Why Writing Style Matters

Stephen Pyne:

Style is not merely decorative or ornamental, any more than are feathers on a bird. Style performs work. Whatever its loveliness or ostentation, it is what allows the creatures to fly, to attract mates, to hide from predators, to be what it is. Those feathers, moreover, are only as good as the wings they fit to, and the beak and claws to which they are indirectly joined, and all the rest. The parts have to connect; they have to work as a whole. Getting them together is what makes good writing.

—Stephen J. Pyne, Voice and Vision: A Guide to Writing History and Other Serious Nonfiction (Harvard University Press, 2009), 10.