"Omit needless words! Omit needless words! Omit needless words!"
Or just "omit needless words!"
The Elements of Style [pdf]
41–50 of 64 posts
Re: The Elements of Style [pdf]
#42Four books have made me a far better writer. I recommend folks read them all: - Strunk & White - On Writing Well - Style: Towards Clarity and Grace - Clear and Simple as the Truth I read them in that order and each felt like a revelation.
All excellent recommendations. I would add to these, Bird by Bird and Zen in the Art of Writing.
Re: The Elements of Style [pdf]
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
As English is not my first language, Elements of Style really has done a decent job of highlighting things that I either completely missed back in my English education, or was not covered at all.
I struggle mightily with "on"/"in". It's a funny thing; English native speakers will tell you that there are rules: "in" is for "inside" and "on" is for "on the surface", as simple as that. But almost every use I can think of is ambiguous. Is that smile in your face or on your face? Are you sleeping in your bed, because your mattress closes over you like the insides of a bag, or on your bed, because it's just a woode…
Prepositions are pretty arbitrary in all the languages I know. Often there is more than one option with slightly different connotations or even denotations. Like for example “on time” vs “in time.”
Re: The Elements of Style [pdf]
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I struggle mightily with "on"/"in". It's a funny thing; English native speakers will tell you that there are rules: "in" is for "inside" and "on" is for "on the surface", as simple as that. But almost every use I can think of is ambiguous. Is that smile in your face or on your face? Are you sleeping in your bed, because your mattress closes over you like the insides of a bag, or on your bed, because it's just a woode…
It is complicated, and many people speak English differently (generally more casually) than they write it (or should write it if they're concerned with rules). As for prepositions and sleeping, I sleep in bed, on a mattress, between the sheets. ;-)
Under the covers.
Re: The Elements of Style [pdf]
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for this. Even if some don't agree with this, it does in my opinion show that it can be rather silly to treat any style guide as authorative. Especially an old one, in a world where there are considered to be multiple types of English. A bit of a rant maybe, but this stems from having wasted hours on a discussion on whether or not a comma is mandatory after a certain construct, and 'Elements of Style' was bein…
> On that subject: as a non-native speaker I always wondered if there actually is a grammar (not syle) guide which is considered authorative, as there is for other languages? No living language has a fully authoritative grammar book, as the grammar of living languages is discovered, not prescribed. That's a part of what linguists do, after all, and they have plenty of debates over precisely how to do it. The overly-s…
I think Italian actually has an official version, which is from when the Academia della Crusca got together and decided what would be the official Italian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accademia_della_Crusca
Re: The Elements of Style [pdf]
#46This book came up recently, and I learned that “White” is E.B. White. Author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart little. I particularly enjoyed the image of Charlotte teaching grammar…
Re: The Elements of Style [pdf]
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
I struggle mightily with "on"/"in". It's a funny thing; English native speakers will tell you that there are rules: "in" is for "inside" and "on" is for "on the surface", as simple as that. But almost every use I can think of is ambiguous. Is that smile in your face or on your face? Are you sleeping in your bed, because your mattress closes over you like the insides of a bag, or on your bed, because it's just a woode…
It is complicated, and many people speak English differently (generally more casually) than they write it (or should write it if they're concerned with rules). As for prepositions and sleeping, I sleep in bed, on a mattress, between the sheets. ;-)
Difference between written and spoken language is common if not universal. Some languages, Arabic for example, the two are so remote they are in a state of Diglossia.
Re: The Elements of Style [pdf]
#48Nothing but a pile of linguistic ignorance and the authors’ weird peeves. See http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/LandOfTheFree.pdf
I came here to link to Pullum.
Most of the specific rules were nonsense: among vs. between, passive voice dogmatism, etc.
Unfortunately, these things have become shibboleths that indicate membership in a particular class of people. If you used among vs. between "wrong" in high school or college, there's a good chance that your teacher corrected you, so now most of the educated elite believes the rule to be "right".
Bizarrely, Strunk & White's prescriptive rules, which had very little to do with English grammar historically when they wrote their book, have now—via generations of dogmatic education—become generally accepted by the educated elite. Ironically, a descriptive grammar must therefore now acknowledge the among vs. between distinction, at least in formal English writing.
We must right this wrong! If we shout loudly enough, maybe we can create entirely new shibboleths, and a new generation of elites can look down on the uneducated masses that follow Strunk & White.
Re: The Elements of Style [pdf]
#49Nothing but a pile of linguistic ignorance and the authors’ weird peeves. See http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/LandOfTheFree.pdf
I came here to link to Pullum. Most of the specific rules were nonsense: among vs. between, passive voice dogmatism, etc. Unfortunately, these things have become shibboleths that indicate membership in a particular class of people. If you used among vs. between "wrong" in high school or college, there's a good chance that your teacher corrected you, so now most of the educated elite believes the rule to be "right". B…
(Of course this sort of thing could never happen in computer programming, where Logic and Rationality prevail completely.)
Re: The Elements of Style [pdf]
#50Nothing but a pile of linguistic ignorance and the authors’ weird peeves. See http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/LandOfTheFree.pdf
I was expecting something a bit more comprehensive and damning after the link… but if one of the most objectionable and controversial claims in the book is about adverbs modifying “unique” I think I’ll continue to recommend elements of style.
> ..but if one of the most objectionable and controversial claims in the book is about adverbs modifying “unique”..
This reads like plain bad faith. Pullum lists a dozen or so very specific problems with S+W, and goes on at some length about the evidence against each. Any of those problems is more objectionable than the "modifying unique" thing, which Pullum mentions once in passing but doesn't discuss.