Hello, Writing Friends!
Welcome back to my new series, Best Books About Writing! I scoured the internet to dig up the very best of them, and believe me, it has given me much food for thought. Through this series, I hope to identify which items will be of use to different types of writers and projects. With that in mind, I now turn to a book focusing on the technical aspects of crafting a text:
Title: The Elements of Style
Author: William Strunk and E.B. White
Purpose: To help authors and editors to brush up on “plain English style”
Audience: College students, writers, and editors, anyone working in a neutral style
Publication Information: 4th Edition. Pearson: New York, 1999.
Considered to be the “bible” of American English usage in colleges across the United States, Elements of Style includes information on many common writing errors such as comma misplacement, misused and misspelled words, and lack of parallelism. In all honesty, with its no-nonsense description of grammar issues, it is quite dull to read straight through. Fortunately, the table of contents makes it easy to locate information quickly, so it is convenient to use as a reference book. In each section the book lists the rule, then it immediately provides examples of correct usage, making it easy for the reader to follow.
The first chapter, “Elementary Rules of Usage,” covers small issues such as punctuation, and sentence structure, whereas the second chapter, “Elementary Principles of Composition” focuses on larger parts of a text such as paper/chapter structure, paragraph unity, topic sentences, etc. Chapter three, “A Few Matters of Form,” discusses formatting issues such as numbers, quotations, and manuscript formatting. Lastly, chapters 3 and 4 cover commonly mistaken and commonly misspelled words. To help the reader to brush up on the basics, the book also includes review exercises to accompany Ch. 2-3.
nfortunately, there are some areas where the book’s usefulness is a bit limited. Since it was originally published in 1918, the English language has evolved a great deal, making some of Strunk’s original suggestions less applicable to current American English usage. His posthumous collaborator, E.B. White (If that name sounds familiar, it’s because he is the author of Charlotte’s Web, too), revised and expanded the book for the 1959 edition published by McMillan. This was the version that I used in college, and it is still the most recent edition. That was over 60 years ago, so there are a few mismatches between the rules presented and acceptable usage in 2024. For example, he warns of using the word “feature,” saying that it is a “hackneyed word” like “factor” and that neither word adds anything to a sentence. However, since 1959, both of these words have become common in contemporary English.
Despite this flaw, the book is still very helpful for those who use formal or professional language, are completing their college rhetoric requirements, or who want to brush up on grammar, punctuation, and style rules. If you are writing fiction or creative non-fiction or using an informal style, this book may not be applicable to your current project. Next month’s A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, by George Saunders, might be more useful for more artistic language.
