects of that process:

1. the subject matter of the organizing principles which are adopted,
2. the manner in which these principles are interpreted and reinterpreted in the context of the problem at hand, and
3. the sequent of applying such organizing principles.

Consistency in style among the output of designers can thus be understood as a habitual way of doing things, of solving problems.

Writing about style in architecture, the nineteenth-century theorist Viollet-le-Duc asserted that "style consists in distinction of form," and complained that animals expressed this better than the human species. He felt that his contemporaries had "become strangers to those elemental and simple ideas of truth which lead architects to give style to their designs," and he found it "necessary to define the constituent elements of style, and, in doing so, to carefully avoid those equivocations, those high-sounding but senseless phrases, which have been repeated with all that profound respect which most people profess for that which they do not understand."

Now that the DALL-E has been successfully midjourneyfied, it is becoming apparent that instead of simulating all possible ›styles‹, AI is fostering the emergence of a distinct visual style, born out of popular aesthetic preferences dominating platforms like DeviantArt.

We look at the collective outcome of millions of decisions made by thousands of individuals and give it a name. A mixture of shared beliefs and aesthetics and traditions and a collective nous emergent from the behaviour of those in the city and their actions. We might as well call it the soul. And even if you're not Calvino, or Neil Gaiman, you ascribe a soul to those cities.

Souls of course are hard to talk about these days. They’re invisible, and rather gauche to discuss in polite company. Jung used to talk about the soul as granting meaning, linking us to the divine, leaving the dead matter as an artificial abstraction.

But we do talk around it a lot. Modern architecture lacks style and beauty and soul. Modern literature seems to live in the shadow of the greats from the past. Poetry is not the same, as is philosophy in so many ways. Not just in an individual’s output, the golden ages are gone. The very idea of a job seems to no longer have the meaning it once did. The culture is devoid of the human connection and too into screens.

We even say it about organisations. Google lost its culture, Facebook isn't what it used to be. The government as a whole has lost its soul. The institutions that helped us reach the civilisation we live in seem to have lost their lustre.

You don’t have to believe all of this, I sure don’t, but the fact that they are felt constantly and needs to be refuted regularly is evidence of our constant yearning for something.

In my opinion, what makes a designer competent is precisely their ability to credibly justify their conclusions. If you can’t do this as a designer—no matter how successful your results are—then neither I nor anybody else can tell if you aren’t just picking things at random.

What I am proposing, then, is no less than to make a designer’s entire line of reasoning a matter of permanent record. On the surface is the familiar set of prescriptions, components, examples and tutorials, like you would expect out of any such artifact. Attached to every element, though, is a little button that says Why? You click it, and it tells you. The proximate explanation will probably not be very satisfying, so you click on the next Why? until you get to the end, at which point you are either satisfied with the explanation, or you aren’t.

Braun design is greatly reduced - stripped of all that is unnecessary. Nevertheless, there is a strong aesthetic characterized by balance, order and harmony.

Self-control is very important. Although my own taste is involved it always has to be under control. Not suppressed though! Controlled!

A capsule wardrobe is a thoughtfully curated collection of clothing that emphasises quality over quantity. It's about streamlining your wardrobe to a selection of versatile pieces that you truly enjoy and wear regularly. The idea isn’t to limit your options, but to create a more intentional and cohesive wardrobe that reflects your personal style and lifestyle needs. Each item in a capsule wardrobe is chosen for its functionality, comfort, and the ability to mix and match, making getting dressed not just simpler, but a genuine pleasure. It’s about breaking free from the endless cycle of fast and on-trend fashion and embracing a more sustainable, personalised approach to what we wear every day.

TO CLARIFY: there’s nothing else for design to f*cking respond to than the world around it. If you are unable to look at freshly-minted stuff or décor arrangements and NOT pick apart how-why it results from a particular socio-cultural psychology of NOW, then respectfully TRY HARDER.

There is something about the aesthetics of NFTs — not a sameness, exactly, but a particular deficiency of which they all partake, such that even though they look different, they all manage to suck in the same way. It’s tempting to say they suck the way everything sucks now, but it’s more like how one particular strain of American aesthetics has sucked for the last 20 years. NFTs are the human capacity for visual expression as understood by the guy at the vape store.

It has been contended sometimes that our response to works of art is entirely learnt and in no way innate; but the questions 'Who did the teaching, then? and how?' have not, I fancy, been much investigated. This contention is very true of our responses to styles and fashions, but it is not true of our response to beauty.

By the 1930s, the teardrop shape, known since the turn of the century to be the form of least resistance, was incorporated into Boeing and Douglas aircraft, and, being the contemporary artifact that best symbolized the future, the airplane set the style for things generally. The most static of mundane objects were streamlined for no functional purpose, and chromed and rounded staplers, pencil sharpeners, and toasters were hailed as the epitome of design.

...Though all design is necessarily forward-looking, all design or design changes are not necessarily motivated by fickle style trends. The best in design always prefers substance over style, and the lasting concept over the ephemeral gimmick.

Design has invariably exhibited styles because some clear limitations on freedom of choice are psychologically necessary to nearly all designers. When design gets too easy it becomes difficult.

It was perhaps a pedantic matter over which to come to such a decision, but shoes are supreme symbols of aesthetic, and hence by extension psychological, compatibility. Certain areas and coverings of the body say more about a person than others: shoes suggest more than pullovers, thumbs more than elbows, underwear more than overcoats, ankles more than shoulders.

Our epoch is fixing its own style day by day. It is there under our eyes—Eyes which do not see.

My own attitude toward the microstructure of metals is not unlike that of an art historian regarding a painting or sculpture. There is something akin to style even in a photomicrograph. There are aspects of structure that are not immediately apparent to the untrained eye, and quite minor features may be clues to a deep meaning.

Whether at the level of national "technological styles" that shape and differentiate the nature of "same" technologies in different national contexts, or the simple but consequential variations by which industrial commodities are brought into, enlivened, and sustained within the circumstances of individual homes and lives, repair may constitute an important engine by which technological difference is produced and fit is accomplished.

Young writers often suppose that style is a garnish for the meat of prose, a sauce by which a dull dish is made palatable. Style has no such separate entity; it is nondetachable, unfilterable. The beginner should approach style warily, realizing that it is an expression of self, and should turn resolutely away from all devices that are popularly believed to indicate style - all mannerisms, tricks, adornments. The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity.

The young writer should learn to spot them - words that at first glance seem freighted with delicious meaning but that soon burst in air, leaving nothing but a memory of bright sound.

Style is a unity of principle animating all the work of an epoch, the result of a state of mind which has its own special character.
Our own epoch is determining, day by day, its own style.
Our eyes, unhappily, are unable yet to discern it.

Literary style, says Walter Benjamin, “is the power to move freely in the length and breadth of linguistic thinking without slipping into banality.” Typographic style, in this large and intelligence sense of the word, does not mean any particular style – my style or your style, or Neoclassical or Baroque style – but the power to move freely through the whole domain of typography, and to function at every step in a way that is graceful and vital instead of banal.