For generations of students, The Elements of Style has been the first and perhaps the only book they have read on English composition. It serves and has served as an inspiration to many people about how to simplify and improve their writing. The self-righteous bashing of the book by people who don’t write nearly as clearly as “Strunk and White” is a reminder that the critics are parasites on the work of others. Criticism succeeds only when the critic’s work is comparable to the literary (or artistic) work being criticized. Otherwise, it digresses into pedantry, as is the case here.
— Michael Parker
While I agree with everything said above, I do still recommend the book. Mainly because most people have never been exposed to the concept of “style” (in any of its senses). They don’t think about how they write – with the inevitable consequence that their writing is unreadable.
Strunk & White is short enough and blunt enough that readers get some useful principles to follow. With luck, they’ll at least pay some attention to how they write, which is bound to improve it.
— David Glover
Enough with the Strunk & White bashing! Yes, some of the grammar rules are outdated. But let’s not lose sight of the big picture. This book taught me how to write, and I earn my living as a writer. I had the best education money could buy, but I didn’t really learn how to write until I absorbed the lessons of Strunk & White. I’m forever in their debt.
— Charlie
Strunk and White may be too elementary or narrow for these professional writing pundits, but it’s valuable for this bureaucrat who reads too much bad writing and tries hard to improve his own. I recently reread Strunk and White over a weekend, did a rewrite of something on Monday, and was quite pleased with the result, not because I could congratulate myself for following someone’s rules but because it was nicer to read.
— Alan McDonald
Considering that most high school students can’t even write a simple sentence anymore this is STILL a great book for “Style” and “Grammar.”
After forcing students to read these books I can finally read their essays without a headache. The above authors are too picky. Overall, it’s a great little book.
— Helen from Hawaii
Hey, hey! Back off people! The book helped me a lot. English is not my first language, and is hard enough language. We are not all linguistics as you all are. So, take it easy on the book; it can not defend itself.
— Nasser Ibrahim
Let me defend Strunk and White. Nobody else did. I like their advice in part because it makes prose easier to understand, especially technical prose. A general principle behind much of their book is that the reader should be able to parse a sentence’s syntax before understanding its meaning. The syntax should help understanding. It should not be part of the puzzle. For example, number agreement provides a redundant cue about the meaning of a pronoun. (That is why “they” as third-person singular is a bad habit, although, I admit, Benjamin Franklin used it.) And putting “only” just before what it modifies removes potential ambiguity.
Some of their rules cannot be explained this way and are probably just archaic. But many others criticized here are not so archaic as to be unenforced by, for example, The Economist, by technical journals (including the one I edit), or even (off and on) by the Times.
Jonathan Baron
Editor, Judgment and Decision Making
— Jon Baron
Whether THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE has value or not might be best cast as a cost-risk-benefit analysis.
Pullum’s CAMBRIDGE GRAMMAR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE lists for $161.42. The list price for Strunk’s ELEMENTS OF STYLE is $1.05, and the price on Amazon for the Strunk & White version of THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE is $4.00
The risk of a student failing to grasp a few of the rules in ELEMENTS is low. The risk of a student failing to wade through Quirk’s COMPREHENSIVE GRAMMAR is high.
If someone who frequently writes can master ten or so pages of ELEMENTS–and in my experience, few actually do–then the benefits are great. Just think how much better our lives would be if marketing and advertising executives actually took the rules outlined in ELEMENTS to heart!
— RobW
“The Elements of Style” has helped vast numbers of people learn to write clearly.
When my eleventh grade English teacher used it as a tool in class, she began with the Introduction; we were taught from the start that it did not pretend to be complete, or final, or even always right.
It is, however, an excellent beginning place for incipient writers. Thank you Strunk and White!
— E. Carpenter