Excerpted from my recent WRITE YOUR BOOK WITH ME,
where I illustrate and comment on the rules.
WRITING
BASICS: THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE (Strunk
& White, 1999)
Communication
is at the heart of human relationships: reading, writing, speaking, listening.
“Writing means sharing. It’s
part of the human condition to want to share things --- thoughts, ideas,
opinions,” wrote Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho.
Use
care: what you write
often impacts others much more and lasts far longer than what you say. How well
you write influences the opinions of others about you.
I
describe here a valuable and inexpensive little book [only 105 pages long] that
will help you write better and avoid the most common mistakes. Originally
written and published a century ago by Cornell University Professor William
Strunk, Jr., and updated decades later by E.B. White, this classic text on
writing, The Elements of Style, has guided myriads of writers and
editors through the thickets of English usage, grammar, and form.
Here are excerpts from Strunk
and White‘s “little book,” with its original words in boldface, followed
by my own examples in italics and by my comments:
I. ELEMENTARY RULES OF USAGE
1. Form the possessive
singular of nouns by adding ‘s.
A dog’s life, Tom’s pen, and Charles’s paper are
right. Note that possessives of plurals that themselves end in s take only the
apostrophe, so we have: several friends’ birthdays. Plurals not ending
in s do take ‘s: the children‘s hour.
2. In a series of three of
more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the
last.
This, that, and the other all qualify.
3. Enclose parenthetic
expressions between commas.
It is best, at least most of the time, to avoid
parentheses.
4. Place a comma before a
conjunction introducing a co-ordinate clause.
This is often done incorrectly, but it is
important.
5. Do not join independent
clauses by a comma.
This is also often done incorrectly; it is
important to use a semicolon instead or start a new sentence.
6. Do not break sentences in
two.
Be sure. Not to. Or only rarely!
7. A participial phrase at the
beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject.
Trying to write well, you should heed this
rule.
II. ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION
8. Make the paragraph the unit
of composition: one paragraph to each topic.
This can be tricky, as “topic” is a slippery term. Lately,
short paragraphs have become fashionable, and they are effective.
9. As a rule, begin each
paragraph with a topic sentence; end it in conformity with the beginning.
“In conformity” does not mean repeating, however. Be more
creative as you restate.
10. Use the active voice.
Active: She wrote the poem. Passive: The poem was written by her.
11. Put statements in positive
form.
Do not put statements in this negative form, generally.
12. Use definite, specific,
concrete language.
As done in “connecting Asian American women to
the world,” the slogan of asiancemagazine.com, where I publish monthly.
13. Omit needless words.
Be pithy, terse, and succinct, avoiding
repetition and redundancy, unlike this sentence.
14. Avoid a succession of
loose sentences.
Loose sentences are distinguished from periodic ones, where
the main idea comes at the end.
15. Express co-ordinate ideas
in similar form.
Use parallelism in sentence structure: she wrote the
book, and he drew the pictures.
16. Keep related words
together.
Make it clear what your modifiers modify.
17. In summaries, keep to one
tense.
Generally, use the simple present or simple past tense: it
does, it did….
18. Place the emphatic words
of a sentence at the end.
Easier said than done.
III. A FEW MATTERS OF FORM
Here the authors advise the
writer on: colloquialisms, exclamations, headings, hyphens, margins, numerals,
parentheses, quotations, references, syllabication, and titles.
IV. WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS COMMONLY MISUSED
Strunk and White (1999) dissect
over 100 troublesome words and phrases, such as distinguishing “disinterested”
versus “uninterested.”
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