ABSTRACT
The choice of words is probably the aspect of prose style. When we are studying a writer's choice of words, the questions that are of interest are: does the writer use, in general, everyday words or unusual words and does the Latin or the Saxon element predominate in his vocabulary. It is not always true that Latin words are long and unusual and Saxon words short and everyday. Street and cheese come from the Latin; maidenhood and holiness are Saxon words. While examining a piece of prose word by word the reader should be looking also for slang words, which may be used for some special purpose, dialect words, coinages, foreign words, puns, words used in order to startle or shock, words used to avoid shocking, quotations or disguised quotations, words carrying many associations, archaic words and Biblical words in good writers.
