I’ve recently ascended (temporarily) to the role of Editor-in-Chief at my Day Job, which means mostly that I spend a lot of time wading through business language and trying to hammer it into something like comprehensible English.  To encourage my edit-ees, I’ve been assembling a list of famous and helpful essays about good prose style.  Politics and the English Language is a good example.  One of my favorites in this genre for sheer snark and hilarity is Twain’s essay, Cooper’s Prose Style, on faults in the fiction of James Fenimore Cooper (the guy who wrote Last of the Mohicans), so, after re-reading it a couple times, I put it on the list.

Last night, though, as I edited my manuscript, at every other sentence I heard the mocking drawl of  Mark Twain’s ghost: “It is truly remarkable that Mister Gladstone’s characters can make such a deduction without any basis in logic or human reason.”   And so forth.  At least he was called me Mister Gladstone – a little respect from a restless spirit always makes one’s evening sweeter.

Vita may be brevis, but sometimes Ars feels especially Longa.