Style is the manner in which a writer chooses to present content to an audience in order to achieve the desired effect. While some experts define style as a writer’s distinctive form of expression—or voice—style goes beyond that. A writer can change styles depending on the nature of the publication, the audience, the topic, the goal that the writer seeks to achieve, and a host of other variables. Journalists and technical writers, for example, usually make a conscious effort to keep their personality out of their writing in order to establish an objective viewpoint. Copywriters want to sell something and may try to do so by evoking an emotional response from their audience.
Style shouldn’t be a mechanical structure superimposed on the content. Style should develop organically along with the content so the final written product serves whatever purpose the author has in mind. The style you use should help you convey information, describe a character, report a story, persuade readers to think or act a certain way, or achieve some other purpose.
Feel the pace shift within the following paragraph from Jack London’s short story “A Piece of Steak,” as the description transitions from Sandel, a spirited young boxer, to his opponent, Tom King, who’s more experienced and methodical:
Sandel was in and out, here, there, and everywhere, light-footed and eager-hearted, a living wonder of white flesh and stinging muscle that wove itself into a dazzling fabric of attack, slipping and leaping like a flying shuttle from action to action through a thousand actions, all of them centred upon the destruction of Tom King, who stood between him and fortune. And Tom King patiently endured. He knew his business, and he knew Youth now that Youth was no longer his. There was nothing to do till the other lost some of his steam, was his thought, and he grinned to himself as he deliberately ducked so as to receive a heavy blow on the top of his head. It was a wicked thing to do, yet eminently fair according to the rules of the boxing game. A man was supposed to take care of his own knuckles, and, if he insisted on hitting an opponent on the top of the head, he did so at his own peril.
While your goal may not be to write a short story or a novel, you still need to be sensitive to the subtle messages that different styles convey. If you’re writing a letter of complaint to a company, for example, you want the tone to be assertive but respectful. If you were writing a letter of apology to a customer, on the other hand, you’d want to sound courteous and accommodating.