Guide: The Elements of Style

Overview
First published in its modern form in 1959, The Elements of Style pairs William Strunk Jr.’s terse classroom manual with E. B. White’s revisions and an original essay on style. Compact and insistent, the guide aims to instill habits of clarity, economy, and correctness in writers of American English. It is both a rulebook and a pep talk: brisk commands for usage and composition, followed by a reflective coda that urges writers to cultivate a voice while honoring precision. The book’s hallmark is its mantra for disciplined prose: "Omit needless words".

Origins and Structure
The core originates in Strunk’s early twentieth-century notes at Cornell, where White was his student. White preserves Strunk’s imperative mood and reorganizes the material into a progression: elementary rules of usage, principles of composition, a few matters of form, a catalog of words and expressions commonly misused, a brief spelling section, and White’s essay "An Approach to Style". The structure moves from mechanics to craft, then to taste and temperament, mirroring the journey from correctness toward confident expression.

Rules of Usage
Strunk’s rules push writers to remove ambiguity and error in sentence-level decisions. They counsel forming the possessive singular with ’s, using the serial comma in a series, enclosing parenthetic phrases between commas, and placing a comma before a conjunction that joins independent clauses. They forbid the comma splice and the fused sentence, remind writers to keep subjects and verbs in agreement and pronouns in the proper case, and insist that an opening participial phrase modify the sentence’s subject. Punctuation marks are given functional roles, colons to introduce, dashes to signal an abrupt turn, so that sentences are both correct and purposeful.

Principles of Composition
Beyond correctness, the book advances a compact poetics of prose. Choose a design and hold to it. Make the paragraph the unit of composition. Prefer the active voice; state ideas in the positive. Use definite, specific, concrete language. Keep related words together so that syntax reflects thought. Avoid a run of loose sentences; balance coordinate ideas in parallel form. In summaries, maintain a single tense. Place the emphatic words at the end of the sentence. These precepts seek prose that moves with logic and energy, producing emphasis by structure rather than ornament.

Words, Form, and Spelling
The middle chapters police fads and vagueness. The list of misused or overused expressions chides "and/or", "due to" in place of "because of", "he is a man who" as padding, "like" used as a conjunction where "as" is required, "the fact that" as flab, and "utilize" where "use" suffices. A short section on form touches titles, quotations, numerals, and margins, favoring consistency and unobtrusive mechanics. The spelling notes enshrine standard American forms and warn against common pitfalls, reinforcing the virtue of correctness as a kindness to readers.

An Approach to Style
White’s concluding essay softens the edicts with practical, humane advice. Write in a way that comes naturally, then revise and rewrite. Place yourself in the background; let the subject show. Do not overwrite, overstate, or lean on qualifiers. Avoid the breezy manner and the lure of fancy words; prefer the standard to the offbeat. Make sure the reader always knows who is speaking in dialogue. Be wary of jargon and of technical flourish masquerading as thought. Style, for White, is the expression of character channeled through clear design, not a garnish sprinkled on after the fact.

Legacy and Debate
The Elements of Style became an American staple, beloved for its portability and aphorisms, and criticized for prescriptivism and a few dated strictures. Even where usage has evolved, its central ethic endures: attention to structure, respect for readers, and prose that earns its effects by clarity and restraint. Writers return to it for the shock of its urgency and the practical force of its rules, which double as prompts to think before writing and to cut after.