The Elements of Style

Posted on 16 August 2017 by William Strunk Jr.

This style manual offers practical advice on improving writing skills Throughout, the emphasis is on promoting a plain English style This little book can help you communicateeffectively by showing you how to enliven your sentences. Read The Elements of Style – kino-fada.fr This book is good for the following things 1 Propping up a short table leg2 Lining a bird cage3 Building a fire4 Using as a coaster for cold drinksI devoted some of my grammar thesis to criticizing this book, and it was time well spent Geoff Nunberg may have said it best The weird thing is to see rules like these passed down as traditional linguistic wisdom Take that edict that you ought to say 10 persons rather than...I remember, my Freshman year, sitting in the Music Building lounge waiting for my next class when Maryanne came crashing in, with an appropriate amount of chaos, announcing to all Oh crap, I can t find my Strunk and White Everyone else in the room apparently knew what she was talking about, but I sat with a blank stare A few weeks latter my required English 101 professor insisted we hit the bookstore and buy The Elements of Style We were to treat it like the Holy Grail of grammar, carry i I remember, my Freshman year, sitting in the Music Building lounge waiting for my next class when Maryanne came crashing in, with an appropriate amount of chaos, announcing to all Oh crap, I can t find my Strunk and White Everyone else in the room apparently knew what she was talking about, but I sat with a blank stare A few weeks latter my required English 101 professor insisted we hit the bookstore and buy The Elements of Style We were to treat it like the Holy Grail of grammar, carry it with us at all times, sleep with it, and consider it our eternal faithful lover This would become the first of many copies of Strunk White that have come and gone in my life I think at one time I actually had four copies Maryanne, made a similar pontification in the sa...There must be some structure to language We must agree on some aspects of it, and creating rules and definitions around those mutual agreements helps to foster intelligibility throughout the language.Likewise, this agreement to abide by these rules means that we can teach communication This does not mean only in the case of children, but it certainly simplifies it for them This also means that writers can continue to learn, to interact, and to write understand...In her charming essay, Insert a Carrot , Anne Fadiman describes a trait shared by everyone in her family a heightened sensitivity to the flaws in other people s writing The Fadimans all belong to that tribe whose members cannot read without simultaneously copy editing When dining out, they amuse each other by pointing out typos on the menu It might seem obnoxious, but really they just can t help it If you re blessed with the copy editing gene you can t just switch it off I have the same In her charming essay, Insert a Carrot , Anne Fadiman describes a trait shared by everyone in her family a heightened sensitivity to the flaws in other people s writing The Fadimans all belong to that tribe whose members cannot read without simultaneously copy editing When dining out, they amuse each other by pointing out typos on the menu It might seem obnoxious, but really they just can t help it If you re blessed with the copy editing gene you can t just switch it off I have the same problem When I read, typographical and grammatical errors leap off the page, assailing my eyeballs, demanding to be noticed A distraction that I am incapable of ignoring, they hijack my attention and diminish my respect for the author I want my own writing to be free of such distractions it should be forceful and persu...The gold standard Noneed be said than to quote Mr Strunk s thoughts under the headline Omit Needless Words 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 reader make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell And every word of Mr The gold standard Noneed be said than to quote Mr Strunk s thoughts under the headline Omit Needless Words Vigorous writing is concise A sentence shoul...Write to day, to night, to morrow but not together with hyphen.Write any one, every one, some one, some time except the sense of formerly as two words.Thanking you in advance This sounds as if the write...Rating 5 of fiveThe essential guide to HOW to write How much better to start with a guide to achieving an effect you re looking for.It is an old observation that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric , says professor Strunk The old fart was probably referring to his students at Cornell University The Elements of Style is indeed a dusty textbook 1918 , but still widely in use today It aims at providing a set of rules and tips on how to write properly, if not elegantly Stephen King, in On Writing A Memoir of the Craft, strongly recommends this book to any aspiring fiction writer.In truth, such rules It is an old observation that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric , says professor Strunk The old fart was probably referring to his students at Cornell University The Elements of Style is indeed a dust...It is very good for what it does, which is advise on how to write clearly and concisely But generations of writers have completely misunderstood its purpose and used it as a Bible of Good Writing It s not Linguist Geoffrey Pullum has famously gone on something of a crusade against The Elements of Style, and while he makes good points, it may be a little unfair to blame SW for the fact that writers don t realize the original authors were addressing an audience of barely literate college s It is very good for what it does, which is advise on how to write clearly and concisely But generations of writers have completely misunderstood its purpose an...OBVIOUSLY I NEED MORE APPRECIATION FOR GRAMMAR But to be honest I ve never been much of a grammar enthusiast At all Just stalk my blog for any amount of time and you ll figure out that typos are my trademark XD But still, despite the fact that this is drier than hardtack and less interesting than dirt, IT IS 100% HELPFUL Like why did no one tell me before now that it s memento not momento I feel betrayed by autocorrect tbh Next time I have a question about grammar HAHAHAhaha let s OBVIOUSLY I NEED MORE APPRECIATION FOR GRAMMAR But to be honest I ve never been much of a grammar enthusiast At all Just stalk my blog for any amount of time and you ll figure out that typos are my trademark XD But still, despite the fact that this is drier than hardtack and less interesting than dirt, IT IS 100% HELPFUL Like why did no one tell me before now that it s memento not momento I feel betrayed by autocorrect tbh Next time I have a question about grammar HAHAHAhaha let s just pretend I ask mys...

English
16 August 2017

William Strunk Jr.