Andrew Ferguson quotes the great jurist in The Justice as Writer:
. . . no construction should call attention to its own grammatical correctness. Finding no other formulation that could make the point in quite the way I wanted, I decided to be ungrammatical instead of pedantic.
A good rule, within limits. The forward momentum of a sentence may be be impeded if you do not split an infinitive or use a contraction. Your precision may distract; your use of 'one' may strike the reader as precious. Writing 'of which' instead of 'whose' may mark you as pedantic even if you have correct usage and logic on your side. We sometimes do well to thumb our noses at the strictures of the school marms while yet reverencing the old gals in our memories. But now my style is about to slide into the sentimental as my mind drifts back to the dear old ladies who taught me and my mates to read and write. So I take myself in hand, a bit too late perhaps.
A caveat, though, anent Scalia's rule. As the culture declines and writing with it, you may not be able to help your constructions' calling attention to their grammatical correctness. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with standing for what is correct among barbarians.
Two sentence fragments in a row. Nothing wrong with that with that either, in moderation.
'Anent,' 'caveat'? Who am I trying to impress? Well, not a barbarian like you, ignorant of his own tongue, whose literary intake is a Twitter feed.
Ferguson's "For a writer like Scalia, who prized the precise and the particular (and seldom succumbed to soupy alliteration) . . . ." both illustrates alliteration and puts me in mind of my own excessively alliterative style.
Laying down rules of style, however, is a risky game. It is easy to fall into one's own traps, as does the great Orwell.
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