Writing for young people demands elegance and precision of phrase, which these authors have in abundance.
For its incandescence, its precision of phrase and description, and its cross-cultural significance, The Meursault Investigation is an instant classic.
While he was still in Cape Town, his taste moved from Hopkins and Keats and Shakespeare to Pope, "the cruel precision of his phrasing," and, even better because wilder, Swift; he feels "fully in accord" with Pound and Eliot's attempt to bring into English "the astringency of the French".
The precision of the phrase startled her.
We used to have to use our memories or imaginations to appreciate the terrible precision of the phrase.
I knew Bernardine for more than 25 years, and the purity of her thought and the precision of her phrase-making, whether in conversation or in writing, were matchless.
With impeccable tuning, timing and precision of color and phrasing, the Sherry Quartet, four young players coached by the cellist Fred Sherry, shows the way through a labyrinth in which one essential melodic and harmonic idea is endlessly rediscovered in new forms.
McCarthy's detractors criticise her for concentrating on the outward ephemera of her characters' lives rather than giving them psychological depth, but in The Group her ability to convey a personality with the precision of a single phrase is deployed to devastating effect.
To take your eye off the principal dancers in Balanchine's Divertimento No 15, set to Mozart, is to be ravished by the precision-cut phrasing of the corps.
Recently Mr. Hutcherson has favored a tighter range of expression, focusing on melody and phrasing with the precision of a good singer.
