Elegant variation is the use of synonyms in speech or writing to avoid repeating the same word. It often arises from a belief that simple parallel structure is or harms euphony or compositional tone. Most modern Englishstyle guides criticize elegant variation and consider that it causes loss of clarity, muddled metaphor, and inadvertent humor. Henry Watson Fowler coined the term elegant variation for this phenomenon. It can be seen in journalism if word variation, such as the replacement of the word "fire" with "blaze" or "conflagration", draws attention to itself. It is considered particularly problematic in legal writing, scientific writing, and other technical writing, where the avoidance of ambiguity is essential. Alternatives to synonymy include repetition and the use of pro-forms.
"Inelegant variation"
in Garner's Modern American Usage proposes inelegant variation as a more appropriate name for the phenomenon, and asserts that, in coining the term elegant variation, Fowler was using elegant in a then-current pejorative sense of "excessively or pretentiously styled". Richard W. Bailey denies Garner's contention, suggesting that Fowler's use of elegant was a deliberate irony. Nevertheless, inelegant variation has been used by others, including Gerald Lebovits and Wayne Schiess.
In French, purists consider the rule of elegant variation essential for good style. A humorist imagined writing a news article about Gaston Defferre: "It's OK to say Defferre once, but not twice. So next you say the Mayor of Marseille. Then, the Minister of Planning. Then, the husband of Edmonde. Then, Gaston. Then, Gastounet and then... · Well, then you stop talking about him because you don't know what to call him next."
Examples
In The King's English, Fowler gives as an example this passage from The Times:
In The King's English, Fowler described a report of an art auction from the Westminster Gazette which, within twenty lines, described sales of pictures, using eleven synonyms for "sold for various sums" ; also, it is not clear which of these words implied different success at the sale.
Fowler also quoted: "At the sixth round, there were almost as many fellows shouting out 'Go it, Figs', as there were youths exclaiming 'Go it, Cuff'. — Thackeray." Were older men supporting Figs and teenagers supporting Cuff? Or not?
Among sub-editors at The Guardian, "gratuitous synonyms" are called "povs", an acronym of "popular orange vegetables"—a phrase that was removed from the draft of an article about carrots in the Liverpool Echo. Charles W. Morton similarly wrote of an "elongated yellow fruit", a presumed synonym of "banana" that was used in the Boston Evening Transcript.
Garner's Modern American Usage cites examples given by Morton, including "elongated yellow fruit" and others: billiard balls ; Bluebeard ; Easter-egg hunt ; milk ; oysters ; peanut ; songbird ; truck.
In a BBC TV report in March 2005: : "... he brought a satellite in... he broke down and carried it on donkeys... with his load on 35 mules...". "Mule" and "donkey" were used as elegant-variation synonyms, although they are different animals.
Another elegant variation nuisance can happen with dates: e.g., replacing "1947... 1963" with "1947... sixteen years later", which forces the reader to ferret back through the text for the previous date and then calculate the intended date. This can also cause ambiguity: "1947 sixteen years later twenty years later" may mean "1947 1963 1983" or "1947 1963 1967".
The Daily Telegraph wrote on 20 June 1943: "The King was refused admission to an R.A.F. station in North Africa by a sergeant who demanded identification papers. The N.C.O., however, quickly recognized his Majesty and permitted him to enter." It is not clear whether the sergeant and the N.C.O. are the same man.
Confusion may result in cases which look like elegant variation but are not. For example:
* A newspaper sub-editor who was accustomed to replacing game with match to avoid repetition may make an error with tennis, where a game is not the same as a match. Similarly, in cricket a draw is not the same as a tie.
* In a local election for councillors, "Party A won" is not the same as "Party B lost", even if no third party had a chance of winning, because there is also the "hung condition", where no party has 50% or more of the seats.
An example in classical literature is in Virgil's Georgics iii 151–519, describing ploughing with two yoked oxen; Virgil calls one of the two oxen "taurus and the other "iuvencum ; was the ploughman ploughing with a bullock and an entire bull? Or is it merely elegant variation?
