The first canon, of course, is that style should have _Distinction_. Distinction is a quality much easier to attain than it looks. It consists, on the face of it, in the selection of peculiar words and their arrangement in an odd and perplexing order, and the objection is commonly raised that such irregularities cannot be rapidly acquired. Thus the Chaplain of Barford, preaching upon style last Holy Week, remarked “there is a natural tendency in stating some useless and empty thing to express oneself in a common or vulgar manner.” That is quite true, but it is a tendency which can easily be corrected, and I think that that sentence I have just quoted throws a flood of light on the reverend gentleman’s own deficiencies. Of course no writer is expected to write or even to speak in this astonishing fashion, but what is easier than to go over one’s work and strike out ordinary words? There should be no hesitation as to what to put in their place. Halliwell’s “Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words” will give one all the material one may require. Thus “lettick” is charming Rutlandshire for “decayed” or “putrescent,” and “swinking” is a very good alternative for “working.” It is found in Piers Plowman. It is very easy to draw up a list of such unusual words, each corresponding with some ordinary one, and to pin it up where it will meet your eye. In all this matter prose follows very much the same rules as were discovered and laid down for verse on page 86. The second canon of style is that it should be _obscure_, universally and without exception. The disturbance of the natural order of words to which I have just alluded is a great aid, but it is not by any means the only way to achieve the result. One should also on occasion use several negatives one after the other, and the sly correction of punctuation is very useful. I have known a fortune to be made by the omission of a full stop, and a comma put right in between a noun and its adjective was the beginning of Daniel Witton’s reputation. A foreign word misspelt is also very useful. Still more useful is some allusion to some unimportant historical person or event of which your reader cannot possibly have heard. As to the practice, which has recently grown up, of writing only when one is drunk, or of introducing plain lies into every sentence, they are quite unworthy of the stylist properly so called, and can never permanently add to one’s reputation. The third canon of style is the _occasional omission_ of a verb or of the predicate. Nothing is more agreeably surprising, and nothing more effective. I have known an honest retired major-general, while reading a novel in his club, to stop puzzling at one place for an hour or more in his bewilderment at this delightful trick, and for years after he would exclaim with admiration at the style of the writer.