Style (book)

F. L. Lucas's Style (1955) is a book about the writing and appreciation of "good prose", expanded for the general reader from lectures given to English literature students at Cambridge University. Setting out to answer the questions, "Why is so much writing wordy, confused, graceless, dull?" and "What are the qualities that endow language, spoken or written, with persuasiveness or power?", it offers "a few principles" and "a number of examples of the effective use of language", and adds "a few warnings". Written as a series of eleven essays, with much quotation and anecdote (and without bullet-points or note-form), which themselves illustrate the virtues commended, the work is unified by what Lucas calls "one vital thread, on which the random principles of good writing may be strung, and grasped as a whole". That "vital thread" is "courtesy to readers". It is upon this emphasis on good manners, urbanity, good humour, grace, control, that the book's aspiration to usefulness rests.