An Anniversary In Style

For fifty years, Strunk and White's little tome has been the writer's guide into the literary jungle.

The Elements of Style is fifty years old, and still going strong.

If you've taken writing classes, you either were required to purchase a copy of the book to study, or your instructor was teaching from it.

Page after page is filled with rules that are intended to explain how to write well. Professor Geoffrey K. Pullum of the University of Edinburgh would beg to differ, however. He's appalled at the notion of writing by the rules, especially as he finds that Mr. Strunk and Mr. White broke so many of their own rules in writing their prescriptive.

Not that every rule cannot be broken, but Strunk and White give authors a framework that can serve as very good advice. If you would write to be read by others, you should make your sentences as clear as possible so that the reader can follow along.

One basic tenet is worth keeping in mind as you compose your novel, particularly in these troubling economic times. Words are too precious to be wasted, to be spent with reckless abandon. Use them sparingly, with parsimony, and your writing will be suitably lean.

Let The Elements of Style be your guide, on this fiftieth anniversary of its birth. Wander off the path, if you must, but keep an eye on the main road. Don't let your prose become a victim of the obesity epidemic.