The Little Book
March 19th, 2007 by Kathleen Bolton
Last week I blogged about the Florid Verb and how too many of those fancy, four-syllable verbs can rob your prose of power and authenticity, but used judiciously can make your writing pop.
The topic got my juices flowing about other style precepts (whoops, fancy word alert!), and I dug out the writer’s old reliable, Strunk and White’s Elements of Style (I have the third edition) to see what other sins I’d been committing.
First, a word about Strunk and White. I hardly ever refer to this classic when I need to look up something about craft, and I don’t know why I don’t. It’s a slim monograph that’s elegant in its precision, organization, and pithiness. In short, it’s got everything a busy writer needs. Though Professor Strunk wrote it around 1915 as a text for his English students, he happened to teach at Cornell, and his most famous student, E.B. White, happened to land the project to be its editor and refresh it for the “modern” market of the 1950’s. Around the 1980’s, the textbook publisher MacMillan gave it an index, but it’s been remarkably untouched since it’s inception.
E.B. White recalls that Professor Strunk drilled one rule into the heads of his students: omit needless words. From there, all else follows. Strunk was a bit of fanatic about it, apparently. He had a special loathing for the expression the fact that (”it should be revised out of every sentence in which it occurs” p.xiv). and other padded phrases that, if you’re an editor, you recognize on a daily basis even in the best of publications.
To be sure, Struck arose out of an era of especially flowery language. Pick up an Anne of Green Gables novel, and you’ll know what I’m talking about. The late Victorians loved their flowers showy and their language perfumed. But Professor Strunk, reacting against padded, mealy language, scorned such excesses and taught his students to do the same. In doing so, he became the father of modern American literary style. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by saying that. Hemingway’s the numero uno example of stripped bold writing. He must’ve gotten a copy of Strunk’s “little book” which had been circulating privately among the literate set before MacMillan got hold of it.
If you don’t own a copy of the Elements of Style, here’s a link to an online version written without E.B. White’s editorial revisions. This is what Professor Strunk gave to his English students. This is his classic “Little Book.”
i picked up two copies of this at a writer’s book fair, and the salesperson said he was amazed how many copies of this small book he sold at these fairs. thanks for the reminder, k
I have my handy dandy S&W on my shelf, always. Great resource!
I find my writing is better when I take the time to look between the covers of this book and a couple others. Thanks the the link to the on-line source.