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Strunk and White’s
by Stephen Blake Mettee
About the time Henry
Ford was streamlining his assembly-line, William Strunk
Jr., a professor at Cornell University, felt a need to simplify the
convoluted rules and principles of English writing. He wrote and
self-published—they euphemistically termed self-published books
"private printings" in those days—a guide which he called The
Elements of Style and made it required reading for his English
classes.
Direct and
delightful, this book is perhaps, the most prose-enhancing tool available
to writers. When I speak at writer’s conferences, I suggest that it be
read—cover to cover—at least once a year. (For you cynics out there, yes,
my publishing company, Quill Driver Books, does publish books on
writing—excellent books, I might add—but, unfortunately, this tiny gem is
not among them.)
The first edition was
affectionately known about the Cornell campus as "the little
book." Strunk himself was responsible for
this. He would sardonically emphasize the word "little" when
speaking of it, as if to contrast its length with its significance.
The book consisted of
seven rules of usage, eleven principles of composition, a chapter he
titled "A Few Matters of Form," and a list of commonly misused
words and expressions. It was forty-three pages long.
In 1957, E. B. White,
who took Strunk’s English 8 class in 1919 and
is himself author of much that is to be admired, including Charlotte’s
Web, was commissioned by the publishing company Macmillan to revise
it. White wrote of this undertaking: "Somewhat audaciously, and in
an attempt to give my publisher his money’s worth, I added a chapter
called ‘An Approach to Style’ setting forth my own prejudices, my notions
of error, my articles of faith."
White’s audacity paid
off. The Elements of Style, although still less than 100 pages in
length, has a depth and usefulness that it would not without White’s
endeavors. Today, the book is often simply referred to as "Strunk and White’s."
While following all
of the book’s sage advice will likely prove worthwhile, employing one of Strunk’s original eleven principles of composition,
"Use the active voice," might be the most important step novice
writers can take to elevate their own prose. The use of the active voice
adds boldness and vigor to one’s writing.
Basically, using the
active voice—as opposed to the passive voice—means replacing the "to
be" verb in all it’s guises (is, were, has been, could be, etc.)
with a more descriptive, dynamic verb. For instance,
There were scores
of children playing in the park.
is considerably less
vigorous than:
Children scampered
all over the park.
Strunk and White, proponents of brevity in writing,
point out that strengthening a sentence by switching to the active voice
usually achieves the added benefit of making the sentence shorter, as it
did in the example above.
Another way to
increase brevity and to strengthen a sentence is to use precise, explicit
language. Strunk and White put it this way:
"Prefer the specific to the general, the definite to the vague, the
concrete to the abstract."
An example the book
gives is to replace "He showed satisfaction as he took possession of
his well-earned reward." with "He grinned as he pocketed the
coin." Half the words and a more vivid image.
Strunk and White cover an astounding amount of ground
in these few pages—often with a bit of humor. White in his "An
approach to style," writes: "Avoid the use of qualifiers. Rather,
very, little, pretty—these are the leeches that infest the pond of
prose, sucking the blood of words. The constant use of the adjective little
(except to indicate size) is particularly debilitating; we should all try
to do a little better, we should all be very watchful of this rule, for
it is a rather important one and we are pretty sure to violate it now and
then."
Did you notice Strunk’s spirited use of metaphor? His use metaphor
and humor help to make this passage engaging as well as informative. As Strunk knew, good writing makes good reading.
The decades-old
guidance in Strunk and White’s, from
"avoid fancy words" to "do not explain too much" is
as timely today as it was when Henry Ford offered any color the customer
wanted, "as long as it’s black." Read The Elements of Style
on Tuesday and watch your writing soar on Wednesday.
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Stephen
Blake Mettee, publisher, Quill Driver Books/Word Dancer Press, Inc. is
the editor of The Portable
Writers’ Conference, a Writer’s Digest Book Club Selection, and
the author of The Fast-Track Course
on How to Write a Nonfiction Book
Proposal.
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