Do you employ elegant variation? Do you even know what it is? You're a cultured lot – probably you do, but I have to confess that I didn't, until comparatively recently.
The phrase was coined in 1826 by HW Fowler, whose Dictionary of Modern English is still the bible for style in the English language. He was in general against it. RW Burchfield, who revised it more recently, is cautiously in favour.
And what is it? It's the consequence of the instinctive prickling of discomfort at the back of your neck that alerts you to having repeated the same word too often in the same passage. If your copy editor is anything like mine, she will frequently draw your attention to any of these you have missed. You then have to come up with another word that means the same. When you change it, you have performed an 'elegant variation'.
Don't reach for the Thesaurus, though – a primrose path that leads easily on to destruction. The term only came to my attention because there was correspondence about it in the Times.
Journalists clearly have a profound aversion to repetition. The one that irritates me most is when they do the, '55% of people believe that...' then 'more than one in six disagree' thing. I didn't like having to do proportion sums when I was at school and still less do I like having to do them over a breakfast read of the papers.
The article that was under discussion was the story about the rat trapped in a manhole cover that needed nine firefighters had to rescue it. The victim (see how I did that!) was described variously as 'the portly rat', 'the rotund rodent' and 'the unfortunate flabby animal.' This was definitely felt to be OTT.
Of course, it's just as my granny always said, moderation in everything (and eat your greens.). I guess we all do it to some extent and I am just delighted to discover that there's a name for it. One of my favourite characters in literature is Moliere's Bourgeois Gentilhomme who was of uncultured stock but was determined to improve himself with tutors and was enchanted to discover that all his life he has been speaking prose.
6 comments:
I didn't see the original story, but.... Saving a rat? To live and breed again, and produce who knows how many rat pups, all ready to fan out over the cityscape, scavenge the garbage, and carry disease? Didn't it occur to any of the nine firefighters to put the rat out of its misery? I feel a story coming on. It's a bitterly savage parody. Jonathan Swift would have known how to write it.
We are bizarrely sensitive over here about any form of cruelty to any form of animal, like speaking to them in a loud voice. I think if Jonathan Swift were involved the answer would be to cook it and give o to the hungry poor.
Oh, Aline, you are bad for my fictional imagination. Farmed rats fattened for food, governmental action to regulate runoff into streams and rivers, animal rights activists who want to get the rats out of tight confinement and given happy lives, specialty cookbooks and TV food shows, and...and...and...
But wait---this is a murder mystery site! Who will be the victim? The suspects? The smart detective who cracks the case? Excuse me while I get back to my day job.
I look forward to reading it, Anna!
Great post! Thanks.
Rat rescue aside, I am very much aware of the need for elegant variation. After several novels, I've learned the hard way that there are certain words I am so enamored with that I just cannot resist using them over and over. And the number one offender is "just".
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