When you write, do you work at avoiding the "second mention" and strive to achieve what Fowler mocked as the "cheap ornament" of "elegant variation"? - Hallo friend USA IN NEWS, In the article you read this time with the title When you write, do you work at avoiding the "second mention" and strive to achieve what Fowler mocked as the "cheap ornament" of "elegant variation"?, we have prepared well for this article you read and download the information therein. hopefully fill posts Article HOT, Article NEWS, we write this you can understand. Well, happy reading.

Title : When you write, do you work at avoiding the "second mention" and strive to achieve what Fowler mocked as the "cheap ornament" of "elegant variation"?
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When you write, do you work at avoiding the "second mention" and strive to achieve what Fowler mocked as the "cheap ornament" of "elegant variation"?

You know what I mean? What Charles W. Morton called it "the 'elongated yellow fruit' school of writing." You've already written "banana," so you have to write something other than "banana."

I'm reading "The Twitter Account That Collects Awkward, Amusing Writing/When writers strive for elegant variations of the same word, the anonymous Second Mentions account takes note" by Naaman Zhou (The New Yorker). Here's the Twitter account: Second Mentions.

I remember laughing over a specific example of this faux fastidiousness half a century ago: A young woman, having written "small house," felt the need, on second mention, to go with "petite edifice."

Zhou writes:

Take, for example, Adele, who is frequently “the singer Adele” on first mention, and then maybe “the Tottenham soul-pop titan” on second mention. Cheese, if you are saying “cheese” too much, can be “the popular dairy product.” A “pair of armadillos,” who, for some reason, were put on a diet? “The oval-shaped duo.”... [T]he Times of London [referred to] “tea” as “the bitter brown infusion.” The Guardian [called] a fox who ran onto a soccer field... “the four-legged interloper.”...

The second mentions often border on poetry. The moon, described by the Mirror, as “the tide-changing rock.” The Sun describing a sex doll as a “lust vessel.”...

Now that I know a name for this — "second mentions" — I think I might be able to find these elegant variations more delightful than annoying. And I have been peeved at this cheap ornament, so common in everyday newspaper writing. But they are funny foibles. Just humans trying to write. Now, I can think, oh, no, they're doing that!

ADDED: Here is "Chapter III: Airs and Graces/ELEGANT VARIATION" from H.W. Fowler's "King’s English" (1908). 

WE include under this head all substitutions of one word for another for the sake of variety, and some miscellaneous examples will be found at the end of the section. But we are chiefly concerned with what may be called pronominal variation, in which the word avoided is either a noun or its obvious pronoun substitute. The use of pronouns is itself a form of variation, designed to avoid ungainly repetition; and we are only going one step further when, instead of either the original noun or the pronoun, we use some new equivalent. 'Mr. Gladstone', for instance, having already become 'he,' presently appears as 'that statesman'. Variation of this kind is often necessary in practice; so often, that it should never be admitted except when it is necessary. Many writers of the present day abound in types of variation that are not justified by expediency, and have consequently the air of cheap ornament. It is impossible to lay down hard and fast rules, but two general principles may be suggested: (1) Variation should take place only when there is some awkwardness, such as ambiguity or noticeable monotony, in the word avoided. (2) The substitute should be of a purely pronominal character, a substitute and nothing more; there should be no killing of two birds with one stone. Even when these two requirements are satisfied, the variation is often worse, because more noticeable, than the monotony it is designed to avoid.

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