Style Revisited

I am still trying to create that "perfect" definition of style for my paper. This go-round replaces sprawl with a few nominalizations, but it is getting more concise.

Style is developed through a writer's effective selection and arrangement of ideas utilizing the appropriate technology to communicate effectively with a specific audience.

Still not happy, but working on it!

Refer to high, middle, and low styles with what you read/worked on from the edited collection.

Lanham's chapter "High, Medium, and Low Styles" proved simultaneously enlightening and frustrating (at least for someone longing for just one concrete definition). As with much of what we have read this semester, Lanham provides guidelines, general rules, to assist readers in determining categories of style. He does provide a somewhat concrete list of characteristics of high and low style on page 164; however, the application of these traits is not nearly as neat as the columns in which they appear often causing the reader to struggle deciding which category a prose piece should fit. From Lanham's viewpoint, the fact that prose doesn't always fall easily into one category or the other may be good as he states that "it is generally agreed that the middle is the essential prose style. . . " (183).

The criteria Lanham puts forth to assess these three style categories provides a rough rubric with which to determine levels of style, but an equally important consideration is who applies the rubric. If we consider the characteristics of high and low style and strive for "the essential prose style," how do we recognize it when we see it? Lanham, again, provides subjective criteria for identifying middle style: "The middleness of the middle style will lie, for such a reader, in the expectedness of the style. . . . We must talk about the social substance that surrounds it, the historical pattern of expectation which renders it transparent" (185). So style can clearly change, or how we view the style, based on the audience and their situation.

If I apply Lanham's criteria to Whithaus's "ePortfolio" article from our collection, I would have to place his style between middle and high. He has clearly written his article expecting an academic audience with familiarity with writing programs. Although his writing style is comfortable, I wouldn't say that it is transparent. I know I am reading an academic article; there is no getting "lulled" into the content. The presentation is clearly formal, but cannot be characterized as artificial. I believe he is self-conscious in that he presents himself as an academician, yet the vocabulary and sentence structures are "natural" for someone in that role. He also approaches the topic from an emotional perspective in that he argues for the benefits of ePortfolios not only in writing programs but in the assessment of general education and upper division programs as well. He is obviously, then, writing for a public audience hoping for their approval or even adoption of his program. Whithaus, overall, does a good job in predicting his audience and presenting his argument.