Using Official Style to Discuss Children's Literature

It may not seem necessary to use official style when analyzing equestrian fiction for young girls, but Ellen Singleton does exactly that in her contribution to the book, Gender and Equestrian Sport. Singleton’s section focuses on literature starring young females and horses analyzes the genre and attempts to explain why these books weren’t as popular as books about boys’ adventures. This book is by multiple authors and contains a range of ideas about the equestrians and gender. Most of the contributions are from professors and they are all written in official style. 

The section I am analyzing starts out with an introduction paragraph that scored a 9.00 on the Flesch Reading Ease scale: 

In the current era of concern among educators for the reading habits and skills of boys (Ontario Ministry of Education 2004), it is interesting to note that vintage adventure and sport book series for boys were published, marketed and sold in much greater quantities than similar books for girls. This leads to the question of whether boys’ series were more popular than girls’ because the topics were more amenable to masculine reading interests or whether young girls also read ‘books for boys’ because they offered a vicarious adventurousness and physicality not often found, or at least not often found without feminine equivocation, in books for girls. Furthermore, the idealised images of masculine gender displayed in these stories were not only more congruent with the physically challenging adventures portrayed in the stories but also less problematic for both young male and young female read- ers to envision (op de Beeck 2005).
(https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-94-007-6824-6#about)

This paragraph is only three sentences long and averages 48 words per sentence. It is a strong example of official style, with words such as “physicality” and “amenable” in places that could have used simpler words. It uses passive voice and a long wind-up to reach the point: that fiction for boys is more popular due to societal preferences and stereotypes about gender. These sentences are long and complex, with the message hidden at the end. The paragraph is only the introduction, with one main idea, and it takes a long time to reach that idea, with a lot of complicated words and sentence structure thrown in.

The argument is not easy to find, but it is what Singleton’s entire section is about. The message could get across better if it wasn’t written in official style. The entire book may need to change, but the message would be more effective if it were more readable. Reading the first paragraph out loud isn’t easy- that means more concentration goes into trying to read the words rather than thinking about the message the author is trying to convey, which makes rereading necessary. 

The Gunning Fog Index states that this text would take a 25.68th grade reading level to easily understand it. This means that not everybody who is interested in this topic would be able to read this text. It is free to find online, but it is not accessible in the sense that it is difficult to read and requires a high reading level. Many people are interested in the equestrian sport and have experience with the kind of literature that Singleton is discussing and they wouldn’t be able to read this text, so they wouldn’t be able to think critically about it, like Singleton wants. It is not accessible enough for the average person, who reads at a seventh grade level. Singleton’s message won’t be able to circulate very much; it has 11k downloads, but only 54 citations and 14 mentions. This means people are able to find and access this book, but they aren’t able to use it. This is likely because it’s in official style and many people are unable to understand it. 

There could be various reasons for writing this piece in official style. It is part of a book that was edited by educators, all talking about various gender issues in the equestrian community. Every section of the book is written in official style, keeping the voice and tone consistent. It is also aimed at an educated audience that will be able to understand both the equestrian sport and different gender dynamics that may be referenced. Official style is common among educators and educated people, which may be the reason this entire book is written in official style. 

It could also be written in official style because that’s the standard for texts like this. As I stated earlier, it is aimed at an educated audience, so the authors would have no problem with writing in official style. Since official style is the standard for texts like this, it is probably what the authors are used to. Writing in official style might not have even been a conscious decision or one that they discussed. 

This raises further questions, such as how do people decide whether or not to use official style? Is the official style always necessary in academic settings?  Could this be written without official style and keep the same message that the authors wanted? These questions don’t have definitive answers, but official style still remains common in many journals and articles. 

I think this article is representative of other academic articles written in official style. The sentences are long and it takes a while to get to the point. These articles use academic jargon that makes it hard to understand, unless somebody has a vast knowledge of both the equestrian sport and literature. Writing this without official style would get the message across in a much clearer way and would allow more people to read and understand this.

Kira Nerat