How Hemingway learned to write like Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway wrote for the Kansas City Star from October 1917 to April 1918, and there he learned the elements of his style.

As Star columnist Jim Fisher has written, Hemingway's style grew from:

``The Star Copy Style'' sheet, a single, galley-sized page, which contained 110 rules governing Star prose. Hemingway later would recall the sheet as something ``they gave you to study when you went to work and after that you were just as responsible for having learned it as after you've had the articles of war read to you.''

Hemingway would always remember the style sheet and its core admonition: ``Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative.''

``Those were the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing,'' Hemingway said in 1940. ``I've never forgotten them. No man with any talent, who feels and writes truly about the thing he is trying to say, can fail to write well if he abides with them.''

The ``Copy Style'' sheet was a bible, containing eminently practical rules. Some others:

• Never use old slang. Such words as stunt, cut out, got his goat, come across, sit up and take notice, put one over, have no use after their use has become common. Slang to be enjoyable must be fresh.
• Eliminate every superfluous word as Funeral services will be at 2 o'clock Tuesday, not The funeral services will be held at the hour of 2 o'clock Tuesday. Avoid the use of adjectives, especially such extravagant ones as splendid, gorgeous, grand, magnificent, etc.
• Don't say, He had his leg cut off in an accident. He wouldn't have had it done for anything.
• He was eager to go, not anxious to go. You are anxious about a friend who is ill.
• He died of heart disease, not heart failure -- everybody dies of heart failure.''