 First expanded edition (1959) | |
| Author |
|
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Maira Kalman (2005 only) |
| Subject | American Englishstyle guide |
| Publisher |
|
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 43 (1918), 52 (1920), 71 (1959), 105 (1999) |
| OCLC | 27652766 |
| 808/.042 21 | |
| LC Class | PE1421 .S7 (Strunk) PE1408 .S772 (Strunk & White) |
The Elements of Style (alsoStrunk & White) is a writingstyle guide forAmerican English, comprising eight "elementary rules of usage," ten "elementary principles of composition", "a few matters of form", a list of 49 "words and expressions commonly misused", and a list of 57 "words often misspelled". The first edition was written byWilliam Strunk Jr. in 1918, and published byHarcourt in 1920. Thirty-five years later, the writer and editorE. B. White revised and expanded theStrunk & White style guide for publication byMacmillan Publishers in 1959, which was the edition ofThe Elements of Style that Time magazine recognized in 2011 as one of the hundred best and most influential non-fiction books in English since 1923.[1]
AboutStrunk & White, the writerDorothy Parker said that:
If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies ofThe Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy.[2]
AtCornell University, the professor ofEnglish studies William Strunk Jr. wroteThe Elements of Style in 1918 and privately published it in 1919, for use in his classes of English. Later, Strunk and editor Edward A. Tenney revisedThe Elements of Style for publication asThe Elements and Practice of Composition (1935). In 1957, the style guide reached the attention ofE.B. White atThe New Yorker magazine. White had studied writing under Strunk in 1919, but had forgotten about "the little book", which he described as a "forty-three-page summation of the case for cleanliness, accuracy, and brevity in the use of English." Weeks later, White wrote about Strunk's devotion to lucid English prose in his columnLetter from the East.[3][4]
In 1957,Macmillan and Company commissioned White to revise Strunk's writing manual for an edition in 1959. White's expansion and modernization ofThe Elements and Practice of Composition, by Strunk and Tenney in 1935, yielded the writing style manual informally known as "Strunk & White", the first edition of which sold approximately two million copies in 1959.[5] Mark Garvey relates the history of the book inStylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style (2009).[6]
Maira Kalman, who provided the illustrations forThe Elements of Style Illustrated (2005, see below), askedNico Muhly to compose acantata based on the book. It was performed at theNew York Public Library in October 2005.[7][8][9]Audiobook versions ofThe Elements now feature changed wording, citing "gender issues" with the original.[10]
As a professor ofEnglish studies, Strunk concentrated upon the cultivation of good writing and composition; in the original edition of 1918 he exhorted writers to "omit needless words," use theactive voice, and employparallelism appropriately.[11]
The 1959 edition features White's expansions of the preliminary sections, the "Introduction" essay derived from his magazine story about Strunk, and the concluding chapter, "An Approach to Style," which presents a broader, prescriptive guide to writing in English. White also produced the second (1972) and third (1979) editions ofThe Elements of Style, by which time the book's length had extended to 85 pages.
The third edition ofThe Elements of Style (1979) features 54 points: a list of common word-usage errors; 11 rules of punctuation and grammar; 11 principles of writing; 11 matters of form; and, in Chapter V, 21 reminders for better style. The final reminder, the 21st, "Prefer the standard to the offbeat," is thematically integral to the subject ofThe Elements of Style, yet it does stand as a discrete essay about writing lucid prose.[4] To write well, White advises writers to have the proper mindset, that they write to please themselves, and that they aim for "one moment of felicity," a phrase byRobert Louis Stevenson.[12] Thus Strunk's 1918 recommendation:
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that he make every word tell.
— "Elementary Principles of Composition",The Elements of Style[13]
Strunk Jr. no longer has a comma in his name in the 1979 and later editions, due to the modernized style recommendation about punctuating such names.
The fourth edition ofThe Elements of Style (1999) omits Strunk's advice about masculine pronouns: "unless the antecedent is or must be feminine".[14] In its place, the book reads, "many writers find the use of the generiche orhis to rename indefinite antecedents limiting or offensive." The re-titled entry "They. He or She", in Chapter IV: Misused Words and Expressions, advises the writer to avoid an "unintentional emphasis on the masculine".[15][16]
Components new to the fourth edition include a foreword by essayist and E. B. White stepsonRoger Angell, a glossary, and an index. Five years later, the fourth edition text was re-published asThe Elements of Style Illustrated (2005), with illustrations by the designerMaira Kalman.
The Elements of Style was listed as one of the 100 best and most influential non-fiction books written in English since 1923 byTime in its 2011 list.[1] Upon its release, Charles Poor, writing forThe New York Times, called it "a splendid trophy for all who are interested in reading and writing."[17]
InOn Writing (2000, p. 11),Stephen King writes: "There is little or no detectablebullshit in that book. (Of course, it's short; at eighty-five pages it's much shorter than this one.) I'll tell you right now that every aspiring writer should readThe Elements of Style. Rule 17 in the chapter titled Principles of Composition is 'Omit needless words.' I will try to do that here."
In 2011, University of Vienna professor in biochemistry Tim Skern argued inWriting Scientific English: A Workbook thatThe Elements of Style "remains the best book available on writing good English".[18]
In 2013,Nevile Gwynne reproducedThe Elements of Style in his workGwynne's Grammar. Britt Peterson ofThe Boston Globe wrote that his inclusion of the book was a "curious addition".[19]
In 2016, theOpen Syllabus Project[20] listsThe Elements of Style as the most frequently assigned text in US academicsyllabuses, based on an analysis of 933,635 texts appearing in over 1 million syllabuses.[21]
Criticism ofStrunk & White has largely focused on claims that it has aprescriptivist nature, or that it has become a general anachronism in the face of modern English usage. In criticizingThe Elements of Style,Geoffrey Pullum, professor oflinguistics at theUniversity of Edinburgh, and co-author ofThe Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002), said that:
The book's toxic mix ofpurism,atavism, and personaleccentricity is not underpinned by a proper grounding in English grammar. It is often so misguided that the authors appear not to notice their own egregious flouting of its own rules ... It's sad. Several generations of college students learned their grammar from the uninformed bossiness ofStrunk and White, and the result is a nation of educated people who know they feel vaguely anxious and insecure whenever they writehowever orthan me orwas orwhich, but can't tell you why.[22]
Pullum has argued, for example, that the authors misunderstood what constitutes thepassive voice, and he criticized their proscription of established and unproblematic English usages, such as thesplit infinitive and the use ofwhich in a restrictiverelative clause.[22] OnLanguage Log, a blog about language written bylinguists, he further criticizedThe Elements of Style for promotinglinguistic prescriptivism andhypercorrection amongAnglophones, and called it "the book that ate America's brain".[23]
Jan Freeman, reviewing forThe Boston Globe in 2005 described the latest edition ofThe Elements of Style Illustrated (2005), with illustrations by Maira Kalman, as an "aging zombie of a book ... a hodgepodge, its now-antiquatedpet peeves jostling for space with 1970s taboos and 1990s computer advice".[24]
Because Strunk's text is now in thepublic domain, publishers can and do reprint it.
Several books were titled paying homage to Strunk's, for example:
Gender issues, such as the exclusive use of "he", which was the standard in Strunk's day, have been changed to the modern usage of "his" or "her", "you", "they", or "the writer".
The Elements of Style public domain audiobook atLibriVox (Strunk 1918)The Elements of Style, the classic manual for clear writing, re-emerges as a hip new tome and an avant-garde musical piece.
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