Miscellaneous

Today?s installment of Garner?s Usage Tip of the Day included this quotation. This is why I preach against over-reliance on form files and encourage writers to nurture their own individual style.

?Much bad writing today comes not from the conventional sources of verbal dereliction?sloth, original sin, or native absence of mind?but from stylistic imitation. It is learned, an act of stylistic piety which imitates a single style, the bureaucratic style I have called The Official Style. This bureaucratic style dominates written discourse in our time, and beginning or harried or fearful writers adopt it as protective coloration.?

?Richard A. Lanham, Revising Prose vi (3d ed. 1992).