ABSTRACT
Any discussion of the history of technical writing must deal with the matter of style used in the technical and other practical documents of the period(s) studied. In discussing style, we can define the term as the various devices an author employs in his/her writing: word arrangement, period and sentence structure, word choice, sentence patterns, clause length, use of schemes and tropes. In Chapter 1, I noted examples of clear or plain style, a quality of modern technical writing, in the works of several of the first members of the Royal Society. Writing that we now call “plain style” existed in much technical writing of the English Renaissance and then the 17th century. In Emergence of a Tradition, I argued that what emerged as plain styleunadorned sentences emphasizing tight subject-verb-object structure-was fun - damental to Old English, Middle English and finally the 15th century plain style. Three styles were advocated by Greek Rhetoric: the “high” style, also called “oratorical,” elaborate, or Ciceronian; the second, usually clear and direct, often called anti-Ciceronian or low style; and the third style, the “middle style,” blended characteristics of Ciceronian and anti-Ciceronian. Practical writing, such as tech - nical writing, occurred in “low” or plain style throughout the Renaissance and the 17th century. As Jones points out, this shift may have occurred in deference to the middle-class English reader who lacked instruction in Latin. However, rhetoric’s use of the “low style” for instruction or teaching may also have had
influence. Literary historians have, in general, talked about plain style as a shift from the “luxuriant prose of the Commonwealth into that of a diametrically opposite nature in the Restoration” [1, p. 977]. But, as I have shown elsewhere, this “diametrically opposite” kind of prose had existed in practical (or technical) writing for well over 300 years. Thus, technical or practical writing remains fundamental to the development of modern English prose style, which matured in the last half of the 17th century. Examples of this mature style occur in Merrett, Colepresse, Moray, Moxon, and Woodward, whose works I discussed in Chapter 1. Since completing Emergence of a Tradition, I have found additional examples of plain, unadorned writing in medieval estate management books, such as those by Walter of Henley, who targeted a range of readers, a point discussed in Chapter 5. Writers of many how-to books before and during the 17th century seemed to understand that readers who used written text to perform tasks needed a concise, direct style and that verbose, decorous language would not achieve that purpose. Even the early technical writers recognized the importance of an appropriate rhetorical stance in presenting information. In this chapter, I discuss the contribution of practical writing to the develop - ment of modern English prose style. This chapter continues my study of plain style in Emergence of a Tradition. In Chapter 3, I will show that technical writing in the first printed English books illustrates paragraphs and organizational prin - ciples of paragraphs that exist today. These paragraphs echo the plain English style I discuss and emphasize in this chapter and anticipate requirements for modern English paragraphs that appeared in the late 19th century. Understanding the emergence of English style requires both a study of sentences and then paragraphs, the focus of Chapter 3. Existing studies of the evolution of modern English prose have misrepresented the history of English style by focusing on literary, humanistic, and philosophical texts. The focus on literary and humanistic works, to the exclusion of nonliterary works, reveals the conflict within English studies over the legitimacy of non - canonical writing and its value in the history of discourse. For example, scholar - ship by Jones [1] and Croll [2] from the 1940s to the 1960s focused specifically on texts that emerged from classical humanism. Croll flatly stated that Montaigne and Bacon were
the first writers in the vernacular languages who employ a style which renders the process of thought and portrays the picturesque actuality of life with equal effect . . . Bacon, Hall, Johnson, and Wotton in England . . . are the actual founders of modern prose style. [2, p. 184]
This focus distorts the story of our language because it eliminates business, administrative, and other forms of how-to writing entrenched in the English culture of work that existed before the Royal Society. And, as I will discuss in
Chapter 3, the lack of awareness of technical writing led Alexander Bain and other early compositionists to state that the English paragraph, as we know it today, did not exist before the 18th century. I will also show in Chapter 3 that clearly developed paragraphs existed in many printed English medical texts of the early 16th century. The argument for the importance of examining practical and humanist writing in tracking the development of English prose style has had other supporters. As Douglas Bush commented,
We have only to think of the vast bulk of plain writing in books of travel, history, biography, politics, economics, science, education, religion, and most popular literature. Plain prose was the natural medium for most kinds of utilitarian writing, and most writing was utilitarian. [3, p. 192]
Elton, in assessing the value of English historical sources from 1200 to 1640, argued that nonliterary texts remain the best source of history because of their writers’ intent to portray rather than embellish the world as they saw it. “The history of the people of England, high and low though more the relatively high, is deposited in the materials arising from the efforts of her kings to finance their governments” [4, p. 53]. The style of these documents is clearly signifi - cant because we can assume that writers of administrative and legal documents recorded reality, or facts, as accurately as they could. Unaware of the world of deconstruction, they believed that the world exists and that it could be described in ways that could be understood; thus, writing that attempts to record fact is as important in the study of style as humanistic works. Fisher [5], who, along with Richardson [6, 7], gave us the seminal work on the influence of Chancery English, went beyond both Clanchy and Bush by stating bluntly that nonliterary texts are critical to the development of English prose style:
Historians of the English language are agreed that the genesis of the standard language is not literary, even though our predilections as literary scholars lead us to study most closely and to take examples largely from belletristic materials. . . . Except for the small quantity of writing related to literature and learning, virtually all writing before the seventeenth century related to business. [5, pp. 60-61]
Albert C. Baugh summarized the situation in this way:
Ciceronism substituted slavish imitation for what had been a natural and spontaneous form of expression. Not only was the vocabulary of Cicero inadequate for the conveyance of modern ideas, but when Wycliff refused to carry on his argument with the Church in any language but English, the power of Latin, as emanating from the church, was also lost. [8, p. 247]
In short, nonliterary writing from the year 900 onward existed in greater quantity and was more pervasive and influential in English society than were classical and literary writing, a point recently emphasized by Richardson [7, pp. 25-26]. But in considering nonliterary texts, we have to broaden the canons of style to include features ignored by studies of literary writing, namely, the confluence of sound, format, syntax, and diction, as these are dictated by purpose. I suggest that five factors shaped modern English: (1) brevity induced from accounting/administrative format; (2) aural/oral based text, written to be heard as well as seen, that produced conversational style; (3) persistence of the indigenous subject-verb-object syntax found in the earliest English documents, religious and secular; (4) the growing Renaissance book market of literate middle-class readers who responded to speech-based prose; and (5) English scriptural renditions surfacing during the late Renaissance that associated colloquial speech with Protestantism. These factors suggest that studies of the shaping of English style should include attention to visual and aural elements that underpin diction, syntax, and discourse purpose. These factors therefore engendered five canons of style through which English evolved and must be studied: format, sound, diction, syntax, and purpose. These factors, discussed here, will show the evolu - tion of modern English.
