Return of the living dead
Oh, no -- it's back! Jonathan Yardley, the Washington Post's book critic, has favored readers with a back-to-school appreciation of Strunk and White's unkillable usage manual, "The Elements of Style":
For half a century "The Elements of Style" has been my constant companion. ... It is that to this day, and if someone wants to toss it in the box with me when I go six feet under, that would be fine; it might actually assure my passage through the Pearly Gates, since Saint Peter no doubt is a gentleman of impeccable grammatical taste.
But Yardley, who calls himself a Strunkaholic, credits the wrong author with some of the rules he finds so helpful. The 1959 book (and later editions) is packed with midcentury fetishes that E.B. White subscribed to, but that Strunk -- already deceased when White took on the expansion of Strunk's "little book," published in 1918 --- had not.
Yardley notes, for instance, that Strunkaholics mustn't confuse which and that. Strunk, however, did not follow this rule: He uses the restrictive which that White theoretically opposes. For instance, Strunk says:
Thanking you in advance. This sounds as if the writer meant, "It will not be worth my while to write to you again." Simply write, "Thanking you," and if the favor which you have requested is granted, write a letter of acknowledgment.
But wait, there's more: Even E.B. White used restrictive which (or perhaps left out a comma?) on the first page of "Stuart Little," as Geoffrey Pullum noted at Language Log: ''Mrs. Little ... weighed him on a small scale which was really meant for weighing letters."
And if Strunk believed that none must take a singular verb -- a "rule" unknown for most of the history of English -- I can't find him saying so in the little book. Usage tastes changed between Strunk's heyday and White's, just as they have changed since 1959.
As I wrote a few years ago, the book has a lot of silly or half-explained "rules" and a little advice about writing that's fine if you're already a good enough writer to apply it.
But treating "Elements" as a bible of good usage is literally laughable. Read through the chapter on "Words and Expressions Commonly Misused": If you can get past the entry for "Clever" with a straight face, you've got too much self-control for your own good.
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Fortunately, that rule is White's not Strunk's. But since Strunk is conveniently in the public domain, it's possible to update him, eliminating the obsolete and adding the modern, as I have done: see The Elements of Style Revised at http://www.ccil.org/~cowan/style-revised.html .
For some reason, this makes me just a bit sad. "The Elements of Style" was one of the first stylebooks I bought, and my editor gave me a first editing as a going away present when I left the newspaper business. I have recommended the book (along with other manuals) to freshmen in the writing classes that I've taught. The book has been with me for years, as it has been with Yardley.
Do I believe everything it says? No. I haven't read it in years. I've read countless other more complete manuals since, and I doubt I would find Strunk and White half as useful as my copy of Fowler's or the Chicago manual if I actually sat back down to read it.
But the "little book" holds some symbolic meaning for me. It is a talisman of simple style, of plain speaking and direct writing. I like keeping it around for that reason, if nothing else.
As I recall, the manual preferred by the several universities of my experience was "A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations" by Kate Turabian. Later in life, the preferred arbiter of correctness has been first the Council of Biological Editors and now the Council of Science Editors. Both the latter choices beat hell outta either Turabian or Strunk & White.
"It is a talisman of simple style, of plain speaking and direct writing."
Omit needless!
Jan, I think you're being rather unkind to the Elements and, perhaps, to some of the people who still favor it. If it is a bible, then, like the Bible, it must be interpreted in order to be applied to a time distant from its writing. People who love the Elements (in whatever editions) love it because it loves language, is interested in the details of its usage, and is itself quite stylish (it would be called "retro" nowadays, and can be enjoyed as such, rather than being considered fusty). It inspires, rather than micro-manges, one's writing; and it surely is not meant as a replacement for more up-to-date and technical manuals.
In any case, do even its devotees really follow its dictates literally, the way fundamentalists claim to follow Leviticus (or at least the parts that condemn folks or practices the fundies dislike)? I'd be very surprised!
Cheers!
Strunk and White and Turabian were my teacher's "bibles" in AP English my junior year of high school.
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