Viscoian Maxims, Griceian Maxims

Speranza

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How To Write Good

by Frank L. Visco

My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules:

1. Avoid alliteration. Always.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)
4. Employ the vernacular.
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren't necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
12. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
13. Don't be redundant; don't more use words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. Profanity sucks.
15. Be more or less specific.
16. Understatement is always best.
17. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be avoided.
21. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
22. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
23. Who needs rhetorical questions?

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In the handwritten notes "Logic and Conversation" (ii), Grice has 'sic' in two places:

"Be perspicuous". For really, who knows that 'perspicuity' is _clarity_?

Also:

"Avoid unnecessary prolixity": long for 'be brief'.

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Visco:

>How To Write Good
>by Frank L. Visco
>My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules:

---- as did Grice's way of ideas, way of words.

1. Avoid alliteration. Always.

----

2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.

3. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)

------- What _is_ a cliche? Grice would say that

"You're the cream in my coffee" meaning "you're my pride and joy" (Grice's gloss), compares with

"They're old hat". To consider.

Note that Grice is interested in breaches to 'sincerity' (say the truth). Someone who says, "you're the cream in my coffee" knows he is saying something false. Grice notes that this type of falsity can be second-order. One can use, 'ironically', "You're the cream in my coffee" to mean, Grice's interpretant, "You're my bane".

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4. Employ the vernacular.

---- Grice loved it. The etymology of 'vernacular', in the vernacular, is not learned.

5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.

----

6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.

----- This is indeed the spirit behind Grice's campaign.

7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.

8. Contractions aren't necessary.

9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.

Incidentally, there's an accent on the 'a' of apropos.

10. One should never generalize.

11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."

--- And Marhsall, "Quote in full: chapter and verse".

12. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.

--- only different.

13. Don't be redundant; don't more use words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.

---- unless you implicate.

14. Profanity sucks.

15. Be more or less specific.

---- avoid unnecessary prolixity, unless you don't. Williamson wrote a book on that: "Vagueness". He claims that since lingo is vague ('more or less specific') per se, one should not say it.


16. Understatement is always best.

--- And implicature is Grice's word for 'understatement', meiosis. The opposite is overstatement, as in "Your handwriting sucks" (Grice's meiosis, and understatement, "He was slightly intoxicated" (said of a man known to have broken the house furniture), and "You have beautiful handwriting" (+> but your philosophy is perhaps not Kantian enough).

17. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

---- Grice calls it 'hyperbole': "Every nice girl loves a sailor". "Even in the circumstances that it's a different sailr meant for each girl, this hardly becomes truth-conditional."

18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.

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19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.

----- or a fish without a bicycle.

20. The passive voice is to be avoided.

------ by most people.

21. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.

vide: Avoid cliches like the rats.

22. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.

--- e.g. "You're the cream in my coffee, but not the apple of my eye."


23. Who needs rhetorical questions?

Plato? The Pope?