Book/The Elements of Style
The Elements of Style
About
- Person/William Strunk Jr printed the book privately in 1918 for the English students he taught at Cornell; a trade edition followed in 1920.
- Person/E. B. White, who had taken Strunk's course as an undergraduate, revised and extended it in 1959. That is the edition people mean when they say Strunk and White, and it carries White's own closing chapter, "An Approach to Style."
- The book is organised as lists: elementary rules of usage, principles of composition, matters of form, and words and expressions commonly misused.
Why it is here
- My/AI/Rule/How to Communicate Effectively With Me/Talk to me like a friend, not in vague aphorisms names this book as one of two tests a phrase should pass before it is written.
- Book/Clear and Simple as the Truth is written against books of this kind. Thomas and Turner argue that rules of grammar, sense and sentence structure do not by themselves produce effective prose, and that step-by-step programmes make the problem worse by ignoring that there are several styles with different standards. What they offer instead is a stance the writer takes toward truth, reader and occasion.
- The disagreement is about what a book on writing can supply: a set of prescriptions to check against, or a position to write from. For anyone deciding what to give an AI agent under My/AI/Rule, that difference is more useful than either book on its own.
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