Elements of Style

The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White today is often taken for granted, almost lost in the libraries of most writers, but it still offers specific help and is a helpful reference tool.

William Strunk Jr., an English professor at Cornell University, had the book privately printed in 1918 to help his students with grammar. Often referred to as that “little book,” The Elements of Style originally was 43 pages long and sold for 25 cents. It was published by Harcourt in 1920. 

Original

Later, author E. B. White was commissioned in 1957 by Macmillan Publishing Co. to update the book, so it was available to the general public. It was titled Strunk and White Elements of Style.

He wrote that he could almost hear his professor giving commands about writing, such as “be concise,” omit needless words,” and “use the active voice.”

 One of Strunk’s former students, White is known for writing Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, and a column for The New Yorker. He was commissioned in 1957 by Macmillan Publishing Co. to update the book, so it was available to the general public.

White wrote that he could almost hear his professor giving commands about writing, such as “be concise,” omit needless words,” and “use the active voice.”

In 2011, Time named it one of the 100 best and most influential books written on English.

The Elements of Style offers lots of good advice and is still important today. It offers a good review of basics. Sometimes it is fun to just browse through it and find words misused or unnecessary. It can remind us of little rules we may have forgotten, even after years of writing.

A bit of humor – Dorothy Parker was supposed to have said, “If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

One of the first blogs I wrote in 2012 was about The Elements of Style. That blog shared information from two books written about that little book. Each author had a different view. You can check out their thoughts in the blog I wrote in 2012.

• Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style by Mark Garvey. I noted that he might have been slightly obsessed, but agreed that it was a must-have book.
• Spunk & Bite: A Writer’s Guide to Punchier, More Engaging Language & Style, Arthur Plotnik, gives reasons why he thinks Strunk & White is too rigid for today’s changing world.

As I wrote back then: “Isn’t it great that we have access to such variety.” We have more information from which we can make up our own mind about how much we want to use from the various books and other writing advice.

Besides enjoying reading of these two books, I was thrilled to get a comment from Arthur Plotnik saying “It's always inspiriting to know of a balanced, thoughtful reading of my book, especially in relation to the iconic "The Elements of Style." Thank you, Jo. You blog spunkily and with bite. ---Art Plotnik

What an inspiring comment. Whether you ask a question, offer additional information, or just want to keep in touch.

That Little Book

Recently I read Stylize: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style by Mark Garvey. He writes that he may be obsessive about the book. I think that is an understatement. He is definitely obsessed with that little book. Obviously he was impressed with the book and must have done a lot of research, evident by the detailed history.

I was surprised to find myself continuing to read, and enjoy, this book about a book.  Garvey aroused my curiosity in the history of William Strunk Jr., a professor at Cornell University and his former student, E. B. White, writer for The New Yorker and author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little.

Information about the book written to help students and sold for 25 cents at Cornell and White’s involvement in the various editions with MacMillan editor Jack Case kept me reading. I was bored with some of the excerpts and quotes from other authors throughout the middle of the book.  There were just too many.

I’ve had my copy of Strunk & White, Third Edition, as long as I can remember, referring to it occasionally, but I didn’t realize it had such an interesting history, nor that it was so controversial. Writers seem to love it or hate it, praise it or bash it.

Arthur Plotnik’s book, Spunk & Bite: A writers guide to punchier, more engaging language & style, gives reasons why he thinks Strunk & White is too rigid for today’s changing world. Although he admits he does go back to The Elements of Style to review sensible rules, his opinions of strict rules comes through in the title of Chapter One, “E. B. Whitewashed.”

Spunk & Bite offers “A Little Light Unstrunktion,” discussing flexibility, freshness, texture, force and form. “With some ten million copies rooted on as many reference shelves, Strunk and White has become the ivy (if not the kudzu) on our great walls of clarity and correctness.”  Later in that chapter he writes that both Strunk and White knew that bending the rules “can give writing its distinction, its edge, its very style.” I agree.

I am enjoying the look at different approaches to writing offered by Plotnik. Although, I’m only half finished the book, I had to check out the last chapter, Contemporaneity.

Plotkin discusses excess and standing out from the crowd – to go for broke – whether you win or lose, you learn and can survive. I enjoyed this section: “What is it that the protagonist of Philip Roth’s American Pastoral declares about writing in general? ‘As pathological phenomena go, it doesn’t completely wreck your life.’ Spunky.”

Isn’t it great that we have access to such variety. We can refer to Strunk & White and then add some spunk and bite to our writing.