"By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; and by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches." ~Proverbs 24:3-4
The Elements of Style
E.B. White is best known for his three children's books: Stuart Little (1945), Charlotte's Web (1952), and The Trumpet of the Swan (1970). White was noted for his crisp, graceful style, and author James Thurber once wrote, “No one can write a sentence like White.” In 1957, E.B. White wrote an essay for the New Yorker about his former English professor, Will Strunk, which inspired a reissue of the original 1918 edition of Strunk’s grammatical usage and style text, The Elements of Style. This led to the 1959 edition in which White revised his essay on Will Strunk for the introduction, updated much of Strunk's advice and examples, and added a chapter titled “An Approach to Style.”
The revised edition, which came to be known simply as “Strunk and White,” combines the experience of a language scholar and classroom teacher with the expertise of a professional writer. The meeting of these two minds, Strunk and White (Strunk died in 1946; White in 1985), proved serendipitous. The Elements of Style has sold millions of copies, and today this small book is still a classic reference for students and writers. White revised the book again in 1972 and 1979. A modernized 4th edition appeared in 1999 (with minor revisions made anonymously, such as eliminating masculine gender “bias”). An illustrated edition was published in 2005 (not very practical but makes a good gift book). The 50th Anniversary Edition includes a brief overview of the book's illustrious history, but other than that the content is the same as the 1999 edition. I’ve always been partial to the 3rd edition myself, because that's the one I used in my AP English class. I still refer to my old copy even though I have two new copies!
Used extensively by professional writers as well as high school and college students, The Elements of Style is a must-have book for any conscientious writer. This fundamental work on the use of the English language is concise, direct, and comprehensive. There are no endless pages of explanations - just simple reminders about how to present the written word effectively. The book includes an overview of conventional rules and principles of composition (commas, conjunctions, independent clauses, sentences, paragraphs, etc.), as well as words and expressions commonly misused (too many people have not learned these to this day!). If you are serious about wanting to improve your written communication skills, if only for personal reasons, you should have The Elements of Style on your desk for ready reference.
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“Strunk and White's gigantic little book must be the most readable advice on writing ever written. Side by side with Roget, Shakespeare, the Bible, and a dictionary, it's an essential for every writer's shelf.” ~X.J. Kennedy (poet, anthologist, textbook author)
“From time to time people say to me: ‘Your work is so well crafted.’ At first I took this as a compliment, but eventually I began to think: ‘No, no, no! My work is not well crafted! I simply write according to the rules and procedures I was taught, the rules and procedures whose observation was noteworthy in all the good writers I read!’ (I recently read two books and the copy on a record jacket, both from the 1960s…. people don't even know, anymore, what it is to write like this, they don't even see how simply good, solid, and elegant this writing is. I was left with the melancholy feeling that I was visiting a lost world.) It disheartens me to say it, but most of what I read, nowadays, is pedestrian at best, sloppy at midpoint, and atrocious at worst. Newspaper and magazine articles are riddled with infelicities and outright grammatical errors, and clichés, buzzwords, and hackneyed expressions are everywhere; I am routinely left pining for that lost world of the Fifties and Sixties, all the while asking myself, what went wrong?” ~Stanford Pritchard, fiction writer
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Did you know...? E.B. White’s favorite book was Walden by Henry David Thoreau, about which he said: “Walden is the only book I own, although there are some others unclaimed on my shelves. Every man, I think, reads one book in his life, and this one is mine. It is not the best book I ever encountered, perhaps, but it is for me the handiest, and I keep it about me in much the same way one carries a handkerchief - for relief in moments of defluxion or despair.” (Quoted in “The New Yorker,” May 23, 1953)
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