The Elements of Style

While reading the book The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White, I found it to be both very useful and also a little nit-picky at times. This book was full of information that I thought I knew very well throughout my years as a student, but found that I was unsure of once reading through the book. For instance, I was never properly taught the correct times to you who or whom, which is something that as an English major, I should know but definitely do not!



Being that I am going to be either a high school or middle school English teacher, I will love having this book in my classroom. Not only will it be a great tradebook for my students to reference, but also a good refresher for me. The first chapter in particular, which talks about basic grammar would be a good starting point for my students who are unaware of basic good grammar skills.



One section of the book I enjoyed in particular was the section titled "Omit Needless Words". This chapter was a great raed for me because this is something that I often struggle in. When I was in high school, I had a teacher tell me that my writing was "too wordy". This has been something I have been trying to remedy for years, with little success. While I found the majority of this section to be very helpful, I also thought the writers got a little picky about their ideas. For instance, I don't see much wrong in the statement, "Trafalgar, which was Nelson's last battle". Strunk and White see this differently than I do, and since they are the "experts" I will give their ideas some thought.



I also found the section on using an active voice in writing to be helpful. Again, with my tendency to be a wordy writer, I ofter use a passive voice. I liked the examples given in this section. Sometimes I feel as though I am not really using a passive voice, when in fact that is exactly what I am doing. Strunk and White say in this section, "The habitual use of the active voice, however, makes for forcible writing." I liked what they said here because I feel as though all writing should be forceful. Being forceful is more often than not the only way to get a point across and that is the basis of writing.



As far as things I did not care for in this book, I wasn't that interested in the section titled, Words and Expressions Commonly Misused. Throughout reading the book, I found most of the sections very interesting and when I got to this part, I was slightly underwhelmed. For instance, when the writers talk about the word dependable and say it is "A needless substitute for reliable, trustworthy" I feel as though they are taking something away from the writers vocabulary. Looking through a thesaurus and finding different words is one of my favorite things to do in my writing and I feel as though Strunk and White are dismissing this valuable tool.

All in all, I did like this book and I would love to use it in my classroom to not only teach with, but also as a resource for my young writers to reference and use in their own writing.