Book,
101 Elegant Paragraphs (Vocabula 101 Series Handbooks)
Vocabula Books, (September 2005)
Abstract
This is a Vocabula Book. 101 Elegant Paragraphs -- A Vocabula 101 Series Handbook Vocabula 101 Series Handbooks are slim volumes replete with sound advice on how to use the English language well. Based on The Vocabula Review's "Elegant English" feature, this handy reference includes some prize examples of beautifully written, elegant English. 101 Elegant Paragraphs encourages you to speak and write with deliberation, style, even beauty. Think critically: read a Vocabula Book. From the Introduction: We all know far too well how to write everyday English, but few of us know how to write elegant English -- English that is expressed with music as well as meaning, style as well as substance. The point of this collection is not to suggest that people should try to emulate these examples of elegant English but to show that the language can be written with grace and polish -- qualities that much contemporary writing is bereft of and could benefit from. Read these examples of elegant English at your leisure, and from each you might glean some turn of phrase, some device of rhetoric, some clarity of expression, some novelty of thought that, in more contemporary writing, you seldom will have noticed. From these paragraphs you might indeed learn that language can be written with care and cleverness. You need not study these paragraphs; simply read them. If you find any pleasure in having read them once, read them twice, over time, and you will absorb some of their music, some of their style. It is possible to learn to write well, or to learn to write better, from reading good writing. Elegant English, as these paragraphs show, is exhilarating; it stirs our thoughts and feelings as ably as everyday English blurs them.
