Have any of you guys started reading The Elements of Style? I am in the process of reading the assigned chapters and already I am impressed. The authors present their details in a simple, yet understandable manner which makes it easy to grasp their meaning. I wish I had discovered this book years ago because all my questions about 'how should I say this' or 'should I do this' could have been answered in seconds. Then writing an impressive essay in English class wouldn't be so difficult.
There was a reference to Orwell on pages 22-23, "to show what happens when strong writing is deprived of its vigor, George Orwell once took a passage from the Bible and drained it of its blood." This, of course, refers to the part in Orwell's essay when he takes a verse of Ecclesiates and rewrites it how our world would today. Compared to the Ecclesiates verse, our modern English is clearly bombastic. Maybe if everyone flipped through The Elements of Style once and awhile, Orwell's vision of an incoherent universe would soon be diminished.
I fully agree with The Boston Globe when they said, "No book in shorter space, with fewer words, will help any writer more than this persistent little volume."
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Oh, it is noon, it is hot in my workspace, and your post gave me goosebumps. Stuff like this makes my heart go pitty pat.
ReplyDeleteAre Strunk and White the authors?
ReplyDeleteYeah, Krisa, they are.... :]
ReplyDeleteWhat version of the book did you buy? I was at Barnes & Noble when I bought the other two books we have to read and they had a bunch of different versions.
ReplyDeleteI have been reading The Elements of Style book as well and I am also impressed. I've even been putting it to use. When I started writing some of my essays for Brave New World, I noticed that i had made some mistakes in my grammar, which I would have never caught before I read those chapters in Elements of Style. I am amazed that reading such a simple little book has already improved my writing.
ReplyDeleteI have the FOURTH EDITION with a foreword by Roger Angell.
ReplyDeleteThe first two chapters of The Elements of Style have come closer to perfecting my writing than any other method. It is very understandable, and you can grasp the concepts of each rule because of the many examples given. It's also accessible because if you ever forget a rule or aren't sure about something you can just refer to this book. For these reasons I agree with Kaela and Matt.
ReplyDeleteThe book is also helpful in writing the seven essays for Brave New World.
ReplyDelete