The elements of style william strunk

Jump to ratings and reviews. Want to read. Rate this book.

By William Strunk Jr. William Strunk, Jr. Strunk excelled in school, eventually earning a bachelor's degree from the University of Cincinnati and a PhD at Cornell University. Strunk began his academic career teaching mathematics at Rose Polytechnical Institute in Terre Haute, Indiana from , then returned to Cornell and taught English there for 46 years. In he published English Metres, a study of poetic metrical form, and began writing he critical editions of various classical works. Strunk joined a literary group called the Manuscript Club which held Saturday night meetings to discuss writing and literature.

The elements of style william strunk

Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation. Some corrections of spelling and punctuation have been made. They are marked like this in the text. The original text appears when hovering the cursor over the marked text. A list of amendments is at the end of the text. This book aims to give in brief space the principal requirements of plain English style. It aims to lighten the task of instructor and student by concentrating attention in Chapters II and III on a few essentials, the rules of usage and principles of composition most commonly violated. In accordance with this plan it lays down three rules for the use of the comma, instead of a score or more, and one for the use of the semicolon, in the belief that these four rules provide for all the internal punctuation that is required by nineteen sentences out of twenty. Similarly, it gives in Chapter III only those principles of the paragraph and the sentence which are of the widest application. The book thus covers only a small portion of the field of English style. The experience of its writer has been that once past the essentials, students profit most by individual instruction based on the problems of their own work, and that each instructor has his own body of theory, which he may prefer to that offered by any textbook. The writer's colleagues in the Department of English in Cornell University have greatly helped him in the preparation of his manuscript.

Healy at the National Institutes of Health. For this reason, the most generally useful kind of paragraph, particularly in exposition and argument, is that in which.

The Elements of Style is a style guide to writing American English , published in numerous editions. The original was written by William Strunk Jr. White greatly enlarged and revised the book for publication by Macmillan in American wit Dorothy Parker said, regarding the book:. 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 of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy. Harcourt republished it in page format in

We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us! Search the history of over billion web pages on the Internet. Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Uploaded by Unknown on December 6, Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass.

The elements of style william strunk

Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation. Some corrections of spelling and punctuation have been made. They are marked like this in the text. The original text appears when hovering the cursor over the marked text. A list of amendments is at the end of the text. This book aims to give in brief space the principal requirements of plain English style.

Holiday nails designs 2023

To do so is to put on airs, as though you were inviting the reader to join you in a select society of those who know better. George McLane Wood has of his manuscript. Humanity has hardly advanced in fortitude since that time, though it has advanced in many other ways. Many writers use it frequently as a substitute for and or but , either from a mere desire to vary the connective, or from uncertainty which of the two connectives is the more appropriate. Bestsellers Editors' Picks All Ebooks. Related authors Skip carousel. When the subject is the same for both clauses and is expressed only once, a comma is required if the connective is but. The same holds true of try out , win out , sign up , register up. The application of this rule, when dialogue and narrative are combined, is best learned from examples in well-printed works of fiction. Loading interface If several expressions modify the same word, they should be so arranged that no wrong relation is suggested. The stylistic tips that are not simply platitudinous are often just silly, hopelessly vague, or reflective of the long outdated prejudices of a couple of old white dudes. Every time I revisit it, I'm reminded of not only how much I can learn from my past mistakes but also how much more I need to know in order to improve myself. The writer must therefore, so far as possible, bring together the words, and groups of words, that are related in thought, and keep apart those which are not so related. Audiobook versions of The Elements now feature changed wording, citing "gender issues" with the original.

It is one of the most influential and best-known prescriptive treatments of English grammar and usage in the United States.

Patrick Gibson. Take that edict that you ought to say "10 persons" rather than "10 people. One can only wonder by whose authority these two gentlemen were anointed God. Jackson Brown. The Boston Globe. Then when you write in a way that comes naturally, you will echo the halloos that bear repeating. 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". Claim, vb. White , author of The Elements of Style April 17, If the writer wishes to make it refer to the woman, he must recast the sentence:. Your Writing Critiqued. But those are perhaps just comments on what I might feel about White as a person and not as a writer or teacher. My friends would even tag me as a grammar policeman, the title I learned to accept. Geoff Nunberg may have said it best: "The weird thing is to see rules like these passed down as traditional linguistic wisdom.