The current standard of prose style promoted by prominent business communications texts

is too narrow to accommodate the diversity of situations in business. These texts present a
minimal range of stylistic choice and so limit theflexibility and individuality of the writer.
An alternative form of the plain style was pioneered by Greek rhetoricians, who insisted
on extending the range of options open to writers of even the simplest prose. This expanded
version of the plain style is based on the cardinal principles of clarity and conciseness, but
it aho allows for a repertoire ofdictional, syntactic, andfigurative choices that make ones
prose livelier and more persuasive. This expanded notion of the plain style has already
generated considerable interest and promises to radically alter both the writing and teaching
of business prose.

Business Prose and The Nature of The Plain Style

Michael Mendelson
Iowa State University

I HAD ORIGINALLY INTENDED to title this essay "Gan Business Prose Be

Beautiful?", which had a nice rhythm and consonance to it, but which—as
an indication of my subject—^would undoubtedly have provoked
immediate disbelief in my readers. After all, our usual conception of
English prose in the workplace is that it must be serviceable; it must get
its job done with a maximum of clarity in a minimum of space and time.
And while it may be all right for Bernard Baruch or David Ogiivy to wax
eloquent in memoir, when faced with the need to order two-dozen door
knobs or to propose a new cost-accounting system, most business writers
find that style is a luxury. Yet despite the prevalence of institutional norms
that assume an absence of style, I will persist in asking a variation of my
original question, one that is important for all writers and teachers of
business prose; namely, "Is the caveat against stylistic Hair always in the
best interest of the business writer." Or, more succinctly, "Must working
English always capitulate to the demand for buttoned-down brevity?"
My own answer to these questions begins with the following assumptions:
1) the employment of a range of stylistic features can, if used to efFect,
arouse interest and maintain attention in any discourse; and 2) the ability
to create interest is of particular importance in the business world—^which
is above all a competitive information environment.^ Accordingly, I will
argue that style can be seen as a way of engineering attention and creating
what rhetorical theorist Ghaim Perelman calls "presence" for one's ideas,
an accomphshment of no small merit in a linguistic milieu notable for its
absence of distinguished qualities, for its absence of style.^ And though
I acknowledge that in a large number of business situations common sense
dictates that we get in and out of our correspondence with a minimum
of fuss, I also maintain that a great many business messages benefit
considerably from a sense of stylistic flexibility that goes well beyond what
we usually recognize as Standard Business Enghsh.
 4 THE JOURNAL OF BUSINESS COMMUNICATION • 24:2;SPRING 1987

The specific problem I am concerned with is the narrow range of stylistic

choice presented as acceptable to students in the typical Business
Communication course. I will detail this problem first by looking at a
number of prominent instructional sources for business writers: including
two college texts, the style guide of a large accounting firm, and the
ubiquitous readability formulas that have become the mainstay of business
writing courses. Second, I will suggest that what our students need is an
introduction to a wider range of stylistic options, an alternative to the
skeletal rhetoric of the readability formulas. Such an alternative can be
found in the Plain Style of classical rhetoric, a generally direct, unadorned
prose style that nonetheless accommodates the periodic need for variation
and emphasis. It is the Plain Style's extended range of stylistic choice
that I propose as a solution to the sophomoric simplicity of the Skeletal
Style. And so I will outline the nature of the original Plain Style and
indicate how such prose can achieve, if not beauty, at least some dignity,
and perhaps even a little elegance.

STYLE AND THE INSTRUCTION MANUALS

Undoubtedly, the single most important text in business communication

is Wilkinson, Clarke, and Wilkinson's Communicating Through Letters
and Reports. First published in 1955, it is now in its 8th edition. Its authors
claim that it is "the most respected (and most copied) textbook on business
communication!"^ The view of style presented here is distinctly anti-
rhetorical: style is the elimination of impediments to clarity, not a means of
persuasion in its own right. "All you can expect style to contribute to making
your letters interesting," we are told, is some minimal increase in the
speed and ease of comprehension.* After all, "a reader's starting point of
interest is what you say, not how you say it." Accordingly, the hallmark
of an effective style in business prose becomes not just clarity, but also
"inconspicuousness": your style should be unnoticeable and nondistracting;
any deviation from the norms of common practice is both "inappropriate"
and "immature."^
In more finite terms, these abstractions entail the following lexical
prescriptions: cut down on definite articles, prune unnecessary language,
use strong verbs and active voice, avoid bromides. These imperatives are
reinforced with a series of two-column lists that foster the categorical view
that there is only one right approach to word choice: i.e., always opt for
the shortest possible construction, always substitute "now" for "at this
time." When it comes to syntactic matters, the authors suggest that writers
vary sentence pattern and length, and emphasize main ideas through
 THE PLAIN STYLE • MENDELSON 5

placement. But they provide little practical discussion of syntactic variation:

of subordination, parallelism, modification, or embedding. In fact, they
exile almost all vocabulary of syntactic organization to an appendix, since
(as they remark in the teacher's manual) such handbook data "is not proper
textual material for a college book on business communication."^
This selective approach to diction and syntax is followed by a systematic
discussion of readability in which the authors tell their readers that
"considering your Gunning Fog Index is the first step toward clear
writing."' The formulas of both Flesch and Gunning are then introduced
as ways of "testing" (in italics) one's writing. The effect of the italics is to
place a kind of scientific imprimatur on the readability formulas and to
champion them as a stylistic litmus test. In the process, all other stylistic
criteria become subordinate. "We think you will want to (and should) take
Gunnings advice," say the authors as they introduce the concepts of
monosyllabic diction, lexical familiarity, and short sentences.^
I will return to the notion of readability in a moment, but if Wilkinson,
Clarke, and Wilkinson's own standards of emphasis by space, position,
and phrasing are to be taken seriously, the "first step" of readability analysis
becomes the most important part of their chapter on style.^ This section
is simple, finite, and precise, while it is surrounded by scores of less
concrete prescriptions. The cumulative effect of this overload is that
readers exit the chapter with the Fog Index as the only memorable guide
to the analysis of their own style. The theme of the chapter as a whole
and the residue that remains after its injunctions have evaporated is that
"in writing for business and industry, you needn't depend on style to hold
your reader's interest. "^"This separation of style from matter very naturally
results in the dismissal of style as an important rhetorical concern; for as
W. K. Wimsatt noted, when such a separation is enacted and content
alone is one's focus, there remains "an irreducible something that is
superficial, a kind of scum—which they call style."^^ It is this reduction
of style to the role of an unnecessary appendage, an ornament divorced
from the content it seeks to clarify, that is, in the end, so misleading to
students of business prose.
A different approach, and one more typical of a great many newer texts,
is that taken by Murphy and Hildebrandt in Effective Business Communi-
cations. They offer students a set of seven standards: Completeness,
Conciseness, Consideration, Concreteness, Clarity, Courtesy, and Correct-
ness. All of these are helpful in their way since they work to stimulate the
appropriate concern for reader-reception that young writers too routinely
overlook. But though Murphy and Hildebrandt's discussion of the seven C's
does include a brief warning against wordiness and inappropriate formality.
 6 THE JOURNAL OF BUSINESS COMMUNICATION • 24:2:SPRING 1987

they only discuss the nuts and bolts of prose style under the headings of
Concreteness and Clarity. And this discussion of style is confined to a dozen
pages in a 7C)0-page text. The reader is here told that business prose style
calls for short, familiar words; sentences with 17-20 words; and paragraphs
with unity, coherence, and emphasis. This last trio of suggestions is a hall-
mark of Brooks and Warren's Modern Rhetoric; but whereas Brooks and
Warren spent a chapter apiece on these paragraphing principles. Murphy
and Hildebrandt spend less than a page. Once again, lack of coverage
indicates the subordinate role of style, especially stylistic variation, in the
process of business writing. Murphy and Hildebrandt do, however,
provide a full discussion of "Appropriate Listenability," a version of the
Fog Index which inculcates the familiar guidelines of monosyllables, short-
sentences, and a low expectation of the reader's linguistic competence.
What this kind of presentation, with itsfixationon the lowest common
denominator of stylisticflexibility,does not do is provide students with a
process by which they can achieve a serviceable style. It simply offers
them a way of measuring their own product once it is done. With regard
to the more specific elements of sentence types and structures, syntactic
variation inside and beyond the T-unit, and the plenitude of rhetorical
figures at a writer's disposal, the student is left utterly uninformed; unless,
that is, teachers take the time to supplement the text with their own
discussion, exercises, and examples. This combination of 1) a minimal
interest in prose style in general with 2) an emphasis on only the most
rudimentary elements of style is not only the standard in virtually all
other college texts in the field, it is also a powerful though unstated
argument against the potential contribution of prose style to the rhetoric
of business communication.'^"'
This absence of an approach to style is not unique to college texts.
Inscribed in the writing manual of one of the nation's leading accounting
firms is the same emphasis: "Our goal," say the authors of this guide, "is
plain, forceful business writing," writing that is natural, which doesn't try
to impress the reader or to "turn a phrase," by which they mean writing
that avoids any hint of individual style.^* They begin their outline of the
appropriate, bare-bones style with what they call the KISS principle, "Keep
It Simple, Stupid," an indelicate maxim perhaps, but one that aptly fits
the manual's approach."^ What we find here is what we can now recognize
as the bromides of the introductory course in business writing: be direct,
write like you talk, favor monosyllables, and stick to short sentences.
This advice undoubtedly can help accountants with a preliminary attack
on the ponderous prose of their profession, but it remains questionable
whether prose that conforms to these edicts alone would be able to meet the
 THE PLAIN STYLE • MENDELSON 7

challenge of intricate accounting procedures, or to express the nuance

often implicit in an accountant's relationship with a client. The manual
continues with chapters on passives, nominalizations, over-officious tone,
and general wordiness. But the stylistic guidelines that are sketched in
here are essentially suggestions for what the writer should not do, rather
than what is possible and what writers might learn to do.
There follows, as a coda, a set of suggestions prompting the writer to
revise, to edit, and finally, to read. This last suggestion, to read what is good
in the writing of others and apply it to one's own prose, is the only major
departure from a set of prescriptions that will yield the most rudimentary
and confined of styles. And if the accountants do begin to read widely,
one wonders how they are going to make sense of those departures from
the skeletal style that they encounter if they have no framework or
vocabulary for evaluation other than natural language, monosyllables, and
short sentences.
The informing ethic of the prose presented in the three above-mentioned
texts is clearly the concept of readability, a stylistic formula that promotes
the adaptation of all writing, regardless of the situation, to a level
"somewhere between the comics and the popular digests. "^^ My argument
here is not that the formulas are inaccurate (though there is certainly a
healthy debate on this subject);^^ rather my concern is with the adaptation
of the formulas as a dominant element in the teaching of business prose
style. In the first place, it must be recognized that word and sentence
length are but two of many possible variables that affect readability. Some
of the many other relevant factors include reader motivation, conceptual
difficulty, organization, format variation, and even print type. Furthermore,
the formulas are blind to both semantic difficulty (because they count only
syllables and don't appraise familiarity) and syntactic variation (because
they discount such essential matters as subordination, parallelism, and
variety). As for such elements of prose style as rhythm, modification, simple
figures, and the principles of cohesion, the formulas care nothing at all.^^
In consequence, the formulas promulgate a view of style that is confined
to the most rudimentary stylistic options and, if followed, constitute some-
thing of a rhetorical straight-jacket. This a-rhetorical stance is especially
contradictory given the nature of the author/audience contract in business
writing, a contract which requires that writers modulate their presentation
according to the demands of individual readers and specific situations. A
second, equally pressing concern is that the formulas do not provide a
way to teach even the kind of prose they claim is best. They are at most
a post-hoc measure for assessing potential difficulties during revision.
Students who are taught only this after-the-fact method of analyzing prose
 8 THE JOURNAL OF BUSINESS COMMUNICATION • 24:2:SPRING 1987

will be left v^thout a workable procedure when it comes to creating their

own sentences. In the end, teachers will have to acknowledge that, as
Joseph Williams reminds us, "if we really took the Flesch Scale seriously,
our students would spend more time counting than they would writing. "^®
In challenging the standard of simplicity as the dominant measure of
effective business style, I do not mean to call into question the fundamental
importance of clarity, conciseness, and correctness. Most of us tend naturally
to err on the side of excessive complexity in our prose, especially if we
think the situation is important. Nowhere is this tendency toward prolixity
more pronounced than in the Official Style of corporate writing, as Walker
Gibson showed some twenty years ago in his anatomy of "Stuffy Talk. "^° It
is little wonder, then, that the hurried executive and corporate communi-
cations departments should grasp at the promise of clarity offered by the
single standard of readability.^ Nor can it be doubted that many befuddled
writers have benefited significantly by subscribing to the norms of Standard
Business English.^ And yet these norms remain dangerous; for like a kind
of Gresham's Law of Stylistics, the prevalence of the severely limited skeletal
style tends to drive out the possibility of a more effective, variable one.
It is crucial that business writers recognize that all messages have two
unavoidable aspects: the first is a message of content about the explicit
situation at hand; but the second, implicit message is about relationship,
about the nature of the interaction between the sender and the receiver.
As Richard Lanham sardonically puts it, "People seldom write to be clear.
They have designs on their fellow man."^ It is this second agenda, the
implicit, personal message, that the skeletal style is insensitive to and
unable to render. With a little more latitude of stylistic choice than the
readability advocates or our standard business texts make available to
students, this second communication agenda can be accommodated without
sacrificing the sine qua non of clarity. This option for varying the stylistic
norms of simple diction and controlled syntax with periodic, well-chosen
deviations is the distinguishing characteristic of the Plain Style of classical
rhetoric.^

T H E ORIGINAL PLAIN STYLE

It is often assumed that the tradition of the plain style originated with the
scientific revolution of the 17th-century. In 1668, Thomas Sprat, a founding
fellow of the Royal Society, urged writers to "reject all the amplification,
digressions, and swellings of style: to return to a primitive purity, and
shortness, when men delivered so many things, in an almost equal number
of words."^ And yet Dean Sprat also insisted that "the English Tongue"
 THE PLAIN STYLE • MENDELSON 9

was enriched with a "greater Stock of . . . inimitable similitudes" than

any other language.^^ This acknowledgment of the value of metaphor,
along with the plentitude of balanced clauses, Latinate diction, and various
rhetorical figures in Sprat's own prose testifies to a belief that there was
nothing incongruous about the inclusion of some embellishment within
the plain style as long as these variations served as clarifying agents. The
ultimate authority for this blend of plainness and embellishment, and the
source to which the anti-Ciceronians of the 17th-century themselves
appealed, was the classical theory of the three levels of style.^^
From Aristotle through Cicero and Quintillian, there developed a set
of stylistic distinctions based on the recognition that, as classical scholar
George Kennedy puts it, "different writers, or even a single writer at
different times, will write equally well but in quite different ways."^^ The
three styles that developed (commonly known as the grand, the middle,
and the plain) are not so much a hierarchy or set of levels as a spectrum
along which all prose can be placed. The categories remained influential
throughout the centuries because they provided not only a descriptive
and critical framework, but also because as a rhetoric they helped to teach
young writers their craft. They did so by allowing for distinctions between
categories of style other than good and bad, and by providing for a creative
mix of styles according to the situation. This notion of adaptability, what
the Greeks called "kairos," is both the foundation for the classical concept
of stylistic kinds and the rationale for adapting the ancient practice of the
plain style to modern business prose. ^^
Among the clearest statements on the plain style is that of Demetrius
of Alexandria whose work "On Style" appeared in the third-century B.C.^"
Following Aristotle, Demetrius claims lucidity as the principal goal of the
plain style and asserts that this premier quality depends upon current
diction on the one hand, and clear, precise connectives between clauses
on the other (192). Both distinctions are instructive in their contrast with
the skeletal style of business communication texts. With regard to diction,
Demetrius insists that a writer can choose any words that the reader will
be familiar with—^not just short, simple ones. Here too he closely follows
Aristotle, who established the need for "current and ordinary" words, but
who also recognized that such diction can tend toward "meanness" or
triviality. As a result, Aristotle maintains that language must occasionally
seek "variation from what is usual" in order to be more striking and achieve
persuasion.'^^ This latitude of word-choice opens the way for the inclusion
in the plain style of technical terms, abstraction, even buzz-words that
create a sense of community, as long as these words are appropriate to the
situation. The plain style, then, can adjust its diction to the rhetorical
 10 THE JOURNAL OF BUSINESS COMMUNICATION • 24:2:SPRING 1987

context by allowing for a choice among semantic substitutes, a choice that

is based on the nature of the subject, the character of the audience, and
the implied personality of the author, and not on syllable count alone. It
is important, says Demetrius, for the plain stylist to "call afiga fig"(224),
but there is more than one way to do so.
As for syntactic relations, Demetrius clearly feels that the "lean" or
"spare" style must be at pains to avoid ambiguity. It can accomplish this by
adopting the principles of short clauses (204), simplified word-order (199),
and clear, well-marked connectives (192-97). However, in Demetrius, such
guidelines are always subordinate to the higher principle of clarity itself.
As a result, brevity is not as important to him as vividness, a quality that
keeps the plain style from slumping into the commonplace (202-14). If
repetition or extended description help achieve vividness, then brevity
is well-sacrificed (194). Moreover, Demetrius can accept variation in what
he calls "natural word order" (199) if the ultimate syntax produces a more
lucid rendering of the essential idea. Correspondingly, he comments on
such syntactic variations as apostrophe, embedded clauses, parallel series,
and a number of rhetorical figures, all of which serve to protract sentence
length at the same time they work to enhance sentence clarity. The
effectiveness of these syntactic choices is insured by clear connections
between major clausal blocks within the sentence; or as he writes, clarity
is "made safe by connectives" (193). So while Demetrius does argue that the
simple, periodic sentence with a strong close and a minimum of qualification
is the basis of the plain style, he also maintains that crisp, lucid prose
need not renounce all syntactic orders but the agent-action-object series.
After all, a sentence with clear connectives between clauses, like a road
with well-placed signs, is much easier to follow than a road without signs,
even if that road is short (202).
Unlike the advocates of skeletal business prose or the later Roman
rhetoricians who insisted on a rigid distinction between the grand, the
elegant (or middle), and the plain styles, Demetrius recognizes that no
single style is perfectly adapted to every audience.^^ So in his shifting
schema, the various styles can be mixed, simplicity and ornament synthe-
sized in accordance with the demands of the rhetorical situation. He there-
fore includes in his discussion of the plain style a number of rhetorical
features that properly belong to "elegance" but which may occasionally
contribute to the vividness of the plain style. Of special interest to us are
those figures of speech that Demetrius identifies as "a kind of word-
arrangement" (59) and that Edward P. J. Corbett has discussed under the
heading of "Schemes of Construction."^^ These embellishments include
anaphora, antithesis, epanalepsis, homoioteleuton, and isocolon; and
 THE PLAIN STYLE • MENDELSON 11

despite their forbidding Greek names, these devices continue to offer

interesting, effective ways of manipulating without distorting the plain
style.^^ In anaphora, for example, the same word is used at the beginning
of successive phrases or clauses, as in "The goal of the new program is to
increase product recognition, to increase demographic distribution, and
ultimately to increase our market share." Such figures, maintains
Demetrius, are acceptable within the plain style not only because they
enliven one's prose, but also because they enhance the clarity of the
passage. Kinneavy has argued that there is a "necessary tension" in persua-
sive discourse between the need to be natural and ordinary on the one
hand, and the need to persuade through recourse to the exceptional on
the other. ^^ By including elements of the middle style within the arsenal
of options open to the plain stylist, Demetrius is attempting to mediate
that tension by improving persuasiveness without sacrificing lucidity.
What the plain style of Demetrius does, then, that the skeletal style
of our texts does not do is to recognize the tedium and immaturity implicit
in an overly simplified style. When the plain style becomes too strict, he
says, the resulting prose is "arid" and incapable of claiming the reader's
attention (236-39). Snch prose is like a deserted road which "makes even
a short journey seem long" (47). Demetrius is quite specific in his
indictment of "trivial words" (237) and "an excess of short phrases" (238)
as the cause of aridity; and, as we have seen, his prescriptions for this
stylistic fault include dictional and syntactic variation and the periodic
inclusion of organizational figures to achieve variet)' and increase vividness.
It is of particular interest to us that Demetrius applies his notions of the
plain style and the threat of aridity directly to the practice of letter-writing,
or what has come to be known among classicists as epistelography."^^ A
letter, Demetrius maintains, is like "one side of a dialogue" (223) which
comes to the reader invested with a strong element of the writer's
personality (or "ethos"—237). Because of the need to enhance clarity with
the vividness of truly personal address, the plain style natural to
correspondence must strive for variation through occasional recourse to
elegance. An unrelieved plain style in correspondence is not only
stylistically arid, it is also incapable of conveying the personal component
required for effective communication. Only through stylistic variation
from the norm can the vividness and personality required by such
communication emerge. Ultimately, it is this expanded notion of the plain
style, one that incorporates the need for variation, vividness, and
personality, that makes the rhetorical theories of Demetrius so instructive;
for it is just such breadth that is required for the successful practice of
the plain style in contemporary business prose.
 12 THE JOURNAL OF BUSINESS COMMUNICATION • 24:2:SPRING 1987

AN APPROPRIATE PLAINNESS FOR BUSINESS PROSE

But what is it that leads to such breadth of style, to a prose that is, as
Joseph Williams puts it, "not just clear but vigorous, not just direct but
forceful"?^^ The answer is implicit in Demetrius's program for the plain
style; for what the writers of our classes and offices need is an expanded
range of stylistic choice. I attempted earlier to show that the reigning
paradigm of business prose is a uniform standard of stylistic minimalism.
By expanding the scope of the plain style, by including options that
transcend the "grammatically primitive," the business writer can achieve
that vividness, variation, and personality that Demetrius saw as the
necessary counterpoint to "pure" plainness."^^
The distinguished psycho-linguist Charles Osgood has defined style as
"an individual's deviations from norms for the situations in which he is
encoding, these deviations being the statistical properties of those
structural features for which there exists some degree of choice in the
code."''^ In Standard Business English, the institutional norms of clarity,
conciseness, and correctness that govern stylistic range must, of course,
be acknowledged; but writers also need to know that an individual style
begins to emerge only as they choose from among the myriad of possible
transformations in diction, modification, figures, arrangement, even
punctuation, transformations that deviate from the strict conventions of
standard practice. The goal of these stylistic deviations is not to call
attention to one's self or one's prose; rather, a writer alert to style is
seeking to stimulate engagement in prominent ideas through recourse to
appropriate stylistic ploys.
My argument is that instead of teaching a uniform standard of style to
which business writing students are confined, we ought to take a clue
from Demetrius and help our students to achieve an adaptable level of
diction, to employ a varied texture of syntax, and to utilize apt figures of
speech.^" The only path to such stylistic flexibility is to spend more time
in class on style as an integral part of effective business writing. ^^ Francis
Christensen, in his discussion of generative rhetoric, makes the essential
point: "When you know the possibilities, you know the range of choice.
Whoever is to call the plays, you will agree, has to know what plays there
are to call." The business writer who is introduced only to the skeletal
version of the plain style does not have enough plays to meet the challenge
of a game with diverse players, situations, and ideas.
Happily, the community of teachers and scholars concerned with business
prose style has begun to pay increasing attention to the role of choice and
variation in effective business writing. Jack Selzer has been one of the
most persistent and articulate champions of flexibility in our stylistic norms.
 THE PLAIN STYLE • MENDELSON 13

In his essay "Emphasizing Rhetorical Principles in Business Writing,"

Selzer acknowledges that "Business students do need to know certain forms
and conventions peculiar to business writing;" but he also argues that
mechanical perfection is not synonymous with stylistic effectiveness. The
"rhetorically-minded teacher," he adds, will insist that students expand
"their stylistic repertoires.'"*^ And in his spirited indictment of readability
formulas as guides to style, Selzer writes that "After all, style is choice,"
and choice is "perhaps the most important word in any writing course. '"'^
My colleagues Helen Rothschild Ewald and Donna Stine, in their essay
on "Speech Act Theory and Business Communication Conventions," have
indicated that far from being uniform, business style is "context-dependent"
and so must seek variations appropriate to specific situations. What is
more, they write that speech act theory "allows that communication which
is securely governed by . . . rules and regulations—and surely business
writing falls into this category—may be particularly enhanced by
thoughtful deviance from those rules." Their helpful classification of "areas
of intentional deviance" provides a potential tool for calculating the
effectiveness of any departure from the stylistic norms of plainness."*^
In a related development, there has been a good deal of emphasis of late
on the role of style in enhancing the "ethos" or personality of working prose.
Dorothy Margaret Guinn notes that a writer's ethos emerges not only
"through his or her lexical and syntactic choices," but also through deviations
from grammatical "hypercorrectness." The sense of the individual writer
that is generated through these stylistic departures from convention "be-
comes a potent means of embedding an identifiable, agreeable personality
within one's writing, and drawing readers into agreement with the ideas
presented.'"*® Merrill Whitburn also argues that any communication can
be improved by "the subtle infusion of personality, particularly if the
message is intended to be persuasive," and that stylistic deviations can
act as enticements for the reader.**^
All of these concepts (style as choice, as deviation, and as the vehicle
for personality) are contemporary expressions of ideas we observed in
Demetrius: choice and deviation are the means by which variation and
vividness are achieved, while personality is the result of stylistic individ-
uality. The precedent set both in Demetrius and in this contemporary
research argues that business writers need not be held captive by a mono-
lithic ideal of stylistic simplicity. On the contrary, there is powerful evidence
that the persuasive effect of the plain style is considerably enriched by
the periodic inclu.sion of "thoughtful deviance," that appropriate plainness
is the result not of stylistic conformity but of individual choice.
One of the most intriguing efforts to expand to range of stylistic choice
open to business writers has been Craig and Carol Kallendorf s carefully
 14 THE JOURNAL OF BUSINESS COMMUNICATION • 24:2;SPRING 1987

reasoned argument for the use of figures of speech in the practice of

business prose.** This argument in defense of "a tradition that integrates
figures quite thoroughly with the context and purpose of the message" is
built on three propositions: first, that the emotional appeal of a well-used
figure can create a bond between the writer and the reader; second, that
there is a special relation betweenfiguresof speech and the logic of certain
thought processes; and third, that figures are an effective way to build
the "verbal ethos" of a document, an argument we encountered in a more
general form above. ^®
The Kallendorfs maintain that taken together these three characteristics
of rhetorical figures (their emotion, their logic, and their expression of
character) encapsulate the three fundamental appeals of Aristotelian
rhetoric: i.e., to persuade by "pathos," "logos," and "ethos." This elegant
appeal for a new look at ancient rhetorical devices is grounded in the
recognition that all business discourse is persuasive at heart and that
figures, as Demetrius suggested, increase the vividness of presentation
and so enhance the persuasive power of one's ideas. Also implicit in the
Kallendorfs discussion is the more general notion that an enriched sense
of style (by whatever means) is central to the persuasive agenda of business
prose. It may be worth noting, however, that almost all the Kallendorfs
examples of rhetorical figures at work in business discourse come from
either advertising or from formal speeches, structures in which the latitude
for stylistic deviation is greater than it might be in more routine situations.
It is important to recognize that the use of rhetorical figures, along with
other stylistic options, is in large part contingent upon the persuasive
demands of the situation, and that figures may not always be fitting. But
this caveat is only a repetition of what we have already heard from
Demetrius: that any stylistic choice depends firmly on the nature of the
specific situation, or on "kairos." The Kallendorfs are quite right to insist
on the addition of figures to the stylistic arsenal appropriate to a large
number of business communication situations, and their effort to create
a theoretical foundation for an expanded "vision of business writing" is a
significant contribution to a new perspective on business style.^
At bottom, this entire complex of ideas on choice, deviation, and appro-
priate figures is a variation on a cardinal principle expressed by Richard
Weaver: i.e. all rhetoric is "an art of emphasis," a technique for making
some things stand out.^^ The business writer who is fully acquainted with
the range of stylistic choices available will be able, when the need arises,
to amplify his or her prose and create emphasis in a way that a writer
dependent solely on the readability standard of style could not. The value of
such an ability is obvious. All effective communication requires procedures
 THE PLAIN STYLE • MENDELSON 15

designed to bring certain ideas clearly and prominently before the

attention of the audience, to lend what we before described as "presence"
to one's message.^^ For some time business communication theory has
recognized the importance of deliberate training in the analysis of certain
extra-linguistic factors, like audience, situation, and purpose.^'^ What this
study suggests is that the variables of style can also contribute to the
presence of our writing, and that more systematic instruction in the purely
linguistic features of diction, syntax, and figures of speech could also help
enhance the persuasive power of a writer's message.
In 1937, A. Charles Babenroth wrote in Modern Business English that
"Although personal preferences must necessarily accommodate themselves
to house character in many ways, the writer must beware of suppressing
his individuality. He should guard individuality jealously as his most prized
asset. "^'' There is no doubt that the plain style of short words in short
sentences is the "house character" of the contemporary business community.
What we need to recognize is that the pure plainness of the skeletal style
also leads to the phenomenon of the absent author, or what Walker Gibson
called "the rhetoric of hollow men. "'^^ It is through an expanded, more
appropriate plainness that business writers can cultivate that "most prized
asset" and learn to project themselves as individuals of presence and style.

NOTES

1. See Weeks, Francis W. and Daphne A. Jameson, Principles of Business

Communication, Champaign, IL: Stipes Puhlishing Co., pp. 9-10, 1979.
2. Perelman, Chaim, The Realm of Rhetoric, trans. William Kluhack, Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, p. 32ff, 1982.
3. Wilkinson, C. W, Peter B. Clarke, and Dorothy C. M. Wilkinson, Teacher's
Cuide for Communicating Through Letters and Reports, 8th ed., Homewood,
IL; Richard D. Irwin, p. vii, 1983.
4. , Communicating Through Letters and Reports, Homewood, IL:
Richard D. Irwin, p. 35, 1982.
5. , Communicating, pp. 35 and 52.
6. , Teacher's Cuide, p. 5.
7. , Communicating, p. 47.
8. , Communicating, p. 47. The authors proclaim that they have "achieved"
a Fog Index of 8.8 in the 8th edition of Communicating; i.e., a junior high-school
level of prose that "is ideal for college undergraduates." See Teacher's Cuide p. 4.
9. Ibid., pp. 36-37.
10. Ibid., p. 36.
11. Wimsatt, W. K., Jr., "Style as Meaning," in Essays on the Language of
Literature, eds. Seymore Chatman and Samuel R. Levine, Roston: Houghton,
Mifflin Co., p. 362, 1967.
12. Murphy, Herta A. and Herhert W. Hildebrandt, Effective Business
Communications, 4th ed.. New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 38-47, 1984.
 16 THE JOURNAL OF BUSINESS COMMUNICATION • 24:2:SPRING 1987

13. For representative texts, see Lesikar, Raymond V., Basic Business
Communication, 3rd ed., Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin, pp. 12-72, 1985;
Robert Nixon, Practical Business Communications, San Diego: Harcourt, Brace
Javonovich, pp. 58-82, 1984; and Malra Treece, Communication for Business and
the Professions, 2nd ed., Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., pp. 113-32, 1983.
14. Effective Writing—1402, (a Touche-Ross manual). New York: American
Institute of Certified Public Accountants, p. 1-1, 1976.
15. Ibid., p. 2-L
16. See Kinneavy, James L., A Theory of Discourse, New York: Norton, p. 182,
1971. It is important to point out that of the great many formulas that have been
developed to assess readability, business communication texts usually mention
only Flesch and Gunning, undoubtedly because these two are so easy to calculate.
For a brief survey of other formulas, see Colin Harrison, Readability in the
Classroom, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 51-81, 1980.
17. A good deal of research has shown that the two factors most often measured
by readability formulas (word-difficulty and sentence length) are consistently
connected with comprehension; see Harrison, pp. 9-50; and Ceorge Klare, "A
Second Look at the Validity of Readability Formulas," The Journal of Reading
Behavior, 8, no. 2, pp. 129-52, 1976. It is, however, the significance of this
connection that has been questioned; for a fine review of the research as it pertains
to business communication, see Jack Selzer, "Readability is a Four-Letter Word,"
The Journal of Business Communication, 18, no. 4, pp. 23-4, Fall, 1981.
18. See Harrison, p. 44.
19. Williams, Joseph, "Defining Complexity," College English, 40, no. 6, p.
598, February, 1979.
20. Gibson, Walker, Tough, Sweet, and Stuffy: An Essay on Modern American
Prose Styles, Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, pp. 91-101, 1966.
21. Selzer points out that seventeen states now require the use of readability
formulas in the drafting of insurance policies, and that General Motors has widely
distributed a computer program based on the Flesch formula; see Selzer, p. 31.
22. See Broadhead, Glenn J., "Style in Technical and Scientific Writing," in
Research in Technical Communication: A Bibliographic Sourcebook, eds., Michael
G. Moran and Debra Joumet, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, p. 237, 1985.
23. Lanham, Richard, Style: An Anti-Textbook, New Haven: Yale University
Press, p. 17, 1974.
24. It is important not to confuse the Plain Style with what Francis Weeks and
Daphne Jameson call "The Plain Language Movement"; see their Principles of
Business Communication, pp. 76-7.
25. Sprat, Thomas, The History of the Royal Society (Part II, sec. XX), in
Eighteenth-Century English Literature, eds., Geoffrey Tillotson, etal.. New York:
Harcourt, Brace and World, p. 27, 1969.
26. — , p. 25. For a related discussion of Sprat and the plain style, see
Merrill D. Whitbum, "The Plain Style in Scientific and Technical Writing," in
The Journal of Technical Communication, 8, no. 4, pp. 350-57, 1978.
27. See CroU, Morris, "'Attic Prose' of the Seventeenth Century," in Style,
Prose, and Rhythm, eds., J. Max Patrick, et al., Princeton: Princeton University
Press, pp. 51-101, 1966; and Walter J. Ong, Ramus, Method, and The Decay of
Dialogue, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, passim, 1958.
28. Kennedy, George, "Theophrastus and Stylistic Distinctions," Harvard
Studies in Classical Philology, 62, p. 93, 1957. See also G. L. Henrickson, "The
 THE PLAIN STYLE • MENDELSON 17

Peripatetic Mean of Style and the Three StyUstic Characters," American Journal
of Philology, 25, pp. 124-46, 1904.
29. For an indication of Greek and Roman thinking on the concept of "kairos,"
see the following: Plato on the need to know when to use various rhetorical
techniques (Phaedrus, 255-67); and Aristotle on the appropriate style for various
audiences and suhjects (Rhetoric, Bk. Ill, 1408a 10-27); the Rhetorica Ad
Herennium (casually attributed to Cicero) on the three styles and the right time
to use each of them (Bk. IV). Cicero himself maintains that "no single kind of
style ean he adapted to every cause, or ever>' audience, or every person, or every
occasion" {De Oratore, Bk. Ill, Ch. LVI).
30. There is naturally a good deal of uncertainty ahout hoth the author and the
date of the treatise; see Gruhe, G. M. A., A Greek Critic; Demetrius on Style,
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 39-56, 1961). All further references to
Demetrius will he to this text and will cite section # in parentheses within my essay.
31. Aristotle, Rhetoric, Bk. Ill, 1404h and 1405h, resp.
32. Demetrius actually includes a fourth style, the forceful, in his flexihle
framework. For a discussion of the stricter system of later Latin theorists, see
Gruhe, p. 24.
33. Gorhett, Edward P. J., Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, New
York: Oxford University Press, pp. 429-38, 1965.
3-1. Briefly, antithesis is the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in parallel
structure; epanalepsis is a key word or words repeated after a parenthetical hreak;
homioteleuton means "like endings"; and isocolon roughly equates with parallelism.
See also Craig and Carol KallendoH, "Figures of Speech, 'Ethos,' and Aristotle,"
The Journal of Business Communication, 22, no. 1, pp. 36-7, Winter, 1985.
35. Kinneavy, p. 286.
36. For a hrief bibliography of research into ancient epistelography, see Gruhe,
p. 20.
37. Williams, pp. 606-07.
38. The quote is from Broadhead, Glenn ] . , "Sentence Patterns: Some of What
We Need to Know and Teach," in Sentence Combining: A Rhetorical Perspective,
ed., Donald Daiker, et al., Carhondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press,
p. 60, 1985.
39. Osgood, Charles E., "Some Effects of Motivation on Style of Encoding," in
Style in Language, ed., Thomas Seheok, New York: John Wiley and Sons, p. 295,
1960.
40. See Walpole, Jane, "Style as Option," CCC, XXX, p. 207, May, 1980.
41. The scope of this polemical essay makes it impossible to take up such
questions as "what should he taught" and "how should we do it?" For an inventory
of practical methods hy which style can he taught, see Broadhead, "Some of What
We Need to Know and Teach;" Francis Christensen, The New Rhetoric, New York:
Harper and Row, 1976; Louis T. Milic, "Compositions vs. Stylistics," in Linguistics,
Stylistics, and the Teaching of Composition, ed., Donald McQuade, Akron, OH:
University of Akron, 1979, pp. 91-102; and Joseph Williams, Ten Lessons in Clarity
and Grace, Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, and Company, 1981. A method that
dovetails nicely with the plain style s demands for simplicity has reeently heen
outlined by Richard B. Larsen in "Sentence Patterning," CCC, XXXVII, pp.
103-04, Fehruary, 1986. With Larsen s method as a base, the teacher can then go
on to those stylistic variations that he or she is most concerned with.
 18 THE JOURNAL OF BUSINESS COMMUNICATION • 24:2:SPRING 1987

42. Christensen, p. 166.

43. Selzer, Jack, "Teaching Rhetorical Principles in Business Writing," in
Teaching Business Writing, ed., Jeanne W. Halpern, Urbana, IL: American
Business Communication Association, pp. 6, 14, and 15, resp., 1983.
44. Selzer, Jack, "Readability," p. 32.
45. Ewald, Helen Rothschild and Donna Stine, "Speech Act Theory and
Business Communication Conventions," The Journal of Business Communication,
20, no. 2, quotes from pp. 17, 24, and 19, resp.. Summer 1983.
46. Guinn, Dorothy Margaret, "Ethos in Technical Discourse," The Technical
Writing Teacher, XI, no. 1, pp. 31 and 34, resp., Fall 1983.
47. Whitbum, Merrill D., "Personality in Scientific and Technical Writing,"
TheJoumalofTechnicalWritingandCommunication, 6, no. 4, pp. 299-306,1976.
48. Kallendorf, Craig and Carol, "The Figures of Speech, 'Ethos,'andAristotle,"
pp. 35-50.
49. Kallendorf, pp. 30-44.
50. For quote, see Kallendorf, p. 51. Also of interest is the Kallendorfs'
adaptation for the Ciceronian topoi to corporate speeches in "A New Topical System
for Corporate Speech Writing," The Journal of Business Communication, 21, no. 2,
Spring, 1984.
51. Weaver, Richard, Language Is Sermonic, ed., Richard L. Johanneson, et
al., Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, p. 217, 1970.
52. See Perelman, pp. xi, xiii, and Ch. 4, passim.
53. See Walpole, pp. 206-07.
54. Babenroth, A. Charles, Modem Business English, rev. ed.. New York:
Prentice Hall, p. 134, 1937.
55. Gibson, p. 90.

WORK IN JAPAN

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