stylistic:tone
Prose

As noted above, prose generally makes far less use of the aesthetic qualities of language than poetry. However, developments in modern literature, including free verse and prose poetry have tended to blur the differences, and poet T.S. Eliot suggested that while "the distinction between verse and prose is clear, the distinction between poetry and prose is obscure". There are verse novels, a type of narrative poetry in which a novel-length narrative is told through the medium of poetry rather than prose. Eugene Onegin (1831) by Alexander Pushkin is the most famous example.

On the historical development of prose, Richard Graff notes that, in the case of ancient Greece, "recent scholarship has emphasized the fact that formal prose was a comparatively late development, an 'invention' properly associated with the classical period ".

Latin was a major influence on the development of prose in many European countries. Especially important was the great Roman orator Cicero. It was the lingua franca among literate Europeans until quite recent times, and the great works of Descartes (1596 – 1650), Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626), and Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 1677) were published in Latin. Among the last important books written primarily in Latin prose were the works of Swedenborg (d. 1772), Linnaeus (d. 1778), Euler (d. 1783), Gauss (d. 1855), and Isaac Newton (d. 1727).