SOURCE: "You, Too, Can Write the Casual Style," in Harper's Magazine, Vol. 207, No. 1241, October, 1953, pp. 87-9.

Whyte is an American author who wrote several studies of American business, including The Organization Man (1956). In the following excerpt, he provides a satirical study of the prose style employed by various New Yorker writers.

A revolution has taken place in American prose. No longer the short huffs and puffs, the unqualified word, the crude gusto of the declarative sentence. Today the fashion is to write casually.

The Casual Style is not exactly new. Originated in the early Twenties, it has been refined and improved and refined again by a relatively small band of writers, principally for the New Yorker, until now their mannerisms have become standards of sophistication. Everybody is trying to join the club. Newspaper columnists have forsaken the beloved metaphors of the sports page for the Casual Style, and...