Strunk and White
I’m packing books in preparation for returning to New York, a task that requires me to make some hard choices. When I told a friend that I was using as a criterion whether I had opened the book in the last twenty years, she said this was too loose and suggested five years, which I find too rigid.
Among the books that came off the shelf for examination was the third edition (1979) of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, which, of course, I began to page through. I agree with much of it, indeed with most of it, but I find some prescriptions rather arbitrary. The chapter entitled “Words and Expressions Commonly Misused” has much helpful advice, particularly on words or phrases that are hackneyed (factor, feature), bankrupt (meaningful; in the last analysis), redundant (a man who; character; nature), shaggy (nice), newfound (offputting, ongoing), feeble (one of the most…), unconvincing (interesting), pretentious (personalize), etc
One of the “Elementary Principles of Composition” set out with Mosaic force in chapter 2 is: “Omit needless words,” which is followed by this paragraph:
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should contain no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
(Strunk and White are particularly vigorous against the phrase: “the fact that…”) With the rules fresh in mind, I had to revise four or five of the sentences in the first two of the paragraphs above.
I had six years of very good training in English composition; frequent essays were required, and they were carefully evaluated. It’s often been said that the best way to learn to write is to read well and widely. Late in those years I read everything I could find by Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene, and if I can write clearly today, it’s in good part because of their example. Greene praised Waugh’s novel The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold because “There is almost a complete absence of the beastly adverb – far more damaging to a writer than an adjective.” He believed that if you chose the proper verb, you didn’t need an adverb. (Stephen King says that “the road to hell is paved with adverbs.”)
There are later editions of the book, which I like, but there are many people who don’t like it and who dislike the very idea of prescriptions in style.
The two authors should be grateful that they did not live to see today’s Washington Post which has an article on the exchange of letters between the governor of South Carolina and his Argentinian paramour. The author introduces the love-notes with: “He to she” and “She to he”. I didn’t make that up, and the author was not trying to be clever.
Tags: Elements of Style, grammar
Fr. Komonchak,
I know you are a great admirer of John Henry Newman the theologian. I assume you are also an admirer of Newman the writer. I wonder what you think Strunk and White would say about his prose style. Waugh recommended that every would-be writer keep a copy of Fowler’s on his desk, but I think Newman would also have run afoul of Fowler — if Fowler’s Modern English Usage had existed when Newman was writing. It’s probably true that if you follow all of Strunk and White’s rules, you won’t write badly. But there is in their book a strong suggestion that you can’t write well except by following their rules, at least some of which are based on bad linguistics, and many of which are, to use your word, arbitrary. E.B. White himself wrote beautifully, but it would be too bad if every writer of English prose in the twentieth century had written like E.B. White, and most great writers before the twentieth century are a mess by Strunk and White standards. Still, I’ll take a chapter of Moby Dick, that great literary carryall stuffed with purple prose, over White’s whole oeuvre any day.
Personally, I myself have always loved communicating in writing.
I think “communicating” is the point of the book. You write transparently, focusing the reader’s attention on what you’re writing about, without drawing attention to yourself or the writing.
Does writing like this have to be spare? Maybe not, but it can be, e.g. Willa Cather’s My Antonia and White’s own excellent The Second Tree from the Corner.
In addition to (or in lieu of) Strunk and White, I would highly recommend a book titled Style, written by University of Chicago professor Joseph M. Williams. It is especially good for academics, lawyers, and other writers of “technical” or specialized prose.
Fr. Komonchak wrote:
I agree with much of it, indeed with most of it, but I find some prescriptions rather arbitrary. The chapter entitled “Words and Expressions Commonly Misused” has much helpful advice, particularly on words or phrases that are hackneyed (factor, feature), bankrupt (meaningful; in the last analysis), redundant (a man who; character; nature), shaggy (nice), newfound (offputting, ongoing), feeble (one of the most…), unconvincing (interesting), pretentious (personalize), etc
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I read this critique of EOS a few weeks ago; the author is merciless.
http://chronicle.com:80/free/v55/i32/32b01501.htm
50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice
By GEOFFREY K. PULLUM
April 16 is the 50th anniversary of the publication of a little book that is loved and admired throughout American academe. Celebrations, readings, and toasts are being held, and a commemorative edition has been released.
I won’t be celebrating.
Strunk and While was written for jounalists who had to be very concerned with word counts. I would imagine that should include bloggers.
I knew about Pullum’s piece, and about other criticisms of S and W.
Mr. Taylor: Why do you think the book was written for journalists? White says he encountered Strunk as a professor of a college course in English; later White was asked to put out a new edition for the college and general trade. On the other hand, I did wonder whether White might have been giving advice for people who would like to have their work published in “The New Yorker.” I wonder what John Updike might have made of S and W.
Mr. Boudway: With regard to Newman, I might want to distinguish. The prose of his Anglican sermons, and of the great works of that period, is much leaner than that of his Catholic sermons and of his later great works. It’s like the difference between a New England Congregational Church and a Catholic Church. For what it’s worth, he once said that the single most important influence on his prose-style was that of Cicero.
White has this to say: “Style rules of this sort are, of course, somewhat a matter of individual preference, and even the established rules of grammar are open to challenge. Professor Strunk, although one of the most inflexible and choosy of men, was quick to acknowledge the fallacy of inflexibility and the danger of doctrine. ‘It is an old observation,’ he writes, ‘that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetori. When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation. Unless he is certain of doing as well, he will probably do best to follow the rules.’”
Word counts –yes.. I find it a lot harder to write an 800 word column than 800 words of a longer article.
Fr. Komonchak,
I take your point about the development of Newman’s style, but surely even his plainest style would not have been plain enough to satisfy Messrs. Strunk and White. Their taste in prose was more Shaker than Congregationalist.
Strunk’s proviso, quoted by White, is a fancy version of the schoolmarm’s old standby: Before you can break the rules, you have to learn them. Maybe. But I doubt any of the “great writers” Strunk had in mind made the sort of calculation his rule implies: Will the rhetorical effect I’m aiming for adequately offset the violation of this or that article of the Strunk and White faith?
And that last sentence is pure bullying. “Unless he is certain…”? Really? That’s quite an inhibition, even for great writers. For the rest of us, that sentence means, “Who do you think you are, William Faulkner?” As for poor Updike, think of all those adjectives (many of them Latinate!) and subordinate clauses. Enough to give Strunk the trembles.
Thank you, Fr. Komonchak, for your post on Strunk & White. I was introduced to S&W in the Fall of 1965 in a Freshman English Composition course, and I have found in S&W a trusted source of good grammar and comp;osition that has served me well.
Although I teach Latin at the secondary level, I always give my Senior Latin Students a copy of S&W as a graduation gift. Nothing is perfect…but I think S&W will serve them well, at least as a start.
By the way, I believe that Father Meier (and your quote from him is a case in point) exemplifies the kind of writing that S&W advocates…clear, and always to the point. I find Fr. Meier easy to read, although he is dealing with materials that is, at times, abstruse, because he writes with such clarity and directness.