THE MINISTRY OF HIGHER AND SECONDARY SPECIAL EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN

THE UZBEK STATE WORLD LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY

II ENGLISH PHILOLOGY FACULTY

ENGLISH STYLISTICS DEPARTMENT

COURSE PAPER

on

PECULIARITIES OF PROSE STYLE

Written by the student of

__________________________

SCIENTIFIC ADVISER

______________________________

TASHKENT 2011

PLAN

 

INTRODUCTION

STYLISTICS AS A SCIENCE

BASIC PROSE STYLE

1. Write in the Active Voice

2. Avoid Nominalizations

3. Express Parallel Ideas in Parallel Grammatical Form

4. Place the Emphatic Words at the End of the Sentence

5. Express Statements in Positive Form

6. Vary Sentence Patterns

7. Choose Your Words Carefully

8. Avoid Overusing Word Modifiers

9. Clarify the Logical Relationships between Your Ideas

10. Prune Deadwood

11. Avoid Redundancy

12. Use Metaphor to Illustrate

BASIC PUNCTUATION AND MECHANICS

1. Commas

2. Semicolons

3. Colons

4. Dashes

5. Parentheses

6. Ellipsis Dots

7. Hyphens

8. Apostrophes

9. Italics

10. Titles

11. Numbers

12. Quotation Marks

13. Punctuating Quotations

14. Introducing Indented Quotations, Vertical Lists, and Formulas

15. Punctuating Vertical Lists

16. Question Marks

17. Exclamation Points

18. Multiple Punctuation

CONCLUSION

THE LIST OF THE USED LITERATURE

INTRODUCTION

 

This pamphlet is designed to introduce you to, or remind you of, the basic principles of prose style and mechanics. The Prose Style Section describes twelve basic principles of good prose style and illustrates most of these principles with examples. Since most writers and editors agree about the importance of these twelve basic principles, I have drawn from a wide variety of sources. However, I would especially recommend two texts: The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White and Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity & Grace by Joseph Williams.

All twelve principles described in the style section above are based on one overriding principle—that the essence of good writing is rewriting. You may attend to some of these principles spontaneously when you compose your first draft, but stylistic considerations become more deliberate concerns when you work on second, third, and fourth drafts. Remember that good writing is hard work, and as Samuel Johnson said, "What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure."

The Basic Punctuation and Mechanics Section of the pamphlet presents rules that govern the approximately fifty most common problems with punctuation and mechanics. Most of these rules are illustrated with examples, and many are cross-referenced with other rules with which they are frequently confused. This section is based primarily on The Associated Press Stylebook and The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition, generally considered the definitive reference on questions of punctuation and mechanics.

 

STYLISTICS AS A SCIENCE

 

Treatises devoted to the study of style can be found as early as Demetrius's On Style. But most pre-twentieth-century discussions appear as secondary components of rhetorical and grammatical analyses or in general studies of literature and literary language. The appearance of stylistics as a semiautonomous discipline is a modern phenomenon, an ongoing development in linguistic description that is closely tied to the similar rise of literary criticism and linguistics as academic subjects and departments. Modern stylistics, in general, draws much of its analytical power from the analytical methods and descriptive intentions of linguistics, while modern literary stylistics, in particular, draws upon that area and adds to it the interpretive goals of modern literary criticism. In both cases, the use of linguistic methodology has allowed stylistics to move beyond earlier normative and prescriptive descriptions of "correct" styles to a fuller analysis of language itself and the purposes to which language regularly is put[1].

Whatever the limits of previous approaches to style, or the difficulties that have arisen from the practical application of linguistic methods to stylistic analysis, the desire to begin with a set of well-defined terms and procedures lies at the core of the initial formation of stylistics as a discipline. While all versions of literary stylistics have dedicated themselves to the study and interpretation of literary texts, it was the growing importance of European historical linguistics during the mid-nineteenth century that produced the most easily recognized component of early modern stylistics: a deeply rooted concern with formal linguistic description of literary language. The methodological benefits that stylistics gained by uniting literary interpretation and linguistic analysis were matched by institutional gains as well[2]. Historical and general linguistics were well-established academic disciplines at the turn of the twentieth century, and stylistics could expect to benefit from that status. The use of linguistic procedures thus offered stylistics both an affinity with an established discipline and the possibility of founding the description and interpretation of style upon the bedrock of science. ............