The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition
Author: William Strunk Jr., E.B. White, Roger Angell
List Price: $14.95
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ISBN: 0205313426
Publisher: Pearson Higher Education (24 August, 1999)
Sales Rank: 4,351
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
A handy reference guide for your desktop...
Quickly approaching its hundred-year anniversary, "The Elements of Style" - a pocket reference guide created by Cornell professor William Strunk as an aide for his students is today as relevant and helpful as ever. The introduction by E.B. White is worth the price of the book by itself, but when his immense talents are combined with his professor's, the world ends up with a valuable tool."The Elements of Style" contains everything a practitioner of the English language would need. The book starts with "Elementary Rules of Usage" which references the proper rules for possessives, parenthetic expressions, colons, dashes, etc. The book then moves on to "Elementary Principles of Composition", advising writers to use the active voice, choose a suitable design and hold to it, and among other things - omit needless words! That last tidbit of advice can't not ever in a million years be written enough times for people to read it and understand, you know?
The remainder of "Elements of Style" focuses on form, commonly misused words and expressions, and the writer's individual approach to style. This last part takes on the role of a coach for the writer - simply reminding him of the various do's and don't that make writing clear and concise. Overall, this is a helpful book and a handy reference for one's desktop. If you find yourself constantly wondering if "who" or "whom" should be used, then this is the book for you... Get yourself a copy!
Britt Gillette
Author of "Conquest of Paradise: An End-Times Nano-Thriller"
Rating: 5 out of 5
Start here ... or at least visit
This is NOT a grammar, it's about style. You won't find ANY inane lifeless nonsense rules like "don't split infinitives" (a red herring itself). That said, I suppose another flattering review is superfluous -- Strunk would disapprove -- but this book's rating is a half star below five! I have been writing in one capacity or another my entire life and cannot think of a single volume as fundamentally influential as Strunk. I have had a copy since high school, though I couldn't tell you where it is now; not that it matters, I've committed it to heart. By providing the table of contents, Amazon[.com] has essentially given you the book save its illustrative examples -- that's how tight it is, and yes the examples are worth having. Perhaps the somewhat militant author could have slipped "please" in here or there, but that would violate rule 13, "Omit needless words." Strunk doesn't want you to write better to please him, he saying if you're serious about your work you'll allow your assumptions to be challenged; and if you look closely you will recognize a compassion between the words, a committment to teach not browbeat. This book is nearly a century old and will be relevant in a century more, barring some sort of natural calamity, nuclear war, or extraterrestrial invasion. If you like, preview an old edition in the public domain at Bartleby.
Rating: 5 out of 5
The best, the briefest, the most practical.
Writers can learn more per word of this small book than any other book I've read on writing (quite a few). It focuses on the practicalities rather than the mysteries of writing. If you follow this book's recommendations (or commands!), whatever you write will sound better. You may still need an editor; no one can take the hard work of thinking out of writing: in other words, you can't make up in style what you lack in thought.So, think clearly and use this book when writing. Good results will ensue.
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