11.02.2009 2:46 pm
Strunk & White: fusty or still fresh?
Post-Dispatch Book Editor
This week Harry Levins reviewed “Stylized,” a history of the classic guide to English usage. But at age 50 is “The Elements of Style” beyond its prime?
Guest blogger Harry Levins writes:
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of “The Elements of Style” — better known as “Strunk and White,” after its authors, English prof William Strunk and New Yorker writer E.B. White. The book has topped the 10 million sales mark, partly because so many teachers put it on their required reading list for students.
Did any of your high school English teachers or your college English profs ever order you to read Strunk & White? If so, did any of it stick with you?
Some readers call Strunk & White a terse guide to writing clear and simple prose. Others call Strunk & White a bunch of fuddy-duddy rules put down by two fuddy-duddy men. Where do you fall in this argument?
I’m afraid the lack of comments may be the answer! Perhaps the editors of Strunk need to bring the book into the internet age and hire a snarky copyeditor to answer reader questions à la Chicago?
I am glad that I was required to read it for an English class in my freshman year at SLU!
Strunk & White is a guide to clear communication, but it should be used as a guide, not a life- or straitjacket. Writing rules are made to be broken with clear intent, not by accident.
Given the choice between S&W (hey, it’s not Smith & Wesson!) and the typical college grammar handbook as far as usefulness, I’d take S&W any day.
The lack of comment here may be due to the burying of intellectual pursuits on St. Louis Today by sports stories and flashy ads, rather than lack of interest. The new navigation scheme where the blogs move around on the menu bar depending upon category may be stylish, but it makes many of the blogs harder to find.
I have taken up writing as my new career and have spent the past year realizing how much there is to learn in order to write fiction beyond reading the thousands of books I have read by this point in my life, 52 years old. Having studied many how-to books about writing I got to thinking that I have not had a grammar class in which I diagramed sentences and such since I was in junior high.
I decided to take on the task of studying writing from a grammatical perspective for a while so at least, if what I write lacks in character development, plot, description and the like, it will at least be well written.
I am about halfway through The Elements of Style 4th Edition and give a 100% thumbs up. There is a great deal to learn from a very small investment in time. How can you go wrong when the entire book including glossary is only 100 pages. There are some rules that may be dated, but only because some word usage evolves over time.