"Professor Strunk was a positive man. His book contains rules of grammar phrased as direct orders."

On this day in 1959 as you may already know, The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White was published by the MacMillan Publishing Company. To this day the college students that read The Elements of Style learn how to properly utilize; a semicolon, dashes, colons and the serial comma. Thinking about it, the prose of none of these students was perfect: but with hard work their writing will be great!

You would anticipate such improvement when the book in question is regarded as being the best guide to direct and/or concise writing ever written. An especially meaningful example of directness comes from the noted prose stylist, Herbert Spencer, who in his not ironically named Philosophy of Style wrote about compelling examples:

In proportion as the manners, customs, and amusements of a nation are cruel and barbarous, the regulations of its penal code will be severe.

There is no doubt but that this second quotation is superior:

In proportion as men delight in battles, bullfights, and combats of gladiators, will they punish by hanging, burning, and the rack.

Spencer is a man who knows the proper insertion of the particular for expressive purposes is a subject with which all good writers should be familiar. The Elements of Style is both a great book and not tedious to read---but one must watch his or her step lest they depersonalize their prose for the foreseeable future.

Which is possible because the truth is, some of the advice they give has the effect of flattening prose: as when, for example, you are told not to use the adverb "tangledly" because no one, at least no one they know (or knew, depending on whether Strunk, White or the current editor, of the fourth edition, named Roger Angell, is the person who is speaking out against "tangledly") ever said the word "tangledly" out loud, even though the word "tangledly" would literally be the most appropriate word to describe a sentence like, for example, this one.

So as not to inject too much of my own opinion into this celebration of The Elements of Style today, I will stop this post here, hopefully long after you realize what it is I have done, which is to boldly piss on their grave.

(x-posted.)

Comments

[Jen Pierce]

Boo Hiss. You are ruining my bloggy crush. Come now, though. Has their influence been all bad? Once you learn good rules, you must always, always, break them. It's so hip to hate Strunk & White right now. So tragically, tragically hip.

[Ahistoricality]

at least know one they know

I don't remember anything in that book -- though it's been a while, I grant -- about replacing words with non-synonymous homonyms. In fact, I'm pretty sure they're against it.

Though, looking back on it, I suppose that was the point of this whole exercise. Sorry, for a minute there I thought you were doing one of the obviously funny things: writing poorly by following their directions or writing well by breaking them.

Never mind.

[SEK]

Actually, that was a genuine mistake. Thanks for catching it. It's not easy to edit a piece in which you deliberately flout what is, largely, sound advice.

It's so hip to hate Strunk & White right now.

It's not that I hate The Elements of Style so much as I'm not a fan of the fetishizing of it. It's as sound a style guide as any other, which means it traffics in opinion operating as fact. The Angell version's actually much better than the White in this respect.

[john]

Eat lots of B-vitamin-rich-laden foods.

That way you can do it yellowedlyerificallyiest.

Peeace out!

[Kristine Danielson]

"You would anticipate such improvement when the book in question is regarded as being the best guide to direct and/or concise writing ever written."

Funny! That sentence is surely causing Strunk & White to roll in their graves!

[tomemos]

Yes, nothing bolder than a contrarian "it's not that amazing" response to a classic.

I don't want my grumpy fandom to show through too much, but do you mind saying what your point is? Every S&W rule you break here does seem to make your writing worse, so…

[SEK]

I don't want my grumpy fandom to show through too much, but do you mind saying what your point is?

Basically, my point was that this is the 50th anniversary of Elements of Style, and I wasn't able to compose a response in which I violated the rules elegantly. Seriously, at first I tried to write one that flouted Strunk and White while still being "well-written," but I couldn't pull it off. So I went with a snotty undercutting instead.

[Jake]

It's not that I hate The Elements of Style so much as I'm not a fan of the fetishizing of it. It's as sound a style guide as any other, which means it traffics in opinion operating as fact.

What's the best style guide out there?

[SEK]

For us or for students? For us, it's this one. Instead of pronouncing "Omit needless words," it delineates categories of needless words and offers suggestions for how to omit them. Very, very solid stuff.

[tomemos]

Instead of pronouncing "Omit needless words," it delineates categories of needless words and offers suggestions for how to omit them.

Well, wait, Strunk & White does that too. Page 24: "An expression that is especially debilitating is the fact that. It should be revised out of every sentence in which it occurs: "owing to the fact that" = "since" ("because"); "in spite of the fact that" = "though" ("although")…" Page 41: "As yet: Yet nearly always is as good, if not better."

Beyond which, you are not being consistent in your critique. First your problem was that Elements of Style gives "orders," that it offers opinion as fact; now you're saying it's vague and doesn't tell writers what to do? In the post, you criticized S&W for being too specific, with their objection to the word "tangledly."

(By the way, I maintain that "tangledly" is a clunky word and that S&W(&A) are right to ridicule it as unsayable and therefore unwritable. Better adverbs for the sentence you give would be "confusingly," "awkwardly," or "wordily," but better would be to go with an adjective: "convoluted," or how about "tangled"?

It seems to me that you can't simultaneously tell the authors to attenuate their advice and also to make it more specific. Which is my problem with posts of this kind: all the author knows for sure is that the work isn't as good as everyone says it is—how could it be?—and the arguments are then slotted in around that premise. Look at any random feature from Slate or Salon if you want more examples of this.

[Innogen]

May I please use this post for teaching?