Consult your second thoughts about slang, euphemisms, and “what everybody says,” so as to make your diction entirely your own choice. Make sure you know not only the meaning but the bearing of the words you use.ĥ. Look for all fancy wordings and get rid of them.Ĥ. Have a point and make it by means of the best word.ģ. It is not that I disagree in any meaningful way with his first five principles.ġ. I have just begun rereading this book, so I will write only about the first chapter, “Diction, or Which Words to Use.” This chapter troubles me, actually. Third, I think I always knew that someday I would need to return to it.

Second, once upon a time, I actually used the book as a supplement in classes, typing out and photocopying Barzun’s 20 principles of good writing. They knew their specialties well, but they read widely. Barzun was a member of that generation of scholars, who were brilliant without being stuffy. As Ronald Reagan had his version of an idyllic 1950s, I have mine, and I hold on to it tightly. First, as will become very clear as I continue to write this blog, I have strong attachment to the generation of academics and public intellectuals that preceded me. However, I have kept this book for several reasons. There came a time when books passed through my library too quickly for me to claim ownership too tightly. I dropped the “Junior” in the early eighties, and I quit writing my name in books about that time also. Grant, Jr.,” so I am guessing I purchased the book within a few years of it publication. On the flyleaf of the book, I inscribed my name “Lyman W. We assumed that Barzun had been unable to complete either the survey or the questionnaire.I am beginning my refresher course in writing by reading Jacques Barzun’s 1975 Simple and Direct. We had recently sent out the 2012 usage surveys, and we had also sent Barzun a special questionnaire as part of a project to give selected panelists the opportunity to tell us more about their ideas and practices concerning language. We were sad to hear of his death on October 25, 2012, at the age of 104.

He continued to complete the surveys for the next several decades, through his nineties and, astonishingly, all the way into his 100s. When Barzun joined the panel, he was already in his late fifties. He became a master of the English language and was a faithful filler-outer of our annual usage surveys. Author of numerous books on Western intellectual and cultural history, most recently From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present, Barzun was born in France and came to the United States with his family at the age of twelve. The historian Jacques Barzun joined the American Heritage® Dictionary Usage Panel in 1964, the year it was formed.

Simple and Direct by Jacques Barzun