Style rules enable skillful departure only after being mastered

Evidence

Rulebooks can fossilize thinking on questions of style. In a sense, that is their purpose and their virtue. But that virtue can turn into a vice if users stop thinking about the reasons for stylistic decisions. Undoubtedly every user of this book will encounter a situation in which the better course is to depart from a rule. But the acknowledgment of this fact hardly means that the rules can be tossed aside: you need to know the rules before you can decide when to depart from them. Only then is there any hope of using the language skillfully. — Bryan A. Garner, Jeff Newman, Tiger Jackson, The Redbook, 20

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Rules that always yield to rule-free optimization cease to function as rules — Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer, 222; Subordination stops being degrading once framed as impersonal technique — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 764

Broader Connections

• Subordination stops being degrading once framed as impersonal technique #expands (0.72) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 764