The Elements of Style
The Elements of Style, now 75 years old, is one of my favorite books. When I found a slim copy in a bookstore recently, I was astonished at how relevant this little tome is today, especially with so much inaccurate and ungrammatical writing proliferating on the Internet.
I am taking the liberty to quote directly from this book, for its words are as good as gold.
In a 1979 version, editor E.B. White writes, “All through The Elements of Style one finds evidences of the author’s deep sympathy for the reader. Will (Strunk Jr., the original author) felt that the reader was in serious trouble most of the time, floundering in a swamp, and that it was the duty of anyone attempting to write English to drain this swamp quickly and get the reader up on dry ground, or at least to throw a rope."
A good example of getting the reader on dry ground is in this fourth edition of the 2000 © book: “Put statements in positive form. Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating noncommittal language. Use the word not as a means of denial or in antithesis, never as a means of evasion."
Vigorous Writing is Concise
The Elements of Style also states “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 that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell."
One of my favorite passages in The Elements of Style goes: "Style is an increment in writing…All writers, by the way they use language, reveal something of their spirits, their habits, their capacities, and their biases...All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation--it is the Self escaping into the open. No writer remains incognito."
Attitudes of Mind
The book continues, "Style takes its final shape more from attitudes of mind than from principles of composition...If you write, you must believe - in the truth and be worthy of the scrawl, in the ability of the reader to receive and decode the message. No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing."
I and other journalists I know have always valued accuracy and integrity in our articles and web pages – no matter how long we spend to get the facts and the words right and to polish our styles.
