The Reader Over Your Shoulder Quotes

“There should be two main objects in ordinary prose writing: to convey a message, and to include in it nothing that will distract the reader’s attention or check his habitual pace of reading—he should feel that he is seated at ease in a taxi, not riding a temperamental horse through traffic.”
― Robert Graves, The Reader Over Your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose

“A third general cause of confusion has been timidity. A fear of feeling definitely committed to any statement that might cause trouble or inconvenience seems to haunt almost everyone in Britain who holds a public position, however unimportant.”
― Robert Graves, The Reader Over Your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose

“We suggest that whenever anyone sits down to write he should imagine a crowd of his prospective readers (rather than a grammarian in cap and gown) looking over his shoulder.”
― Robert Graves, The Reader Over Your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose

“There is no natural safeguard in the English language against the faults of haste, distraction, timidity, dividedness of mind, modesty. English does not run on its own rails, like French, with a simply managed mechanism of knobs and levers, so that any army officer or provincial mayor can always, at a minute’s notice, glide into a graceful speech in celebration of any local or national event, however unexpected. The fact is that English has altogether too many resources for the ordinary person, and nobody holds it against him if he speaks or writes badly. The only English dictionary with any pretension to completeness as a collection of literary precedents, the Oxford English Dictionary, is of the size and price of an encyclopedia; and pocket-dictionaries do not distinguish sufficiently between shades of meaning in closely associated words: for example, between the adjectives ‘silvery’, ‘silvern’, ‘silver’, ‘silvered’, ‘argent’, ‘argentine’, ‘argentic’, ‘argentous’. Just as all practising lawyers have ready access to a complete legal library, so all professional writers (and every other writer who can afford it) should possess or have ready access to the big Oxford English Dictionary. But how many trouble about the real meanings of words? Most of them are content to rub along with a Thesaurus—which lumps words together in groups of so-called synonyms, without definitions—and an octavo dictionary. One would not expect a barrister to prepare a complicated insurance or testamentary case with only Everyman’s Handy Guide to the Law to help him; and there are very few books which one can write decently without consulting at every few pages a dictionary of at least two quarto volumes—Webster’s, or the shorter Oxford English Dictionary—to make sure of a word’s antecedents and meaning.”
― Robert Graves, The Reader Over Your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose

“To haste as a cause of confusion must be added distraction. Normally, except for those who work in the early hours of the morning, or who live up a long country lane, it is almost impossible to avoid being disturbed by incidental noises of traffic, industry, schools, and the wireless, or by the telephone, or by callers. Few people can immediately switch their minds from one complicated subject to another, and presently switch back again, without losing something in the process. Most business men and journalists claim that they are accustomed to noise and can ‘work through anything’. But this does not mean that they are not affected by noise: part of the brain must be employed in sorting out the noises and discounting them. The intense concentration achieved when one writes in complete silence, security and leisure, with the mental senses cognizant of every possible aspect of the theme as it develops—this was always rare and is now rarer than ever. Modern conditions of living encourage habitual distraction and, though there are still opportunities for comparative quiet, most people feel that they are not really alive unless they are in close touch with their fellow men—and close touch involves constant disturbance. Hart Crane, a leading American poet of the Nineteen-Twenties, decided that he could not write his best except with a radio or victrola playing jazz at him and street-noises coming up through the open window. He considered that distraction was the chief principle of modern living; he cultivated it, distractedly, and committed suicide in his early thirties.”
― Robert Graves, The Reader Over Your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose

“It is not that modern people are less intelligent than their grandparents: only that, being busier, they are less careful. They must learn to take short cuts, skimming through the columns of a newspaper, flicking over the pages of a book or magazine, deciding at each new paragraph or page whether to read it either attentively or cursorily, or whether to let it go unread. There is a running commentary in the mind. For example, in reading a Life of Napoleon: ‘page 9 … yes, he is still talking about Napoleon’s childhood and the romantic scenery of Corsica … something about James Boswell and Corsican independence … tradition of banditry … now back to the family origins again … wait a minute … no … his mother … more about her … yes … French Revolution … page 24, more about the French Revolution … still more … page 31, not interested … ah … Chapter 2, now he’s at the military school … I can begin here … but oughtn’t to waste time over this early part … in the artillery, was he? … but when do we get to the Italian campaign?’ And even when the reader does get to the Italian compaign and settles down comfortably to the story, he seldom reads a sentence through, word by word. Usually, he takes it in either with a single comprehensive glance as he would a stream or a field of cows that he was passing in the train, or with a series of glances, four or five words to a glance. And unless he has some special reason for studying the narrative closely, or is in an unusually industrious mood, he will not trouble about any tactical and geographical niceties of the campaign that are not presented with lively emphasis and perfect clarity. And, more serious still from the author’s point of view, he will not stop when the eye is checked by some obscurity or fancifulness of language, but will leave the point unresolved and pass on. If there are many such obstructions he will skim over them until his eye alights on a clear passage again.”
― Robert Graves, The Reader Over Your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose

“In demonstrating how not to use metaphors, they quote a line from a Graham Greene novel: “Kay Rimmer sat with her head in her hands and her eyes on the floor.” Their reply: “And her teeth on the mantelpiece?”
― Robert Graves, The Reader Over Your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose

“A fourth cause of confusion has been dividedness of mind. When people have to write from a point of view which is not really their own, they are apt to betray this by hedging, blustering, an uneasy choice of words, a syntactical looseness. We mean, for example, Cabinet Ministers expressing the view of a Cabinet from which they have often considered resigning; priests, assailed by honest doubt, who must continue to enunciate church dogma; Communists uneasily following the party-line; officials relaying to the public some order from headquarters of which they disapprove; critics borrowing aesthetic standards not properly understood.”
― Robert Graves, The Reader Over Your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose

“No writer should fail to reckon with modern reading habits. As each year until the fall of France more and more reading matter was obtruded on people’s notice, they had to protect themselves in some way from having their whole leisure time engrossed by it. How much of the averagely interesting book is actually read nowadays by the averagely interested person? It can only be a small part, and of that small part a good deal is lost because, though the eye goes through the motions of reading, the mind does not necessarily register the sense. Even when a book is being read with the most literal attention—a fair example is proof-reading by the author, his friends and members of the publishing firm and printing house—scores of errors pass by undetected.3”
― Robert Graves, The Reader Over Your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose

“The old catch of asking someone to repeat the verse: Tobacco, Tobacco, Tobacco! When you’re sick it makes you well, And it makes you well when you’re sick, Tobacco, Tobacco, Tobacco! is the point here. Nine intelligent people out of ten will reverse the order of the words in the third line, to change the repetition into an antithesis: And when you’re well it makes you sick. We do not suggest that writers should indulge busy readers by writing down to them—giving them nothing but short messages simply phrased; but only that sentences and paragraphs should follow one another so easily and inevitably, and with such economy of phrase, that a reader will have no encouragement to skip.”
― Robert Graves, The Reader Over Your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose