How I found out about this book
by Richard L. Weaver II, PhD
For me, writing was natural and easy. Throughout my school years my
mother would look over my reports, papers, and projects, and she would
make corrections in grammar and spelling. Most of my writing was
praised by my teachers, and I learned a great deal from their criticism
and evaluation. It was a teacher’s recommendation that allowed me into
an advanced-level English course in high school.
In college, after switching from a pre-medicine program to a speech
major, I decided to get a teaching degree just to give me something to
fall back on. Also, I knew that if I ever wanted to teach speech in
high school, I would undoubtedly be asked to teach an English course or
two as well; thus, I made English a minor as I proceeded to get a
Master’s Degree in speech at the University of Michigan.
There is a reason for all this background information. As I began my
Ph.D. program at Indiana University, I thought I was a good writer. I
took a topic for my dissertation from the University of Michigan — the
lyceum movement in Michigan — and I began writing a variety of chapters
on the topic as the final papers for a number of different courses I
took while completing my doctorate.
It wasn’t until I began writing my dissertation for my graduate advisor,
the late Dr. Robert Gunderson, that I came into contact with William
Strunk Jr. and E.B. White’s little book, The Elements of Style, 4th ed.
(Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2000). It was abundantly clear to
him that — with respect to my writing — there was an urgent and profound
need for the book.
I remember the moment well. After writing a chapter of the dissertation
for him, he called me into his office after a class session, and before
handing me the chapter with his comments on it, he carefully took from
his bookshelf a small, cream-colored book measuring just 7-inches long
and 4½- inches wide.
He paused after taking the book from the shelf, and he looked at it with
a great deal of reverence and consideration, then he slowly and
patiently looked me in the eye and said, “Are you familiar with this
book?”
He continued looking at me for an answer, but he already knew what it
would be.
I shrugged my shoulders and responded abruptly, “No.”
“Richard,” he said, not even waiting for my response, “I want you to
purchase this book at once, and before writing any other chapters for
me, I want you to read it, then read it again.”
I interjected briefly, “Okay, I would be happy to do that.”
But, I didn’t realize I had interrupted his train of thought, and he
continued speaking. “Richard, I want you to follow their rules precisely
in all your writing for me.”
Again, I thought he was finished, and I said, “Certainly. I will try to
do that.”
Dr. Gunderson continued, “In the future, Richard, I want you to accept
this little book,” and he paused just long enough to gently pat the book
he held in his left hand, with his right, “as your Bible. If Strunk and
White say it, don’t question it, just do it.”
Dr. Gunderson was a kind, gentle man — in his office and in the
classroom. There was, however, an exception to his kind gentleness, and
that was when he critiqued your writing.
I didn’t open the chapter he handed to me — the first one I had written
for him — until I left his office. It was a good thing I was sitting
down when I turned the first page. I couldn’t believe it. I had never
seen anything like it before. My knees went week, my breath came in
short spurts, my heart began thumping loudly, and I felt light headed.
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There was almost more of his writing on the page than mine, but the
thing that devastated me the most was the color: his comments were all
in red. The page was dripping in red, as if it was my blood seeping
slowly from my pores. I flipped through several more pages and the
hemorrhaging didn’t stop. I could hardly control myself. Thank
goodness I didn’t open the chapter while in his office. I was still
having difficulty catching my breath.
The point Gunderson made with his profuse comments — and no further
proof was necessary — was my need for Strunk and White’s book, The
Elements of Style.
I nearly ran to a bookstore on my way back to my apartment close to
campus, and I began reading the book at once — that very evening. I
felt quite comfortable with the first part of the book, “Elementary
Rules of Usage.” I knew, for example, that you form the possessive
singular of nouns by adding ‘s, that you enclose parenthetic expressions
between commas, and that you place a comma before a conjunction
introducing an independent clause. Out of the 11 elementary rules, the
one I found most useful is, “In a series of three or more terms with a
single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last.” The
book’s example is: red, white, and blue. The remaining seven rules, for
me, was a valuable review.
The second section, “Elementary Principles of Composition,” includes
another 11 items. The suggestions here will make any writing come
alive. One valuable insight for me was the comment, “Enormous blocks of
print look formidable to readers, who are often reluctant to tackle
them. Therefore, breaking long paragraphs in two, even if it is not
necessary to do so for sense, meaning, or logical development, is often
a visual help. But remember, too, that firing off many short paragraphs
in quick succession can be distracting.” It put decision making in my
hands!
The other four valuable insights from this section include, “Use the
active voice,” “Put statements in positive form,” “Use definite,
specific, concrete language,” and “Omit needless words.” You can easily
see from these four suggestions alone how writing can become dynamic,
lively, and exciting.
In the next section, “A Few Matters of Form,” the authors discuss
colloquialisms, exclamations, headings, hyphens, margins, numerals,
parentheses, quotations, references, syllabication, and titles. There
is excellent advice in this brief section.
Part 4 covers over 120 “Words and Expressions Commonly Misused,” and it
is just a guess, but I suspect every writer will find new and useful
advice on at least five or ten of these words and expressions.
If your goal is to become a writer then Part 5, “An Approach to Style
(With a list of reminders)” may be your most valuable section because it
contains, “advice drawn from a writer’s experience of writing.” This
section could be considered a list of rules, but the authors prefer to
call them “gentle reminders: they state what most of us know and at
times forget.” With these 21 reminders, writers will have at their
command all the essential tools for enhancing their ability to “reveal
something of their spirits, their habits, their capacities, and their
biases.” They will, in fact, strengthen their confidence, build their
reserve of tools, improve their ability, and secure their writing
style. That is, indeed, what effective communication is all about.
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I use this book every day!
by Richard L. Weaver II, PhD
Just to my left where I sit here at the computer and just above the
height of my left shoulder in a bookshelf full of reference works
including Webster’s Dictionary & Thesaurus, the Oxford American Writer’s
Thesaurus, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, David and Mary Crystal’s
Words on Words, Bergen and Cornelia Evans’s A Dictionary of Contemporary
Usage, and Theodore Bernstein’s The Careful Writer, and almost hidden
not because of its importance but because of its size, lies Strunk and
White’s The Elements of Style. Of all the reference works that have
most influenced my writing is this little book on style.
The original Elements of Style was a 43-page textbook written by William
Strunk Jr. in 1935 for his Cornell English class. It contained eight
rules of usage, ten rules of composition, some notes on miscellaneous
matters of form in writing (such as headings, numerals, and quotations),
and lists of commonly misused and misspelled words. It was a sparse
forty-three pages. After Strunk’s death in 1957, the book was revised
by his former student E.B. White. White had taken Strunk’s English 8
class in 1919 at Cornell. He wrote about the “little book” for the The
New Yorker, and it sparked so much attention and spurred so much
interest that he was asked to revise and update the 1935 edition so that
a new version could be published.
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White is known for his children’s books, including Charlotte’s Web and
Stuart Little, and his regular columns in The New Yorker. In addition,
he was a Pulitzer Prize winner. His elegant style shows through:
simple, precise, a paragon of clarity and good taste. For his revision,
he expanded on the original sections, added an additional section on
style, a forward, introduction, afterword, glossary, and index. From
his section on style, White writes, "With some writers style not only
reveals the spirit of the man but reveals his identity, as surely as
would his fingerprints."
Strunk and White’s Elements of Style was first published in 1959, and in
the intervening decades, this little book on language and its proper
usage has been forced-fed to countless high school students. My
introduction occurred as I was getting ready to write my Ph.D.
dissertation, and my advisor told me this book should become my writer’s
bible. He told me that writing is a bit like inviting someone to your
house. The writer is the host, the reader the guest, and you, the
writer, follow the etiquette because you want your readers to be more
comfortable, especially if you’re planning to serve them something they
might not be expecting.
To be sure, in The Elements of Style there is an abundance of sage
advice on matters of style, I fell in love with it because of its short
and pointed rules and injunctions such as “Make every word tell,” “Use
the active voice,” “Write in a way that comes naturally,” and “Avoid
fancy words.” It is those pithy phrases that served as a lifeboat to me
who, until that time, felt adrift in a perilous sea of split
infinitives, dangling participles, and weak and flabby prose.
The fundamental thesis of the book is that writing’s primary purpose is
to communicate ideas to the reader. Although that sounds like a truism,
with the decline of educational standards, replaced by concerns about
self-esteem and self-realization, and the influence of technology (e.g.,
e-mails and text messaging), writing has come to be focused less on the
reader than on the writer. Writing must be universally understandable
whether or not the writer feels fulfilled as an individual, and one of
the primary contributions that Strunk and White make is to maintain
writing’s communicative function.
There is a second reason for the importance of this book that,
coincidentally, also relates to communication. The book presupposes
that language should communicate in clear and concise fashion. So
often, language conceals or prevents thought, and that is precisely what
Strunk and White try to attack and defeat.
Their instruction on constructing paragraphs has been indelibly
inscribed on the muses who guide my writing: “As a rule, begin each
paragraph either with a sentence that suggests the topic or with a
sentence that helps the transition....” And, farther along in their
meditation on the paragraph, they write, “In general, remember that
paragraphing calls for a good eye as well as a logical mind. Enormous
blocks of print look formidable to readers, who are often reluctant to
tackle them. Therefore, breaking long paragraphs in two, even if it is
not necessary to do so for sense, meaning, or logical development, is
often a visual help. But remember, too, that firing off many short
paragraphs in quick succession can be distracting. Moderation and a
sense of order should be the main consideration in paragraphing.”
There is a crucial third reason why I am so devoted to this little
book. It is a congenial grammar book. The authors have an ear for the
way language evolves and changes. Strunk and White show good judgment
about the point at which writers might want to adopt or surrender to
neologisms and new usages. It is essential for writers to find a manual
with a loose interpretation of the whole concept of style. It is,
indeed, The Elements of Style that prompted me to hold the concept of
clarity on a higher plain than grammatical correctness.
This slender classic has sold over ten million copies, and 250,000 more
pour off the presses annually. It has influenced generations of
American students and writers. For me, the book is secure at my left
shoulder because it’s a book to which I return from time to time, the
way I periodically look at Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. I always
discover something new, a question that has been puzzling me, or learn a
principle of usage that I have been pretending to know, a pretense that
has resulted in inconsistency, and in the story of errors from which I
can only pray some saintly copy editor will save me. The book is hardly
comprehensive, and the word lists are somewhat idiosyncratic, and yet
its influence is undeniable.
For me, the key phrase of the book is: "All writing is communication.
Creative writing,” says White, “ is communication through revelation—it
is the Self escaping into the open."
Because of the pointed rules and directions, its fundamental thesis, its
emphasis on clarity and conciseness, and its service as a congenial
grammar book, it is the most important book of its kind ever written.
Nothing compares.
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