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Review of 'Stylized' for Strunk and White's 'Elements of Style' on their silver anniversary
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Back in 1959, half a century ago, a slim volume came out of the press of Macmillan, called The Elements of Style. Most of it had circulated earlier as a set of rules for writing English papers, written up by Professor William Strunk, who, as you may have guessed, was an English professor. He first began selling his little book in the bookstore on his own university campus back in 1919, so most of this book is fully 100 years old. E.B. White, the other name on the cover, was one of his students, perhaps the most famous of them. I knew of him for some of his wonderful children’s books, Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little. One of the best services White rendered other writers was to update and expand on his old teacher’s list of rules, putting out The Elements of Style for the general public, and revising and updating it every so often.
Some writers love and adore The Elements of Style while some hate and despise it. I’ve known folks who nearly froth at the mouth when they mention that immortal pair, “Strunkenwhite” (always uttered as a single word). Those of you in the first club ought to go right out and buy Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style by Mark Garvey (published by Simon and Schuster this year, 2009, to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of that wonderful, little book). It’s chalk full of anecdotes about the authors, including both the gory and clever details of the making of each edition, photos of Strunk and of White as kids, adults, and old guys, tidbits from their correspondence with each other, with their editors, and with various other folks important to the story. Since Will and E.B. were good and clever writers, this is the best part of the book, I think. White’s sense of humor is delightful, especially when dealing with those who found fault with The Elements of Style – and legions of readers did.
Garvey also throws in many more fun bits, including info on Strunk’s sojourn in Hollywood late in life, when he was providing advice on the filming of Romeo and Juliet. There are quotes from many professional writers in addition, giving their two cents on what the little book has meant to their own writing, pro and con. Now, as for what Strunk and White have meant to me, I must say I come down on the pro side. Most of my English teachers, from the 4th grade into college, were somewhat like Strunk himself. That is to say, they had their own mildly eccentric rules for how to write and how to punctuate. Unfortunately, no two had the same set of rules. Even more unfortunate, none of them bothered to reveal their rules to us, their students, until after giving us a test at the beginning of the school term.
In those days, this meant we students had nothing to go by but our previous experience with other eccentric English teachers, so we inevitably failed this first-of-term test. Then we had to sit through a long lecture which went something like this (summarized and shortened): “You are the worst students I’ve ever seen in my life! You are stupid, ugly, dirty, horrible, and utterly without any redeeming social value! I shouldn’t have to waste my time teaching worthless scum like you! You shouldn’t have been allowed to contaminate my illustrious classroom with your irredeemable presence, you worms! Now, I’m going to be forced to actually teach you something! Oh, fate worse than DEATH!!!”
In particular, my teachers most deplored our use of commas. For some reason that I never fathomed, they went on and on over that rule about putting one in front of the word “and,” when listing items in a series. Some were in favor of such placement while some were bitterly opposed. However a particular teacher stood, each was absolutely positive that her stance was the one and only correct position, that we all should know this without her having to say so, and that our ignorance of this was a sign that the world would soon come to an abrupt and ghastly end. Further, this woefully ignorant state of ours was our fault alone and she was on the verge of a nervous collapse because of it. One never knew which way a given teacher would stand, of course, so one could only mentally flip a coin when taking that preemptive test. One was always wrong. Hence that deplorable speech, of which one quickly tired.
Thus, Strunk and White’s little book came into my life as a breath of fresh air. It did not begin with either a test or a version of that dreadful speech. It simply listed the rules in a straightforward and comprehensible manner. Put the comma here, there, and yonder. Use simple words. Use active verbs. Avoid strings of adjectives. Make your writing concise. That’s the essence of what I remember of it. I felt that if I needed to make an exception (God forbid!) I could go and talk to those authors about it, reasonably, logically – minus the usual hysteria shown by my real English teachers. If I had a good reason for breaking one of the rules, I could explain it calmly and reasonably to Professor Strunk and Mr. White and they might even agree with me – because they were reasonable folks. My real English teachers would turn blue in the face if I tried such an approach. I know. I tried. NO PASSIVE VERBS! EVER!! WHAT, ARE YOU TRYING TO DESTROY CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT?!
I never had an English teacher who mentioned Strunk and White, but I know some who did. No doubt this is where the loathing comes in. I suspect that if my teachers had thought to make use of this book, they’d have wielded it as a sledgehammer to pound us students over the head, driving us into the ground and utterly immobile. If this was how you experienced The Elements of Style, I sympathize.
But this was not how Strunk or White themselves envisioned their little book. It was a set of guidelines, not a straitjacket. The correspondence that White carried on with readers makes clear, as you'll see if you read Garvey's wonderful book. Actually, I thought White made this fairly obvious in the chapter he wrote on style, in the book itself. But then, that’s the part that so many people don’t bother to read, probably because it doesn’t have short sentences.
As an aside, I often found that my teachers failed to read the books they assigned to us as students. They mainly knew the answer page to the assigned exercises. And If they lost that answer page, they couldn’t answer the questions to the assignment any better than we students could. I thought this a rather defective teaching method, even when I was a child. But what do I know?
Coming back to the point, since I mentioned the poor style of digressions earlier, let’s consider when this book first came out, in its original incarnation, in 1919. One of the first rules is to make things concise, something I obviously have trouble with. Now, Strunk wasn’t talking about great literature, remember. He was writing to his own students, who turned in lots of bad and overly wordy papers (much like mine). They were writing what we used to call expository papers. In these, you’re supposed to write an opening paragraph concisely describing what your paper is going to be about. Then you write the body of your paper, making your points about your topic, preferably without boring your teacher to tears. You then conclude (appropriately enough) with a concluding paragraph in which you repeat concisely what it was that you told your reader.
If you drone on and on, saying everything there is to say about your topic all the way back to creation – as Herodotus does in his famous book, The Histories – you may end up with great literature, but you’ll get a bad grade on your essay. Since your professor has anywhere from 20 to 120 papers to grade, he doesn’t want to read many pages from any one student, and probably won’t. If there’s too much drivel up front, you’ll get the big, red C (or worse) right off the bat and he’ll be off to the next paper before your golden prose has a chance to capture his interest in paragraph 187.
Pretending to apply this “Strunkenwhite” standard to good literature, though, let’s take a couple of classic works from a little before Strunk’s day, say, Moby Dick and Silas Marner. I had to read these novels of the 19th century when I was in high school and found both to be dreary and tedious. The first one, Moby Dick, begins with a very famous sentence, “Call me Ishmael.” It’s so renowned because of its brevity, consisting of only 3 words. Even people who’ve never read the book can quote that sentence. But who among us – including those few who have read the book – can quote the next sentence? I dare you! You’ll find it below, with no fewer than 40 words in it. In fact, there are an average, in the first 10 sentences of Moby Dick, of almost 18 words per sentence. That’s even worse than me! Not only that, but after the action finally gets going, Melville slows it down again by treating his exasperated readers to a whole chapter on the excrutiatingly dull classification of sea mammals. What is this – a textbook? There was also his obsessive ruining of every last bit of suspense by constantly reminding the reader that this whaling expedition was doomed, doomed, DOOMED, I TELL YOU! By the time the guys in the boat finally went down with the big, white whale, I was heartily glad to see them go! Good riddance!
Silas Marner was even worse in my teenaged estimation. I had heard my parents talking about the movie before I read the book, so I knew the old fellow of the title had bad eyesight and was a miser to begin with. I also knew he was going to find a little girl somewhere along the way. But he certainly took his time about it! The author took over 100 pages just to give us the Halloween atmosphere. I started skipped pages, trying to get to where the old man finds the kiddo. But he had to grow old first. I thought I was going to grow old before she got there! The author felt this atmosphere was important, but it read more like a newspaper editorial on social problems than a novel. Couldn’t a word or a paragraph, here or there, have been trimmed?
The first sentence has truly dire proportions, a full 66 words (also quoted below). This is by no means the worst offender, since number six has 105 words. The average of the first 10 sentences is 59 words! Melville is concise by comparison. If Strunk’s students were trying to mimic that style, no wonder he suggested they keep things short, use simple words (the meanings of which they might actually know) and trim off unnecessary adjectives!
This is what I would call “purple prose,” a style many a newspaper journalist has replicated when trying to tug on readers’ heartstrings. It usually jerks my nausea-cord instead. I suspect Strunk and White had the same response.
The point is, the great authors of yesteryear still had some terrific stories to tell underneath that overwrought verbiage. So they had a reason for their writing, a reason Strunk’s students probably lacked. Those long, Victorian descriptions were a style meant for another time. There was no television, no rat race, and no telephone or computer to steal people away. Readers could sit by the fireside and pour over this stuff for hours. Nobody can sit still that long anymore, unless something horrible is holding them down. We need a different style. We have since 1919.
Quite a few of Strunk and White’s maxims still hold, even though text messaging and blogging might seem to have sent them off into oblivion. One of their main caveats was to write clearly. Why say “utilize” when the simpler “use” will do? Stick with the shorter, easier word and your writing is better. That works for technical writing and it works for the rest of writing too. Why use “orientate” as a verb when the shorter “orient” exists for the same meaning? The extra syllable is thrown in to make the speaker/writer sound a pompous, educated, and erudite (meaning "wordy"). It doesn’t make things clearer, though. So don’t use “orientate.” Being clear also means avoiding fads in word use, which means the “Strunkenwhite” list of offending words has to be updated with each new edition. I haven’t heard anybody say “groovy” in decades, but decades from now nobody will be hearing many of today’s trendiest words, either (like “awesome”). So leave them out of anything that you want to last.
Language is always changing, so the fads will change constantly. Thus, the need ever-new editions of Strunk and White will be with us, long into the future.
A new name may have to be added to the cover eventually. One of my personal favorites from my college days is that of a professor who made his own list of rules. Each rule involved its own violation (e.g., “When dangling, avoid modifiers.”). My favorite was this: “Before you hand in your paper, check to see if you any words out.” I think Strunk and White would have been tickled by that rule as much as I have been. So, perhaps we shall one day see the immortal William Strunk and E.B. White joined by Isaac Kikawada.
Moby Dick’s 2nd sentence: “Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.”
Silas Marner’s 1st sentence: “In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses—and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak—there might be seen in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny countryfolk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race.”
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