The Simplified blog

Over the past few months, I’ve been dipping into Virginia Tufte’s ‘Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style’. The more I dip, the more I like.

Virginia Tufte is Edward Tufte’s wife and she does for syntax what he does for information design. She deconstructs grammar and looks at it functionally, trying to give the principles and rules that result in language sounding poetic or prosaic or elegant or clumsy or cynical or rude, or however we want it to sound.

These days it’s fashionable to talk about 'good' or 'bad' or meaningful or wasteful words (what cliché really irritates you?), but to me, what holds the words together is far more interesting. If you agree, try 'Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style’ by Virginia Tufte, Graphics Press LLC, 2006.