The Elements of Style by Strunk & White is one of the most influential style guides out there; it is required reading in thousands of U.S. high school and college classes. We worked through it in Writing Roundups #5-9, but aside from the occasional comment, I haven’t shared my opinion, so that’s what I’m doing today.

Description:

William Strunk Jr. wrote The Elements of Style in 1918 and privately published it in 1919. Professor Strunk used the original 43-page book in his English class at Cornell University where it became known as “the little book.”

William Strunk Jr.

E.B. White

In a column for The New Yorker in 1957, E.B. White (one of Strunk’s former students) called the book a “forty-three-page summation of the case for cleanliness, accuracy, and brevity in the use of English” and was then recruited by MacMillan to work on the expanded and revised edition, hence why the revised editions of the book are sometimes referred to as “Strunk and White.”

The Elements of Style Review

This book’s biggest asset is its brevity.  While most people are not going to read other style guides all the way through, this one is short enough for that—either in its original form or in any of the expanded editions. It also isn’t nit-picky on overly specific things like citations, which are mostly relevant for academic non-fiction writing. It focuses on the most common problems.

Most of the advice in this book is great. “Omit needless words,” for example. Other pieces of advice are outdated to the point of humor. Some of these archaisms are corrected in the fourth edition, but I haven't read the fourth edition, so let's just keep talking about the third.

One of my favorites is from “Words and Expressions Commonly Misused.”

Generally, I agree with this advice, but the evolution of language causes the next sentence to fall flat:


These days, we use moisturize to refer to the application of greasy things like lotion, whereas moisten is mostly used for the application of water. I suspect that advertising and the skincare industry is responsible for this shift in the language.

Based on my research, this isn't even a Strunk comment, but an E.B. White addition, which I think makes it even funnier. Strunk's original book was less strongly-worded than the later E.B. White revisions. So why not just roll the calendar back and read the first edition?

For starters, the first edition has its own collection of archaisms. And while E.B. White was probably responsible for a number of the things I find less-than-useful in my revised edition, he was also responsible for some of my favorite sections, like the final chapter "An Approach to Style," which includes his philosophy and advice for cultivating a plain, clear writing style.

Sidenote: The final chapter of the first edition "Words Often Misspelled"(not included in the 3rd edition) is also worth looking at. The pieces of advice below the table are outdated now, but plenty of people still have difficulty spelling words from the table.

Most of the hilarious out-of-date opinions of the third edition are from "Chapter IV: Words and Expressions Commonly Misused." Even the out-of-date recommendations here are worth reading for the entertainment value, but the hilarity might be lost on someone who doesn't have a firm grasp of English grammar/usage to begin with.

"Chapter I: Elementary Rules of Usage" and "Chapter II: Elementary Principles of Composition" are pretty solid, basic, and helpful. They cover things that help with clarity, organizing a piece of writing, and creating strong sentences. "Chapter III: A Few Matters of Form" provides brief guidelines for things like formatting and quotations.

Bottom Line

In spite of some outdated or overly opinionated bits of advice, The Elements of Style is still a great book. Where other style guides cover too broad a range of subjects to be approachable, this book is brief enough to read in its entirety. I give the third edition five out of seven mustaches but suspect that a more updated version would be worth six.


I don’t regret using The Elements of Style in our Eclectic Writing Class, but I do wish we could have started with a more general grammar resource, rather than a style guide. Next week we’ll start Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing by Mignon Fogarty, which should be a more modern, grammar-centered, and approachable resource. If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, there’s still time.