Books in Brief: The Reader over Your Shoulder

The Reader over Your Shoulder, by Robert Graves and Alan Hodge (Vintage, 290 pp., $3.95; paperback). The difference between this book and most books on Engjish usage is like the difference between architecture and bricklaying. Graves and Hodge don’t harp on a few rules as stodgy grammarians do; instead, they explain why good English needs to be written, and then they show how to write it. The authors promote the cause of simplicity and directness of expression. Furthermore, they demonstrate that without constant watchfulness even the greatest writers may err, often egregiously. While Graves and Hodge’s ideas are scarcely original, their book is useful because it convinces the reader that—regardless of what the defenders of linguistic permissiveness say—“the writing of good English is a moral matter.’’ The book includes a number of “principles of clear statement” which the authors refer to as they examine excerpts from works by a variety of distinguished writers—George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, T. S. Eliot, J. M. Keynes, H. G. Wells, and others—and then rewrite these passages, eliminating ambiguities and unnecessary words. Also of interest is the chapter which describes how English differs from other languages. The main disadvantage of English, say Graves and Hodge, is that the vernacular freedom of our language often leads to sloppiness: many Europeans consider English an illogical language unsuited for lucid thinking. But after reading this book, many of those Europeans might agree with the authors, who maintain that no other language “admits of such poetic exquisiteness” as carefully written English.

JS

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Jeff Sorensen

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The Reader over Your Shoulder, by Robert Graves and Alan Hodge (Vintage, 290 pp., $3.95; paperback). The difference between this book and most books on Engjish usage is like the difference between architecture and bricklaying. Graves and Hodge don’t harp on a few rules as stodgy grammarians do; instead, they explain why good English needs to be written, and then they show how to write it. The authors promote the cause of simplicity and directness of expression. Furthermore, they demonstrate that without constant watchfulness even the greatest writers may err, often egregiously. While Graves and Hodge’s ideas are scarcely original, their book is useful because it convinces the reader that—regardless of what the defenders of linguistic permissiveness say—“the writing of good English is a moral matter.’’ The book includes a number of “principles of clear statement” which the authors refer to as they examine excerpts from works by a variety of distinguished writers—George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, T. S. Eliot, J. M. Keynes, H. G. Wells, and others—and then rewrite these passages, eliminating ambiguities and unnecessary words. Also of interest is the chapter which describes how English differs from other languages. The main disadvantage of English, say Graves and Hodge, is that the vernacular freedom of our language often leads to sloppiness: many Europeans consider English an illogical language unsuited for lucid thinking. But after reading this book, many of those Europeans might agree with the authors, who maintain that no other language “admits of such poetic exquisiteness” as carefully written English.