September 4, 2018 (In-Class)

What is good prose style?

I'm going to be honest here by saying I'm not exactly sure what prose style is. It has come up before in other English classes that I have taken, but it's never been studied by myself. So, winging off of the collection of knowledge from my other courses, I'm going to say that good prose style is the format of writing that best matches the surrounding context. This would include punctuation, slang, vocabulary, etc.

An example I am thinking of would be an advertisement for a company (let's go with Menards). The text there is short & sweet, but powerful enough to inform & attract guests into buying something or learning more about that item. I think this would categorize itself into advertisement content and that type of content requires a special type of prose style. Item descriptions can't take up too much space on the page so editors have to choose the quickest (and most accurate) way to inform the reader of the item while at the same time being able to sell it to them, or rather make it worth it for the guest to come into the store and purchase the item.

With the above example, they're can't be room for any grammatical errors, which there aren't many cases where that would be okay. However, in this context, it is vital because that advertisement is representing the company and because the guest is most likely not already in the store, it would be difficult to get them there if the outgoing ad is riddled with poor writing.

I guess what I'm trying to say over all is that a good prose style depends on the situation. There are going to be some cases where sloppy writing is well received and other areas where it is not tolerated. Maybe I'm completely off on this question, but I think it's definitely something to consider when writing a document, no matter who it is for.