Affectation in style is more or less the same thing as affectation in language, with the difference that what is written should naturally be given a bit more care than what is spoken, because one is assumed to think long and hard about it when writing it, from which it follows that what is considered affectation in language sometimes is not so in style. Affectation in style is to affectation in language what the affectation of a great Lord is to that of an ordinary man. Occasionally, I have heard some people being praised for speaking like a book : if what these people say were written, it could be tolerable; however, it seems to me that it is a great flaw to speak like that. It is almost a sure sign of lacking in affection and imagination: what a pity for those who never make slips in speaking. One could say that those people are always reading and never speaking. Interestingly, these smooth talkers are usually very bad writers, the reason for which is quite simple: either they write as they would speak, convinced that they speak as one should write – and so, in this case an infinite number of lapses and inapt expressions escape them, despite having them, in speech; or that, to some extent, they put the same care in writing as they do in speaking; and in this case, the affectation of their style is, if one could say so, proportional to that of their language, and consequently, ridiculous.