By James Aitchison

Aspiring writers frequently wonder why their work is rejected.  Didn’t they like my idea?  Didn’t they like my writing? 

Clumsy punctuation, misspelt and misused words and clunky phrases are the bane of busy editors.  Faced with a forest of impenetrable bad grammar and sloppy spelling, editors hit the reject button.  They don’t have time to do what writers themselves are supposed to do: submit well-presented and grammatically correct manuscripts.

Fortunately, one book offers every writer the gold standard guide to style and craft.  It is the one book which should reside by every writer’s right (or left) hand.  It is the undisputed style guide for American English.

The Elements of Style by Strunk and White was hailed as one of the hundred best, most influential non-fiction books in 2011 by Time.

As American wit Dorothy Parker said, “If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favour you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style.  The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

….

William Strunk Jr. self-published The Elements of Style as a guide to his students at Cornell University in 1918.  It was intended to help them achieve a writing style that was “easy and flowing, not feeble and overblown”.  Strunk taught English at Cornell for 46 years.  In 1920, Harcourt, Brace & Howe published what by then was known as “the little book”.

Fast forward to 1959.  E. B. White, one of Strunk’s most dedicated students in 1919, revised and expanded what became the Strunk and White style guide, published by Macmillan.  White, a contributing editor for The New Yorker magazine, was the author of the famous children’s books Stuart Little (1945) and Charlotte’s Web (1952).  His clear, lucid English earned him universal recognition.

Strunk and White were unique collaborators, working separately and decades apart.

….

What makes The Elements of Style indispensable?  Its chapters include the elementary rules of usage, the elementary principles of composition, words and expressions commonly misused, and an approach to style.

Strunk preached brevity.  His mantra: “Omit needless words”.  He trimmed “used for fuel purposes” down to “used for fuel”.  He cut “the question as to whether” down to “whether” — a saving of four words.  He reviled the expression “the fact that”.  He argued that vigorous writing is concise.  “A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences … for the same reason that a machine should have no unnecessary parts,” he added with typical Strunkian wit.  “Every word should tell.”

One of his passions was the possessive singular of nouns.  Whatever the final consonant, he taught, names should be followed by ’s.  Too often writers believe “Charles’ friend” is correct when it should read “Charles’s friend”.  “Burns’s poems” and “the witch’s malice” are also correct.  Just remember they should be written the way we would say them.  Biblical names are exceptions: Jesus’ and Moses’.

A common error that flags poor writing is to use it’s for its, or vice versa.  His, hers, its, theirs, yours and ours have no apostrophe.  The apostrophe in it’s indicates a contraction of it is.  As Strunk and White remind us, It’s a wise dog that scratches its own fleas.

….

As a writer indebted to Strunk and White, I learned to use the active voice and put statements in a positive form.

The active voice — “I shall always remember my first trip to Boston” — is more direct and vigorous than the passive — “My first visit to Boston will always be remembered by me”.

I learned to avoid lazy, tame, colourless language.  A statement in the positive form — “He usually came late” — reads better than “He was not very often on time”.

As a writer I try to remember that it’s (it is) better to express even a negative in a positive form:

“dishonest” is better than “not honest”, “trifling” is better than “not important”, and “distrusted” better than “did not have much confidence in”.

….

Commas are traps awaiting authors.  The following usage is correct:

April 6, 1986

6 April 1986

However, no comma should separate a noun from a term of identification:

Billy the Kid

The novelist Jane Austen

William the Conqueror

The poet Sappho

….

Crucial subtleties often fly beneath the writer’s radar.  If submitting work to an American publisher, writers should be aware of two important rules:

In American English, when ending a sentence with a quote, the inverted commas always follow the full stop (period), as they would appear after speech.  For example: Strunk said, “omit needless words.”  In British English, the quote is tucked into the sentence.  The correct use is: Strunk said, “omit needless words”.

In American English, in a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term:

red, white, and blue

gold, silver, or copper

British English spares commas and dictates:

red, white and blue

gold, silver or copper

….

The Elements of Style is still “that little book” you can carry in your pocket, a book that gets your writing right and solves problems whenever you’re in doubt.  It is not a crutch; it is a writer’s first aid kit.  Of course, language is perpetually in flux.  Young writers prefer to experiment than conform.  As E. B. White reminds us, “Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.  Style is the writer; what you are will determine your style.”

The Boston Globe has the last word: “No book in shorter space, with fewer words, will help any writer more than this persistent little volume.”

Amen to that.