Desparately Seeking Strunk

After reviewing a couple of my posts, I noticed a couple of punctuation errors. I don’t normally write much in my role as a shop teacher. Most of my writing consists of filling out forms and sending e-mails so I’m a little rusty. I’m also a terrible typist, usually in a hurry and constantly distracted while I’m at work. I really enjoy writing and I would like to improve. How to improve? Practice and get a little professional help.

For help, I dug out my copy of The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E. B. White. It’s a compact little book that’s chock full of grammar rules and writing advice that’s been around since 1935. E.B. White updated the book and added the writing advice and in my fourth edition, it was updated once again. E. B. White was a student of William Strunk at Cornell and the author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little. He was also the father of Joel White, a very well known naval architect and boatbuilder. As a long time subscriber to Wooden Boat magazine, I’m very familiar with that name.

To give you a taste of White’s advice, in Chapter V, An Approach to Style, Rule 6 states:


Do not overwrite
Rich, ornate prose is hard to digest, generally unwholesome, and some-times nauseating. If the sickly-sweet word, the overblown phrase are your natural form of expression, as is sometimes the case, you will have to compensate for it with a show of vigor…

When writing with a computer, you must guard against wordiness. The click and flow of a word processor can be seductive, and you may find yourself adding a few unnecessary words or even a whole passage just to experience the pleasure of running your fingers over the keyboard and watching words appear on the screen. It is always a good idea to reread your writing later and ruthlessly delete the excess.


Hopefully, the future will include the needed apostrophes and more judicious editing.