When it comes to literary style, the commonplace wisdom of composition classrooms, newsrooms, and editorial offices has long been that less is more.
Students are taught that the best prose is that which eschews ornamentation and rhetorical flourish. But what if sometimes more is more?
In “Praise of Purple Prose” playfully and cheekily contests a century worth of convention that rejects the baroque and byzantine as “purple prose,” making the case that fun and joy in language can be as important as concision and comprehension.
Part style guide and part manifesto, the book rewrites the rules on writing.
