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The Elements of Style [pdf]
- Animats 3y ago"Omit needless words! Omit needless words! Omit needless words!"
- canjobear 3y agoNothing but a pile of linguistic ignorance and the authors’ weird peeves. See http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/LandOfTheFree.pdf http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/LandOfTheFree.pdf
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Sparrowhawk21 3y agoExactly, beware prescriptivist hogwash.
- ryanklee 3y agoI hope that someday this message makes it into the primary schools. It'd be nice to have a future generation with a significantly lower count of idiotic language pedants.
- hgsgm 3y agoThe paradox of descriptivism is that it can't proscribe prescriptivism.
- msla 3y agoThat is not what descriptivism means.
- stinos 3y agoThanks for this. Even if some don't agree with this, it does in my opinion show that it can be rather silly to treat any style guide as authorative. Especially an old one, in a world where there are considered to be multiple types of English. A bit of a rant maybe, but this stems from having wasted hours on a discussion on whether or not a comma is mandatory after a certain construct, and 'Elements of Style' was being treated as being definitive on the subject (for reasons I still do not understand), even though I presented other guides which would say the opposite or would say that there is no decision. On that subject: as a non-native speaker I always wondered if there actually is a grammar (not syle) guide which is considered authorative, as there is for other languages?
- msla 3y ago> On that subject: as a non-native speaker I always wondered if there actually is a grammar (not syle) guide which is considered authorative, as there is for other languages? No living language has a fully authoritative grammar book, as the grammar of living languages is discovered, not prescribed. That's a part of what linguists do, after all, and they have plenty of debates over precisely how to do it. The overly-simplified grammars taught to language learners as "Correct" are only the tip of a huge, wonderously complex iceberg. Here's an example of a more academic English grammar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cambridge_Grammar_of_the_English_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cambridge_Grammar_of_the_E... Note that The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language is almost 2000 pages long.
- ouchjars 3y agoIronically, I'm finding this hard to read without formatting to distinguish using words and mentioning them.
- OldGuyInTheClub 3y agoarchive.org has several editions with, to my eyes, better formatting. If you have an account, you can check them out for online reading. e.g. https://archive.org/details/elementsofstyle0000will_j3d8/page/n7/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/elementsofstyle0000will_j3d8/pag... or the full set of choices at https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22William+Strunk+Jr.%22+style https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22William+Strunk...
- crabmusket 3y agoShould have been an HTML file, not a PDF!
- walteweiss 3y agoBe the change you want to see in the World ;)
- ughitsaaron 3y agoI read “On Writing Well” recently and really enjoyed it. The author cites “Elements” frequently. https://ia800308.us.archive.org/31/items/OnWritingWell/on-writing-well.pdf https://ia800308.us.archive.org/31/items/OnWritingWell/on-wr...
- trumbitta2 3y agoI got this on Kindle as preparation for starting my first novel. I found it interesting and informative, even though most of the rules in it I reckon are better followed via acquired intuition (i.e. reading a lot) than studying them.
- mbork_pl 3y ago> I found it interesting and informative, even though most of the rules in it I reckon are better followed via acquired intuition (i.e. reading a lot) than studying them. This. OTOH, reading about them may make you more aware of them when reading, so it might reinforce the learning process.
- erksa 3y agoAs English is not my first language, Elements of Style really has done a decent job of highlighting things that I either completely missed back in my English education, or was not covered at all.
- dsign 3y agoI struggle mightily with "on"/"in". It's a funny thing; English native speakers will tell you that there are rules: "in" is for "inside" and "on" is for "on the surface", as simple as that. But almost every use I can think of is ambiguous. Is that smile in your face or on your face? Are you sleeping in your bed, because your mattress closes over you like the insides of a bag, or on your bed, because it's just a wooden pallet the place you sleep "on" (in?) ? On this subject and for particular cases, ChatGPT fights BERT sometimes, Google's grammar checker fights ProWritingAid, and my flesh and bone editors fight each other. But it's all so simple.
- dcuthbertson 3y agoIt is complicated, and many people speak English differently (generally more casually) than they write it (or should write it if they're concerned with rules). As for prepositions and sleeping, I sleep in bed, on a mattress, between the sheets. ;-)
- Brajeshwar 3y agoThis is in the open, and is available in all formats (PDF, HTML, E-Readers, etc.) at Gutenberg - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37134 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37134
- jxy 3y agoThat's the original William Strunk Jr.'s version. The Strunk & White version is not in public domain yet.
- helmette 3y agoSee also Fowler's ``King's English'' and ``Dictionary'', and Pinker's ``Sense of style''.
- klodolph 3y agoAs always, I recommend Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace by Williams and Colomb. Get an old copy if you don’t want to pay for a new edition. Elements of Style is a classic but there are better alternatives.
- lindig 3y agoFor covering the subject of writing, the typesetting of the PDF is remarkably poor. The mix of serif and sans serif, the font sizes don't match the structure of the document, and enumerations have inconsistent indentation - to point out just a few blemishes.
- loughnane 3y agoFour books have made me a far better writer. I recommend folks read them all: - Strunk & White - On Writing Well - Style: Towards Clarity and Grace - Clear and Simple as the Truth I read them in that order and each felt like a revelation.
- zebomon 3y agoAll excellent recommendations. I would add to these, Bird by Bird and Zen in the Art of Writing.
- cpfohl 3y agoThis book came up recently, and I learned that “White” is E.B. White. Author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart little. I particularly enjoyed the image of Charlotte teaching grammar…