Students, Teachers, & Style
A review of William Strunk & E. B. White’s The Elements of Style
An excellent textbook can endear students to itself. When I studied English Literature, I owned many useless, overpriced textbooks for a semester. Then, I sold them back to the university for a fraction of the original price (there was one Statistics volume I purchased for over $200, only for my professor to never give a single assignment from it). But I remember a few excellent ones, most of which I still own. These textbooks were not only instructive, but energizing. Like the best teachers, the best books can shelter a learning mind while pushing it out of the nest. They are a challenge and a guide together, even after a second reading.
The Elements of Style, after more than 10 million copies sold and 5 editions published, is not that kind of textbook. At least, not two decades into the 21st century. I cannot recommend the present version of this text for young writers today. New writers need guidance into contemporary grammatical usage, in terms of style and in terms of industry expectations. And since some of the standards found in Elements are more than a generation out of date and sometimes vague to the point of indiscernibility, it no longer offers that necessary guidance. Instead, it now stands as an artifact of recent grammatical history, if not by its virtue, then by its omnipresence. Whether you avoid it or not, Elements is here and here to stay. But while it’s not useful for students and beginners, this little volume may interest experienced writers and grammarians. After all, there can be pleasure in reading something you dislike.
Since it was first published 100 years ago, William Strunk’s Elements has gathered a team of collaborators to add and edit each new edition. First written in 1918 by Strunk, revised (and greatly expanded) by E. B. White, decorated with accolades on its back cover, and now supplemented by a foreword by Roger Angell and an afterword by Charles Osgood, this little book has become as top-heavy as this sentence. And if the density of these amendments aren’t already overwhelming, a quick search for reviews of the book might dissuade the casual reader from even picking it up. As usual, the opinion of the internet stands divided. The blogosphere complains that Strunk & White needlessly vilify the passive voice, restrict colloquialisms that are perfectly acceptable and command the use of the unnecessary oxford comma (oh well). But then, there are others online who revere the book. I did not readily find what these readers revere so very much, but they sure like it.
Then again, the academic grammarians loathe Strunk. But on the other hand, satirist Dorothy Parker recommended the book, and American writers should worship Dorothy Parker as a rule. Unless, of course, her recommendation of the book was also satire. Then perhaps we’re not supposed to like it? Still, plenty of college and high school English curriculums not only include, but begin with the Strunk & White. And it’s on Time’s 100 most influential books of the 20th century. But who reads Time? The discourse surrounding Elements is long and tangles more with age, and even if you had been wise enough to skip the reviews (including this one) before you read Elements, you may have discovered this ambivalence for yourself.
In the contemporary edition, there is an affectionate Forward by Roger Angell, the stepson of White. It strikes the right tone by offering a glance into White’s private life and writing habits. Angell recalls White constantly in his study, mildly tortured by the perfect prose eluding him as deadlines approached. Angell admires White’s discipline, but also understands his labor. “Writing is hard, even for authors who do it all the time,” Angell declares to the reader, presumably to warn the pluckiest aspiring writers of what actually lies ahead in their professional lives. But the romance is not lost in the warning. The 3 pages Angell offers end with:
“But we are all writers and readers as well as communicators, with the need at times to please and satisfy ourselves (as White put it) with the clear and almost perfect thought.”
In my first reading of the book, I was not sure of the definition of “clear and almost perfect thought”, but I was excited to find out. White himself follows these words in the 1979 Introduction still included in the fifth edition; it serves as his opening argument for the pertinence of Strunk’s Spartan manual. The scene is set: White at Cornell in 1919 devoted to Strunk, his English professor, and by extension, his manual on grammar. Then, White graduates and forgets about the “little book” for a time, until 1957 when he writes a glowing review of this manual from his youth. The review prompts a publisher to commission White to revise it for a second edition.
Twenty years after the smash success, White seems to maintain the affection that prompted that first review. Even through his reserved register, White gushes about the singularity of Elements, calling it “sheer pith”, even “Stunk’s parvum opus”, with admiration. Concision, clarity, and brevity presented in only 85 pages. To White, “Rule Seventeen: Omit needless words! Omit needless words! Omit needless words!” is more than just sound advice. It’s a mantra to the serenity of good prose.
Perhaps it’s the devotion to the ideals of writing that confounds the blogosphere today. The contemporary writer has been submerged in Postmodernism, deconstructionism, postcolonial theory, etc. for half a century. But at 80-years-old in 1979 while writing the Introduction for third edition, White is still a good, old-fashioned Modernist, attached to these pseudo-cubist declarations of grammatical structure taught to him in his youth. So while twenty first century writers challenge Strunk’s grammatical standards, White accepts them whole. Rules are rules; learn to live with them. Also, there’s the pragmatic reason. White’s a working writer, damn it, and he needs some sort of standard to get the work done. He says, “(Strunk’s) book is clear, brief, and bold.” Boundaries are helpful when you have a deadline approaching.
And then, if you have made it past the discourse online and the six pages offered by Angell and White, you finally get to Strunk. And in Part One: Elementary Rules of Usage, Strunk begins the chapter by teaching the proper construction of possessive singular nouns with apostrophes.
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but after such an introduction, I was prepared to be amazed. Instead, I received a basic grammar lesson. Rule after rule, I could only think, “Well, obviously,” to most of what he commanded. The Oxford Comma is Rule #2 (which I mostly use, except when I find someone demands it, then I am obliged to torture them). After that, we have rules for parentheticals, punctuation between independent clauses, a warning on sentence fragments, and subject verb agreement. Not exactly earth-shaking stuff. I tutor high school students on English grammar for ACT preparation, and unless you are a very specific sort of person, I think you’ll be as bored as my students when reviewing these topics. Regardless, these rules are essential to clear writing. And, you know, they are the rules of English grammar. I guess we better use them.
If Part I is pretty toothless, Part II: Elementary Principles of Composition bites. With every other rule, the creative writer inside me raged. When Rule 12 recommends that we, “choose a suitable design and hold to it,” I considered writing this review as a half-sestina. Rule 14 declares that we must not use the passive voice; I am more inclined to abandon the English language entirely. And Rule 15 decries statements in the negative form, which does not agree with me. But for each rule that left me disagreeing with Strunk or questioning my own standards, another rule in Part II seemed reasonable: “Express coordinate ideas in similar form”, “Make the paragraph the unit of composition,” and most importantly, “Omit needless word.” Strunk may not help his students learn which words are needless, but at least he introduces the idea of revision and compression.
It’s easy to see the high-water mark of “perfect prose” that stood above a nineteen-year-old White as he read these rules; their descriptions conjure the felicity of a perfect product, like gold twice refined. But then, the next rule, “Place emphatic words of a sentence at the end,” left me wanting and ended Part II.
The next two chapters are hard to remember or appreciate. Part III: A Few Matters of Form offers more reminders on elementary grammar and several outdated suggestions. Then, Part IV: Words and Expressions Commonly Misused supplies 27 pages of definitions and disambiguations, that would be helpful if not for the invention of the internet.
But by the time we reach Part V: An Approach to Style (With a List of Reminders), the text folds back over onto itself. At last, White presents the Style suggested in the title, and questions the didactic chapters that preceded. And what is style to White? Flight: “Here we leave solid ground”, “These are high mysteries, and this chapter is a mystery story, thinly disguised.” In contrast to the brow-beating declarations in the early chapters, Part V opens the cage and encourages the novice to write as a form of self-discovery, as an act of revelation. I suspect the irony of White’s philosophy was not lost on even him, a tense union between, “Don’t step out of the lines, but also soar into the sky.” The new writer reading thus far has been thoroughly instructed, and is now finally energized.
More importantly, White questions the rules of the previous chapters. In passing, White asks if forbidden constructions like “soulwise” are just as valid as “otherwise”, and if a passive construction may be permissible if it is also “poetical and sensuous”. And how do we write such voluptuous prose ourselves? White does not directly say, but he points the way with “some suggestions and cautionary hints” on style itself. These suggestions are vague, gestures rather than a roadmap, but in the context of the chapter’s openness to the creative spirit of the writer, I found them refreshing if ironic. The venerable White instructs like a sage, speaking of truths the young writer may hear now but only learn in experience and time. Like Polonius’ commands to his son in Hamlet, if taken out of context of the speaker and the rest of the text, the charges of Part V may actually inspire. Or induce the desire to stab the old man through a curtain, either one.
At the end, White implores the reader that, “If you write, you must believe-- in the truth and worth of the scrawl, in the ability of the reader to receive and decode the message.” This may all be just as old fashioned as the rules that preceded, but even in my mild annoyance, I could remember how much I needed romance of the written word at 19 much more than I do now. I needed something to help me begin. Even something misguided would have worked just fine.
When I have recently returned to my favorite textbooks from a decade ago, I feel slightly embarrassed. The introduction to a volume of English Romantic Poetry, that once was so inspiring, now feels trite. The translator’s footnotes in my favorite copy of Beowulf now seem elementary compared to the other scholarship I found later. None of these once treasured books have stood the test of time, not as far as I’m concerned. Neither do many of the lessons of my first English professors. So today, instead of devotion to the past, I enjoy a broader discussion. To wherever the English language is moving today, I’m determined to go there too. Manuals like The Elements of Style provide a look back at our initiation as writers, but the evolution of our language and of style does not stop. So I’m going to keep reading, the new and the old, hopefully with a sharper eye and broader mind. And there can still be a place for the old textbooks. There can be pleasure in reading something I dislike now but loved years ago. It reminds me that I have moved on, and I will continue to do so.
