<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10px; "><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">There's a new post on the </span></font><a href="http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">Web of Language:</span></font></a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 12px; white-space: pre; ">The Elements of Style turns 50. If you're celebrating, make sure to use the active voice</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">April, 2009, is the 50th anniversary of the publication of </span></font><em><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">The Elements of Style,</span></font></em><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"> a book first written and published privately in 1918 by William Strunk for his composition students at Cornell, but revised and reintroduced to the world by E. B. White half a century ago.</span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">White took English 8 from Strunk in 1919. He then forgot about his freshman composition course, and its textbook, until 1957, when a friend sent him a copy of </span></font><em><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">The Elements of Style</span></font></em><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"> that he had stolen from the Cornell library. White wrote about the purloined book in the </span></font><em><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">New Yorker</span></font></em><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"> (“Letter from the East,” July 27, 1957, pp. 35-36; 41- 45), but he apparently didn’t return it to Cornell. Instead, he revised it (Strunk had died in 1946), added an introductory essay, and republished </span></font><em><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">The Elements of Style</span></font></em><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"> in 1959. It immediately became a best-seller, and its four editions have sold millions of copies.</span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">No one can really shrink the rules for writers down to an easily-swallowed pill, a 43-page essay, or even a long, rambling tome, and hope to be successful, because writing doesn’t respond well to formulas, and no set of rules can anticipate the situations writers have to deal with daily. But true to the spirit of brevity that writing teachers often extol, Strunk’s Rule 13 states, “Omit needless words,” and that’s pretty much what he did: Strunk only wrote one other book, a 73-page study of English meter. . . .</span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><br></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">read the rest of this post on </span></font><a href="http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">the Web of Language: </span></font></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(20, 79, 174); font-family: Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 72, 72); "><a target="_new" href="http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage" title="The Web of Language blog" style="margin-top: 0px; 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"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>____________________</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Dennis Baron</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Professor of English and Linguistics</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; 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Wright St.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; ">Urbana, IL 61801 </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica">office: 217-244-0568</font><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica">fax: 217-333-4321</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></font></div></span><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#0000EE" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; text-decoration: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 11px; "><a target="_new" href="http://illinois.edu/goto/debaron" title="My faculty home page" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 128); text-decoration: none; ">http://illinois.edu/goto/debaron</a></span></span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></font></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3">read the Web of Language:</font></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#144FAE" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; text-decoration: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(72, 72, 72); font-size: 11px; "><a target="_new" href="http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage" title="The Web of Language blog" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 128); text-decoration: none; ">http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage</a></span></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#0000EE" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><br></span></font></div></span></div><div><div><br></div></div></div></span></div></span></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br></body></html>