The Elements of Style

The Elements of Style is the most influential American English practical style guide on improving writing skills. Written originally in 1918, by William Strunk Jr., a professor of English at the Cornell University, and later revised and enlarged by his former student E. B. White, it is a comprehensive text covering elements of English language style, usage, and composition also focusing on misused and misspelled words. The version revised by E.B. White, was named by Time in 2011 one of the top 100 most influential English books since 1923.<br><br>The book contains &quot;elementary composition principles, &quot;elementary rules of usage&quot;, &quot;matters of form&quot;, commonly misused expressions and words, and a list of often misspelled - these all make for a rather small, but comprehensive volume in a few dozen pages that covers a lot of style and grammar issues and pays tribute to classic high-end English.<br><br>The message that came with this work is to ensure an efficient and cleancommunicationstyle by omittingneedless,parasiticwords and expressions,by using activevoice,and parallelconstruction on parallelconcepts.It alsohastips on how to develop an effective and naturalstyle.Among other recommendations are:avoidqualifiers,beconcise,do not overdowithexplanations,avoidadverbs,avoid dialect,donotinsertopinion,usethestandard rather thantheunconventional and new (the author even lists a bunch oftrendywords which,accordingtohim,would lose popularityveryrapidly by the timethebook is published) .Writing is also aboutpleasingyourself and aiming forthatmoment of sublime satisfactionfromthe conveyedmessage and the way itisdone.<br><br>AccordingtoStrunk, &quot;vigorous writing is concise&quot;, implying thatasentence mustbestrippedoff of any unnecessary parts,whichcanobscure its structureandflow.This does notmeanthat the authoradvisesshort sentences and a dry,limitedcommunication style,whichcutscorners hereandthere - rather, he advocatestomake &quot;every word tell&quot; and haveitsrole in thebiggerscheme.