I googled around for this, and did a specific google search on Language Log as well. I found a lot of scattered tidbits arguing against specific claims in S&W. But what I’m looking for is some single webpage somewhere (or a connected series of them at least) that tries to take on the work as a whole, in one extended argument.
What in god’s name could this possible be about? You realize the English language has no governing body or Official Rules™, right? The guidelines are actually made by people like Strunk and White, so “proving them wrong” sounds pretty dumb.
The above is a strange post which attributes a phrase to me which I did not use–nor did I use one that could reasonably be construed as equivalent in meaning–and which first says that there are no official rules or governing bodies concerning English usage, (where nothing in my post could be construed as claiming otherwise,) but then says that there are guidelines in force made by “people like Strunk and White” and that one ought not to argue with them.
As for what in god’s name this could possibly be about, I will paraphrase my OP. I have seen here and there arguments to the effect that Strunk and White ought to be ignored, and I was wondering if anyone has brought such arguments together in a single place in some extended form. What in god’s name else could it have possibly been about?
The Language Log guys seem to be loudest on the subject. I don’t know how easy it is to search the site and so how much of their writing on S&W is findable, but they have a chapter on it in their book Far from the Madding Gerund and Other Dispatches from Language Log.
As I’ve said in earlier threads, I disagree with just about every word they have to say on the subject so I’m not the one to take this farther. Anyone who argues with “omit unnecessary words” should be taken around outside and put into the air and while they’re there available measures should be taken, like, I suppose here’s an example, take something large enough to hold them, maybe a barrel or something big and round and cylindrical, although I suppose a square or cube box-like thing would work, and then fill it up completely to the top with water, or even better with water filled with other stuff, eels, man, that would be funny, and then you throw them inside and they can’t breath because it’s already filled with water and the other stuff, like the eels and things and stuff, and they’d drown, because they couldn’t breath and their lungs would fill up with water instead of air and that would cause them to stop breathing, and that usually leads to death, although I suppose they might get rescued and someone do CPR, but who would want to put their months on somebody drowned by eels, you know?
By your subsequent jokingly wordy prose, I take it that by saying they “argue with” the rule, you mean that in the sense of arguing against the rule. But their objection is just that it is vaccuously true. They think its uninformative, but they don’t think it’s false. So they aren’t arguing against it.
ETA Sorry, forgot to thanks you for pointing me to the chapter in the book!
This proves only that it’s possible to write poorly in a manner that uses many words, most of which are in some sense unnecessary. It does not follow that “omit unnecessary words” is useful advice, any more than it follows that “Don’t write poorly” or “Don’t talk about eels” is useful advice.
(I would argue with “omit unnecessary words” in more detail, but Frylock gave the gist of what I would say (or at least half of it), plus it’s not relevant to the current GQ.)
We’ve had this argument before and I’m puzzled that it doesn’t come up in search from any combination of language log and Strunk & White.
My position is pretty simple. In the real world, S&W gives good advice that the vast majority of average writers desperately need. Can you get too simple? Probably not. “Use capitals at the beginning of sentences” would seem to be unnecessarily simple advice, yet dozens of Dopers need to hear this. “Omit unnecessary words” may seem to you to be unnecessary in and of itself, but I absolutely guarantee that most people need to hear it.
If you want to be technically, pedantically formal S&W may not be the guide for you. But unless you’re advanced enough to argue with S&W you need S&W. It’s short enough to read and heed, which places it above most of the competition right there. And that’s why I don’t know of anybody who has comprehensively critiqued it. Who in the world would such an exercise be for?
I too could have sworn I remembered some relatively recent thread on the topic involving me, you, and the then Kendall Jackson (now Hellestal), but I can’t find it in search either. Might it have been during Amnesia Weekend (or whatever that brief period was called)? I don’t think so, but my utter inability to find it suggests perhaps otherwise.
(Though I’ve had other experiences like this… posts for which I can remember who posted them and specific details about the words within them, yet which I can’t dredge up on search)
I’m 95% sure the discussion you’re referring to above occurred during Amnesia Weekend. I was involved in that one as well. I’m with Exapno on this one, for the reasons he has stated, even though I almost always fall on the descriptivist side of language debates on the Dope.
Wasn’t that around the end of August? Like August 30 or something? Or perhaps I’m conflating this with another event. I seem to remember this discussion (on Strunk & White) taking place at about the same time John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his running mate, or maybe the weekend before.
Amnesia Weekend was indeed at the end of August, so I shall trust your memory.
Also, Hellestal was on your side as well. I was all on my lonesome, alas. Well, perhaps someone will find just such a site as will swing Frylock around to my perspective…
