I have been reading books on writing style. My teachers at Beechwood Park Preparatory School for Boys taught me to avoid writing in the first person whenever possible, so up with that opener one shall not put, though of course, nowadays only the Queen uses the Nob’s Pronoun. Begin again.

This reader has been reading books on writing style. But that is a tautology: all readers read, and all writing has style, good or bad. Worse, I have blundered into the bog of elegant variation. Henry Fowler, coining elegant variation in The King’s English (1906), filed it under “Airs and Graces,” as a kind of unmanly vice. Beechwood Park Preparatory School for Boys was a hotbed of unmanly vices, but inelegant variation was not one of them. I was taught that elegant variety was a mark of learning and taste, and a necessary technique for avoiding confusion. Begin again, again.

This reader has been perusing books on writing style. But This reader is now archaic. And perusing is mock-archaic, used by the sort of wag who prefers quaffing ale to drinking beer. Anyway, what do I mean by perusing? Even the most attentive critic rarely peruses books in the etymological sense, for the medieval Latin perusitare means to use up or to wear out. Am I confessing to perusing in the current sense of casual inspection or skimming, a usage that we all recognize, but which is proscribed by the Oxford American