I would have thought this was the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary edition—this timeless, tidy collection of rules of the writing road seem to have lived among us since the dawn of time.
But, no, it’s just about the same age as my brother (me, I’m the same age as Helvetica.) Yes, the seminal work by William Strunk came out in 1918 (a shade younger than my father-in-law) but the “and White” part of it, the contribution, revision, and expansion by long-time New Yorker contributor and “Charlotte’s Web” author E.B.White made the oh-so-concise rules of his old Cornell professor live again for several generations of succeeding writers.
Some of White’s (and Strunk’s) advice can be ingested and then gently set aside in our new world of marvels like the quickly-burped-out weblog and the vast twitterscape: “Prefer the standard to the offbeat.” “Do not affect a breezy manner.” Heck, what fun is that?
But we can all continue our searches for “one moment of felicity” (S&W quoting Robert Louis Stevenson there.) We can all “omit needless words.” We can all slam the keys with vigor and then hone the result until a bright sheen casts out from our 24″ LCD displays.
April 11th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
I need this book. At one point in my life, I owned three (count ‘em) paperback Strunk ‘n’ Whites. Through various moves, I somehow managed to lose them all. I still mourn them.
This slim volume taught me more about language and writing than most of my English courses, and I remember what I learned because tne entries were short, well-written and funny. Just this past week, I explained the difference between “further” and “farther” to my co-workers–something I learned from Strunk ‘n’ White.