the earnest-vs-grandiose formula
less-long self-contained sentences that sound more earnest and pubescent, like somebody earnestly struggling toward truth instead of flecking your forehead with spittle as he ranted grandiosely
Context
A stray but exact register-formula, surfacing inside Struck's term-paper con. Sanitizing a source's "foam-flecked megalograndiosity," he reaches for the distinction the whole theme runs on: earnest prose is "somebody earnestly struggling toward truth," ironic/grandiose bombast is "flecking you." Plainness-as-sincerity vs. ornamentation-as-evasion, stated as a copy-editing intuition.