The Elements of Style
by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White
These days, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find people who write well. Similarly, it is difficult to find resources instructing such people in the right way to write. More than half a century after it was first published, Strunk and White’s classic is still an excellent resource for writers and non-writers alike.
The Elements of Style is simply written, but covers a wide variety of topics: punctuation is covered in detail, as well as trifling matters such as line spacing, margins, and titles. Strunk provides many comparisons between correct and incorrect English; and not only these comparisons but also his prose is often amusing. A set of basic rules is the meat of the book, but there is also a list of words and phrases to be avoided, and White has added an “Approach to Style” that will be helpful to both novelists and business writers.
Perhaps one of the most useful, and definitely one of the most Strunkian, of the rules is Rule 17: Omit Needless Words. Strunk begins it with a paragraph the likes of which are seldom seen in modern writing; “sixty-three words that could change the world,” White says in his introduction.
“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subject only in outline, but that every word tell.”
Strunk himself, as White’s English professor at Cornell University, thought that this rule was the most important one of all, and followed it perfectly, omitting every needless word he came across. White says in the introduction, “In the days when I was sitting in his class, he omitted so many needless words, and omitted them so forcibly and with such eagerness and obvious relish, that he often seemed in the position of having shortchanged himself – a man left with nothing more to say yet time to fill, a radio prophet who had outdistanced the clock. Will Strunk got out of this predicament by a simple trick: he uttered every sentence three times. When he delivered his oration on brevity to the class, he leaned forward over his desk, grasped his coat lapels in his hands, and, in a husky, conspiratorial voice, said, ‘Rule Seventeen. Omit needless words! Omit needless words! Omit needless words!’”
And omit them he did when he authored his manuscript: although a short book, The Elements of Style is a good book, and shouldn’t be shunned simply because of its age or length. Concise, witty, and to the point, it says far more in its eighty pages than its modern competitors say in their hundreds. This paperback volume proudly bears on its cover a retail prices of five dollars and ninety-five cents – a bargain, considering the value it has to anybody. Whether or not you already think you write well, you can certainly learn from this book.
