span; and in the same way, the
commonplace person is betrayed by his style.

Nevertheless, an author follows a false aim if he tries to write
exactly as he speaks. There is no style of writing but should have a
certain trace of kinship with the _epigraphic_ or _monumental_ style,
which is, indeed, the ancestor of all styles. For an author to write
as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak
as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at
the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

An obscure and vague manner of expression is always and everywhere a
very bad sign. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it comes from
vagueness of thought; and this again almost always means that there is
something radically wrong and incongruous about the thought itself--in
a word, that it is incorrect. When a right thought springs up in the
mind, it strives after expression and is not long in reaching it; for
clear thought easily finds words to fit it. If a man is capable of
thinking anything at all, he is also always able to express it
in clear, intelligible, and unambiguous terms. Those writers who
construct difficult, obscure, involved, and equivocal sentences, most
certainly do not know aright what it is that they want to say: they
have only a dull consciousness of it, which is still in the stage of
struggle to shape itself as thought. Often, indeed, their desire is to
conceal from themselves and others that they really have nothing at
all to say. They wish to appear to know what they do not know, to
think what they do not think, to say what they do not say. If a
man has some real communication to make, which will he choose--an
indistinct or a clear way of expressing himself? Even Quintilian
remarks that things which are said by a highly educated man are often
easier to understand and much clearer; and that the less educated
a man is, the more obscurely he will write--_plerumque accidit ut
faciliora sint ad intelligendum et lucidiora multo que a doctissimo
quoque dicuntur_.... _Erit ergo etiam obscurior quo quisque deterior_.

An author should avoid enigmatical phrases; he should know whether he
wants to say a thing or does not want to say it. It is this indecision
of style that makes so many writers insipid. The only case that offers
an exception to this rule arises when it is necessary to make a remark
that is in some way improper.

As exaggeration generally produces an effect th