Decorum

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company

Decorum

Decorum: The appropriateness of an element of an artistic or literary work, such as style or tone, to its particular circumstance or to the composition as a whole. For Example... If a piece of literary work is meant to be very posh and elegant than the characters, and the diction they would use would also be very posh and classy. Shakespeare was known to go against this as sometimes even characters that were meant to be classy within his works would use colloquialisms It refers to a classical way of writing where everything within a piece of work was similar in style, diction, and tone to the work as a whole.

If a piece of literary work fits to its standard decorum, then all of its components fit the mood, style, and overall feeling of the work. If a play is about homeless people, they arent going to speak like Ye Olde English Aristocrats, and its not going to be set in a Victorian mansion.