Variety is the spice of life, according to the old saying. Let us take up again a theme announced briefly at the beginning of the section on vigor. If the first rule of successful writing is "be clear," the second rule, perhaps, is "be lively" or "do not be boring." In order to get your message across to your reader, you must communicate it clearly. At the same time, however, you must ensure that the reader remains awake, alert, and involved, for if his or her attention starts to wander, even the clearest, most correct, and most elegant exposition of your ideas may fail to achieve its purpose. In the first instance, you should be able to rely on the interesting nature of the subject matter to hold the reader's attention. But anything that you can do to make the way that you write more interesting and more entertaining will help. If you can mix up things a little, put in light and shade, provide occasional comic relief, in short, if you can add variety to the presentation of your material, then you will spice it agreeably and make it that much more palatable for your reader.What to VaryAlmost any element in a text can be varied and will benefit from variety. You can vary your vocabulary, your sentences, and your paragraphs. You can also vary length, tempo, and tone as well as the way in which you approach your topic. It is often quite refreshing to arrive at a "signpost" in a text that says: "Let us now look at this question from a completely different angle," or: "A fresh approach sheds an entirely new light on this problem," or "This discussion also has its lighter side." The more imaginatively you can ring the changes, the more interesting the text will be.As always, however, there are limits. Although you do not want your writing to be completely predictable, at the same time you do not want it to be completely unpredictable. It may seem by now that what is given with one hand, in terms of allowing the writer liberty and scope, is often taken away with the other. (Give your writing variety, but not too much variety. Add spice to your writing, but do not deliberately spice it up. Do not, for example, distort reality by making it appear more thrilling, threatening, or hilarious than it is in fact. Use your imagination, but do not let your imagination get out of control.) For better or worse, this is the nature of style. Variety is important, but consistency, for example, of tone is important, too. Creativity needs to be allied with judgment. Even repetition, which might seem the very antithesis of variety, has its place in the writer's repertoire. But this is merely a note of caution. Where you have the opportunity to vary your writing you should do so.Creating VarietyConsider this example:People think that winning is the only thing that counts. It is not the only important thing, in life or in sports. Fair play is just as important, if we understand the situation correctly. A person who takes illegal drugs to enhance his or her performance cannot claim to be a worthy winner. A person who cheats at cards is actually stealing from the other players. A person who bribes a judge is undermining the whole justice system. Preserving your integrity is just as important as gaining success. We ignore the rules of fair play because we cannot bear to fail. It takes a special kind of courage to fail. You can fail and not be defeated. You are never truly defeated if you have tried your best and behaved honorably. That gives you the strength to try just as hard again. That is what really counts. The writer has an interesting point of view, and the passage is sound in respect of grammar and style. But it seems to be very much all on one note. All the sentences are of roughly the same length. All the sentences are constructed on the same pattern, the standard pattern: The subject comes first, followed by the verb and the predicate. Varying the length and pattern of the sentences would improve the passage considerably and give it a lot more impact.Take the first three sentences, for example:People think that winning is the only thing that counts. It is not the only important thing, in life or in sports. Fair play is just as important, if we understand the situation correctly. and compare them with this version:People think that winning is the only thing that counts. It is not. In life or in sports, fair play is just as important, if we understand the situation correctly. The short three-word sentence set between two longer sentences is arresting and emphatic. Taking the final phrase from the original second sentence and placing it at the beginning of the third sentence not only breaks the subject-verb-predicate pattern, it also avoids the unnecessary repetition of the only … thing.Look then at the next three sentences:A person who takes illegal drugs to enhance his or her performance cannot claim to be a worthy winner. A person who cheats at cards is actually stealing from the other players. A person who bribes a judge is undermining the whole justice system. The repetition of the same pattern here is not in itself a fault. But you could recast the passage like this, for example:An athlete who takes illegal drugs to enhance his or her performance cannot claim to be a worthy winner. To cheat at cards is actually to steal from the other players. When you bribe a judge, you are, in fact, undermining the whole justice system. You could also retain the repetition but use a rather more interesting sentence pattern. Making a point in the form of a question, for instance, can often liven up a passage:If you take illegal drugs to enhance your performance, can you claim to be a worthy winner? If you cheat at cards, are you not actually stealing from the other players? If you bribe a judge, do you not undermine the whole justice system? Either of these solutions has the advantage of removing the rather colorless phrase A person who … from its very prominent position in the original set of sentences.Finally, let us see if we can rework the original ending:It takes a special kind of courage to fail. You can fail and not be defeated. You are never truly defeated if you have tried your best and behaved honorably. That gives you the strength to try just as hard again. That is what really counts. There are too many sentences here, and the writer seems to be advancing by small and rather tentative steps instead of proceeding boldly to a conclusion. If we vary the length of the sentences, which means running some of them together, perhaps we can improve the effect. We should also, perhaps, try to be clearer about what is meant by fail and defeat:It takes a special kind of courage to be defeated without feeling that you have failed. If you have tried your best and behaved honorably, you may have lost the game, but you have not failed so long as you have the strength to try just as hard again. That is what really counts. So the whole passage in the new and more varied version might look something like this:People think that winning is the only thing that counts. It is not. In life or in sports, fair play is just as important, if we understand the situation correctly. An athlete who takes illegal drugs to enhance his or her performance cannot claim to be a worthy winner. To cheat at cards is actually to steal from the other players. When you bribe a judge, you are, in fact, undermining the whole justice system. Preserving your integrity is just as important as success, yet we ignore the rules of fair play because we cannot bear to fail. It takes a special kind of courage to be defeated without feeling that you have failed. If you have tried your best and behaved honorably, you may have lost the game, but you have not failed so long as you have the strength to try just as hard again. That is what really counts. Look out for sameness; look out for repetition. Vary the length of your sentences (and your paragraphs), and vary their construction. That will keep your readers' minds on what they are reading.A Note on RepetitionIt might appear at first sight that repetition was the enemy of variety and therefore had no place in stylish writing at all. This is not always the case:Behind the sofa, there was a curtain. Behind the curtain, there was a little door. Behind the little door, there was a narrow passage. And at the end of the narrow passage, there was a deep dark hole. There is a place for repetition in writing that is aimed primarily at children. There is equally a place for repetition in writing that is aimed at adults. Repetition forms the basis of almost all structural organization in writing and most rhetoric:Give us bread, and we will thank you. Give us the means to make our own bread, and we will bless your name for ever. Repetition is preferable to ambiguity:She asked her sister to accompany her to the railroad station. She was rather reluctant to do so, because it was an extremely hot day. Who is reluctant to do what? One or other element from the first sentence needs to be repeated in order to make the meaning clear:She asked her sister to accompany her to the railroad station. Her sister was rather reluctant to go, because it was an extremely hot day. She asked her sister to accompany her to the railroad station. She asked her rather reluctantly, because it was an extremely hot day. Similarly, consider the following example:A euphemism is a word or phrase that replaces others that might be thought offensive. The word others is plural and so does not match up exactly with a word or phrase. Repetition makes for a better and clearer sentence:A euphemism is a word or phrase that replaces another word or phrase that might be thought offensive. There is a difference, however, between repetition for the sake of clarity or for effect and repetition that is simply the result of careless writing:The constellation Orion is one of the most striking constellations in the northern skies. This new way of seasoning wood is, in many ways, superior to the old way. Developed in the 1940s, the jet engine represented a major development in the history of powered flight. These diverse approaches, which vary considerably in their approaches and emphases, have contributed substantially to our understanding of the problem. It is all too easy, unfortunately, to make such mistakes. As long as you take the trouble to look through your work when you have completed it and to revise it thoroughly, they can usually be eliminated. Often the easiest remedy is to delete the repeated terms:Orion is one of the most striking constellations in the northern skies. orThe constellation Orion is one of the most striking in the northern skies. This new way of seasoning wood is superior to the old in many respects. Alternatively, you will have either to replace one of the repetitious elements with an alternative word with a similar meaning or to recast the sentence. Consider the following sentence:Developed in the 1940s, the jet engine represented a major development in the history of powered flight. The obvious solution is to try to find another word to replace either developed or development.Developed in the 1940s, the jet engine represented a major advance [or step forward] in the history of powered flight. This is a reasonably satisfactory outcome. But although the English language is comparatively rich in synonyms, a synonym is not always easy to find. You can make up for the limitations of your personal vocabulary by making use of a thesaurus, but thesauri often promise more than they can actually fulfill. A relatively simple list of synonyms, for instance, offers the following alternatives for the word develop in the sense in which it is used in this sentence: begin, start, set in motion, found, institute, establish, invent, design, generate, produce. Since the object in question is a machine, only three of those words—invent, design, and produce—are at all relevant, and none of them is exactly right in this case. A machine may be invented or designed in a primitive form long before it is developed, that is, before it is brought to a state in which it can be used. Leonardo da Vinci designed several sorts of flying machine, but he was not able to develop any of them. It is possible that the jet engine was both invented and developed during the 1940s, but you would need to recheck your facts before you substituted invented for developed as the first word of the sentence. First produced in the 1940s is probably the nearest and safest equivalent. Fortunately, finding a substitute for the noun development presents fewer problems.By all means, use a straightforward replacement word if one comes easily into your mind:Beginning a new relationship was not entirely easy; indeed, it was beginning to seem almost impossible. Starting a new relationship was not entirely easy; indeed, it was beginning to seem almost impossible. She decided to break the news to her friends during the afternoon coffee break. She decided to tell her friends [or share the news with her friends] during the afternoon coffee break. He crashed his car into a tree and was lucky to walk away from the crash with a few bruises. He crashed his car into a tree and was lucky to walk away from the wreck with a few bruises. If you cannot immediately think of a substitute, however, think about recasting the sentence before you reach for the thesaurus. Let us revisit an earlier example:These diverse approaches, which vary considerably in their approaches and emphases, have contributed substantially to our understanding of the problem. This sentence suffers not only from the repetition of the word approach, but also from the fact that the idea conveyed by the adjective diverse is virtually repeated in the word vary. It also contains two adverbs, considerably and substantially, that are used to add emphasis rather than specificity. Worst of all, it is very difficult to work out what the writer is trying to say.If you should happen to write such a sentence, you should first retrace your steps and do your best to disentangle the basic idea you wish to communicate from the words in which the idea first presented itself to you. In this instance, we shall assume that the writer intended to say that different people had approached the problem in different ways. The differences in their approaches highlighted different aspects of the problems, thus contributing to our understanding of it. This unpicking of the original sentence is as awkward and repetitive as the original, but it gives us a starting point for a rewritten version:These approaches, with their different points of view and emphases, have contributed substantially to our understanding of the problem.
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