Substance Over Style?

          Or is it the other way around?  Everyone always wants to believe that what they have to say counts more than the way they say it.  That what they write is more important than their spelling.  But the simple and observable truth of the matter is, that if a person writes badly, or perhaps merely blandly, his writing will be lost forever.  No one will be engaged by the ideas if he can’t get by the sentences, which is exactly what Oscar Wilde meant when he wrote:  "The truth is entirely and absolutely a matter of style."

            I used to ask poetry students if the poem gives the theme its force, or if the theme gives the poem its force?  It’s the same question, after all, substance vs. style—and it has the same answer.  It is the poem, with its charged language and rhythmic backbone, that gives the theme its force.  No poem is ever remembered for its message if that message happens to be clouded in sloppy, sappy verse.  In other words, it doesn’t matter if the poem is about God, motherhood, or Superman’s crusade against evil—if the poem is so badly put together that readers uniformly hate it, the poem will not be read.  And there goes the message—the substance—right down the drain.

            And so in that sense, what you have to say is less important than how you say it.  And those who figure out how to phrase their ideas will get them into print, while those who never figure it out, are fated to wonder all through their lives why their superior ideas never can find a publisher (except of course in the world of blogs and self-publishing).  It’s really not that complicated:  it’s style over substance every time.