Strunk and White: First Impressions

Strunk and White's Elements of Style is a handy little book full of grammatical tips, usage rules, and good writing advice. One of the principles that I have have found useful is "use the active voice." This has been helpful to me most in cases where I needed to state a position or make an argument of some kind. My arguments become more convincing, and my tone is more forcible when I use the active voice. The active voice usually helps the writer sound more confident, and gives strength to a text. The caveat with this rule is that, if the passive voice is almost never used, a writer can tend toward pomposity and conceit.

Another principle I have found helpful is to "omit needless words." Time and again, I find that the solution to many problems is simply eliminating words. More often than not, problems with flow, clarity, clumsiness, or awkwardness can be traced back to wordiness, at least in my own case. The more excess a writer can trim away, the more interesting, understandable, and enjoyable his work will be. I say, get to the heart of the matter as quickly as possible, say what needs to be said, and then wrap up succinctly.

One of the elements in the book that I find unhelpful happens to be the first rule: Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding 's. My problem with it is in the case of names that end in "s." I wouldn't normally write "Charles's," I would write "Charles.'" This is mostly a matter of personal taste--I think the "correct" way looks funny and sounds funny in my head--like a bunch of snakes or something. I don't want my prose to hiss. However, if I had to adopt style guidelines different from mine (for a newspaper or magazine), I wouldn't have a problem with it.

There was a rule in the book that I think is actually wrong (well, not wrong, but incomplete). Strunk and White say that "all right" is properly spelled "all right." However, this word can also be correctly spelled "alright" ("allright" is not correct). It may have been the case that "alright" was not accepted in the past. In that case, this rule would probably just be outdated, rather than wrong.