How does one account for authoritative advice on writing style? While styles of writing vary according to each writer's own preference some guidelines are inevitable to enhance writing clearer for readers. William Strunk's The Elements of Styles has been loved and considered to be one of authoritative manual for writers on this regard. Now deceased former English professor of Cornell University, Strunk provided writers eleven rules of usage (chapter one) and eleven principles of composition (chapter two) along with few other tips and reminders in the rest of the book. Thus Strunk's central claim for clarity of writing comes from concision and precision. However since it has been more than fifty years it was first published, should Strunk's assertions considered to be still valid? Has it praised with sacrifice of creativity? Beginning with a brief summary this review will examine several critical issues addressed in the book such as "should passive voice indicative verb be avoided at all cost?"
[Summary]
"Vigorous writing is concise...., but that every word tell" E.B. White who became the coauthor who expanded Strunk's work called this as "master[ly] Strunkian elaboration" (xv). The authors of Element of Style not only obsessed with words but also pleaded writers not to waste any word. Their calling of writers to concise and precise writing has been appealing for half century. They begin Style from specific rules of guidance to broad and thematic traits for composition. Readers learn about how to use commas for listings, how to write dates and common abbreviations, use of restrictive clauses, when to break clauses--and how to break them--, why one should not use `s (apostrophe s) when related to Moses and Jesus but use it in other cases even if the word ends in -s.
Then in the second chapter the authors toned down a little dealing with principles of English composition. Unlike the first chapter, which originally had seven rules but expanded into eleven, this chapter preserved its original eleven principles from Strunk. He suggested principles that many of them now became a kind of norm for most academic writings: begin a paragraph with a topic sentence; use positive language; use definite, specific, and concrete language if available; avoid a successive loose construction; group conjunctions in similar tone; keep related word together, and also keep the same tense throughout if possible; push your emphasis toward the end of a sentence.
In the next three chapters White tried to catch time by supplementing recent and relevant materials to consider for modern writers. Few matters of form (chapter 3) is a culmination of writing tips that can only be found in fragments in various sources. Chapter four "Misused Words and Expressions" so useful that even Grammar Girl often makes reference to some of them. What could have been lacking for a clear writing in 1950s has been supplemented by these last three chapters through White's revision, and even critical readers cannot deny their usefulness to find information in one book.
[Critical Evaluation]
The unseen success of Style motivated many similar works to follow. Probably three more well-known classics followed its success would be John R. Trimble's Writing with Style, William Zinsser's On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction, and Joseph M. Williams' (or Williams's) Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace. Tremble began stressing that writing is a simple conversation between author and his reader. He emphasized, unless Strunk, importance of personal characteristic and creative style of the author which readers appreciate more than rigid style. Giving more authority to readership seemed to continue in the field of giving advice for writing, as if some writers were unhappy with Strunk, with a new book from Zinsser writing is something that cannot be contained in rules and principles but endless craftsmanship. Nevertheless, next two decades from 1980s toward the beginning of the new millennium more students became incompetent in their writing styles and such a tendency called for more strict guidelines. Another huge success of Style by Joseph Williams questions if writing is another discipline to be learned and followed under certain equations like mathematics or it is a privileged realm of some people naturally know how to write well.
Strunk and other authors do not necessarily compete each other to push across their thesis, but writers--who are main readers of their works--still struggle to find clear advice on their writings. It is only a matter of degree whether this confusion would be greater without works like Strunk or even with it. Overall in many ways Strunk's work cannot be avoided or neglected for any serious writer, because he not only proposed a specific way to a better writing. It was a bold--if not audacious--thesis that he brought into discussion in the first place. It has been useful to students, publishers, editors, and other professional writers, and now with lack of literary competency of new generation of students its need seems to be imperative again. With wide spread of Internet usage someone, like Strunk, must tell students "do's and don'ts" for their poor writings for Internet totally substituted personalized jargons with words with concision and precision.
That said, I think that few things suggested in the book should be scrutinized more critically such as use of the first person pronoun (e.g., "I" in this sentence), passive voice indicative verb (e.g., "be scrutinized"), gender-neutral pronouns, and splitting of infinitives. Especially the use of an active voice verb seems imperative in writing for it is preferred and suggested by all writers discussed above. Strunk and White asserted, "The active voice is usually more direct and vigorous than the passive." Their central claim for Style seems to cohere with this point as well. However, if readers seems to deserve more elaborated description about the passive, because these authors are not arguing for all writings but from general perspective. Such as writing for the field of science, legal, politics, history and any disciplines require unbiased and rational fact-report should allow passive voice, if not even prefer it, to be equal option for composition. And (by the way this would be another strike for common rules of writing to begin with a conjunction "and") the Bible has this strong passive called theological passive that whenever the agent is God the Scripture uses passive even omitting the subject. For example, the beatitudes in Matthew 5 are all in this theological passive yet no one ever complains it weaker than active. Readers tend to consider it warranted that Strunk's Style lists absolute rules, but authors do not seem to profess that. Therefore, readers should read Style critically just like any other books they read thus.
Conclusion
"Little book" as Style is first called even through revisions it remains little in size, but its impact and challenge have grown to be undeniable in many excellent writings. The unexpected harmony and partnership of Strunk and White's have fulfilled their central claim successfully, namely clarity of writing still comes from concision and precision. However, it is readers's (or readers') duty to read everything, even Style critically, and henceforth rather than considering their rules and principles as rigid laws they should follow them as accompanying guidelines for their writings. And that is what I do whenever I write something with desire to fully craft for it to be recognized with excellence.
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Be aware: Issues with formatting/editing make this book useless
Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2023
Major print issues make this book unusable. Randomly incorrect or missing punctuation, spacing, and styling completely undermine the purpose of this book - which is to teach the reader about grammar and styling - ironic and frustrating. These issues exist from cover to cover.It's so bad that this should be considered a fake product - it's not what the authors wrote. I'm disappointed I waited until after the return period to read it, or it would have gone back immediately.I've attached two pictures that contain examples of these issues.1. Back cover has many formatting issues, including a lack of spaces between words and punctuation, misalignment in bullet points, etc. Not a deal breaker, but not a good look for a book about writing and styling.2. The second page of content (after the intro) contains at least two formatting/grammar mistakes that confused me until I compared them to a PDF version of the book I found online and finally understood there are just some major issues with the printing of the book.
Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2023
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