elegant variation

Elegant variation is a phrase coined by Henry Watson Fowler to refer to the unnecessary use of synonyms to mean a single thing. In Modern English Usage (1926) he wrote:

"It is the second-rate writers, those intent rather on expressing themselves prettily than on conveying their meaning clearly, & still more those whose notions of style are based on a few misleading rules of thumb, that are chiefly open to the allurements of elegant variation. [...] The fatal influence [...] is the advice given to young writers never to use the same word twice in a sentence — or within 20 lines or other limit."

When Fowler coined the term "elegant variation", in the 1920s, the word elegant had a pejorative connotation of precious over-refinement, which it has since lost. Bryan Garner, in The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style, unambiguously renamed the term: inelegant variation.

Examples

In The King's English (1908), Fowler gives as one of his examples this passage from The Times:

• "The Emperor received yesterday and to-day General Baron von Beck... It may therefore be assumed with some confidence that the terms of a feasible solution are maturing themselves in His Majesty's mind and may form the basis of further negotiations with Hungarian party leaders when the Monarch goes again to Budapest."

Fowler objected to this passage because The Emperor, His Majesty, and the Monarch all refer to the same person: "the effect", he pointed out in Modern English Usage, "is to set readers wondering what the significance of the change is, only to conclude that there is none."

Elegant variation is still common in modern journalism, where, for example, a "fire" often becomes a "blaze" or a "conflagration" with no clear justification, and it is considered an especial fault in legal, scientific, and technical writing, where avoiding ambiguity is important.

• One of the commonly cited examples of the potential negative effect of elegant variation is the use of "elongated yellow fruit" as an elegant variation of "banana".
• Another bad example in a newspaper was "the red-headed non-driver" to avoid repeating the name "Mrs. Thatcher".
• Fowler also quoted: "At the sixth round, there were almost as many fellows shouting out 'Go it, Figs', as there were youths exclaiming 'Go it, Cuff'. — Thackeray." Were older men supporting Figs and teenagers supporting Cuff? Or not?
• Fowler described an article in the Westminster Gazette which, in 20 lines describing a sale of pictures, used eleven apparent synonyms for 'sold for x amount of money'; some of those synonyms may have implied varying success at the sale, some not.
• In a BBC TV report in March 2005: "Kabul had just fallen ... he brought a satellite [communications unit] in ... (the road was impassable to wheeled traffic, so) he broke [the unit] down and carried it on donkeys ... with his load on 35 mules ...": with "mule" and "donkey" used as elegant-variation synonyms although they are different sorts of animals.
• Another elegant variation nuisance can happen with dates: e.g. replacing "1947 [...] 1963" by "1947 [...] sixteen years later", forcing the reader to ferret back through the text for the previous date, and then do arithmetic to find the date. This can also cause ambiguity: "1947 [...] sixteen years later [...] twenty years later" may mean "1947 [...] 1963 [...] 1983" or "1947 [...] 1963 [...] 1967".

Elegant variation in poetry

This sort of variation in poetry is sometimes caused by ad-hoc needs to find a word that fits the poem's scansion and rhyme pattern at each place where the topic occurs.

Languages other than English

Note that a degree of variation likely to be found excessive in English prose may be considered good writing style in another language, for example French or Sanskrit.

See also

• Pleonasm

Other meanings

• The Elegant Variation is a literary weblog.

External links

• Elegant Variation — Fowler's discussion of elegant variation in The King's English (1908)

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