Career: Columbia University, University Professor of History, 1967-75, Emeritus, 1975- (faculty member, 1927- Assistant Professor, 1938-42 Associate Professor, 1942-45 Professor, 1945-55 Dean of Graduate Faculties, 1955-58 Dean of Faculties and Provost, 1958-67 Seth Low Professor of History, 1960) Churchill College, Cambridge, Extraordinary Fellow, 1961- Encyclopedia Britannica, Board of Editors, member, 1962- Literary Consultant to Charles Scribner's Sons, publrs., 1975-93. Genres: History, Intellectual history, Literary criticism and history, Music, Philosophy, Social commentary, Speech/Rhetoric, Biography, Reference, Translations, Language/Linguistics, Literary criticism and history. Read and revise, reread and revise, keep reading and revising until your text seems adequate to your thought.įor more from Barzun, see my post, Jacques Barzun’s 10-point Checklist for Revising Your Prose.BARZUN, Jacques.In whatever paragraphs or essays you write, verify the sequence of ideas and take out or transpose everything that interrupts the march of thought and feeling.The writing of a sentence is finished only when the order of the words cannot be changed without damage to the thought or its visibility.In each portion of the work, begin from a point clear to you and the reader and move forward without wobble or meander.Worship no images and question the validity of all.Make fewer words do more work by proper balance, matching parts, and tight construction.Trifles matter in two ways: magnified, they lead to pedantry overlooked, they generate nonsense.The mark of a plain tone is combined lucidity and force.
To be plain and straightforward, resist equally the appeal of old finery and the temptation of smart novelties.The tense or mood of a verb in a linked pair can destroy it. Agreement is as pleasant in prose as it is in personal relations, and no more difficult to work for.For a plain style, avoid everything that can be called roundabout-in idea, in linking, or in expression.Ideas connected in reality require words similarly linked, by nearness or by suitable linking words.Respect the integrity of set phrases, partitives, clichés, and complex modifiers.Consult your second thoughts about slang, euphemisms, and “what everybody says,” so as to make your diction entirely your own choice.
Look for all fancy wordings and get rid of them.Have a point and make it by means of the best word.Jacques Barzun offers 20 principles for good writing in Simple and Direct: A Rhetoric for Writers:
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