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<h2 class="gmail-blog__title">Strunk at 100: A Centennial Not to Celebrate</h2>
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<p>No one seems to have explicitly noted that this is the centennial
year of a little book that has (unaccountably) become extremely famous.
Professor William Strunk at Cornell University had it privately
published in 1918 at a press owned by W.F. Humphrey in Geneva, N.Y.,
under the title <em>The Elements of Style</em>. Much of its text
survives in the many subsequent revised versions, four of them since
1959 in an expanded and altered form to which E.B. White added his name.
Right across America, students in undergraduate colleges and at
graduate and professional schools are told to study this work and obey
its edicts.</p>
<p>It is unforgivably lazy for instructors to continue directing
21st-century students to a text on the English language written by a man
who learned it in the 19th century. (Strunk was born in 1869, when
General Custer still had half a decade of successful military service
ahead of him.) Language change in matters of grammar is not at all
rapid, but even so, a century is long enough for noticeable evolution.
We should not be teaching our students to write like people did during
the First World War.</p>
<p>Despite its title, Strunk’s book hardly touched the topic of style.
Few have noted this, but White acknowledges it in the first sentence of
his added chapter (Chapter 5, “An Approach to Style,” in the 1959
revision and later editions): “Up to this point, the book has been
concerned with what is correct, or acceptable, in the use of English.”
Strunk covered basics like the genitive suffix (<em>’s</em>), where to
put commas, separating topics through paragraph structure, and how to
hyphenate at ends of lines (Strunk assumes you’re using a typewriter!).
He offers various ill-explained general maxims about using positives not
negatives, omitting needless words, avoiding loose sentences,
expressing co-ordinate ideas in similar form, keeping related words
together, not switching tenses, putting emphatic words at ends of
sentences, and sticking to the active voice (Strunk was one of the very
first writers on usage to express the now tediously ubiquitous <a href="http://ling.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.html">disapproval of passives</a>),
and treats a very few minor technical matters of capitalization,
citation, and quotation. The remaining chapter, “Words and Expressions
Commonly Misused,” is just a potpourri of words Strunk disliked:</p>
<ul>
<li><em>Clever</em> “has been greatly overused.”</li>
<li><em>Dependable</em> is a “needless substitute for <em>reliable</em>, <em>trustworthy</em>.”</li>
<li><em>However</em> is “not to come first in its sentence or clause” (<a href="https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2012/06/07/the-however-myth">see my discussion here</a>).</li>
<li><em>People</em> “is not to be used with words of number, in place of <em>persons</em>.” (Strunk gives this ridiculously childish argument against the entirely standard use of <em>people</em> as a plural: “If of ‘six people’ five went away, how many ‘people’ would be left?”.)</li>
<li><em>Respectively</em> “may usually be omitted with advantage”; it
may be needed “in geometrical proofs” but “should not appear in writing
on ordinary subjects.”</li>
<li><em>System</em> is “frequently used without need.”</li>
<li><em>They</em> should never be used in contexts like <em>anyone who thinks they might qualify</em>; Strunk’s firm recommendation is to use <em>anyone who thinks he might qualify</em>.</li>
</ul>
<p>These stipulations about alleged misuse are absurd. No competent writer could take them seriously.</p>
<p>College syllabi often point students to the <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk3.html">Bartleby.com online reproduction of the original 1918 text</a>
(it is out of copyright), so they don’t have to go to the college
bookstore for it. A reproduction of Strunk’s entire text (slightly
revised at a couple of points) constitutes nearly 20 percent of N.M.
Gwynne’s dreadful book <em>Gwynne’s Grammar</em>. But anyone who defends
the peddling of Strunk’s century-old clunker on the grounds that the
revision by E.B. White has modernized and improved it should think
again. David Russinoff, who is much more favorably inclined toward
Strunk than I am, argues cogently in his excellent essay “<a href="http://www.russinoff.com/david/usage/strunk.html">Strunk vs. White: An Analysis of Authorship</a>” that White’s changes and additions made Strunk’s book significantly worse. My article “The Land of the Free and <em>The Elements of Style</em> (published in <em>English Today</em>; <a href="http://lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/LandOfTheFree.html">browsable version here</a>) also criticizes White for ridiculous pothering, atavistic prejudices, and outright falsehoods.</p>
<p>We should not be sending students to a text as myopic and antiquated as <em>The Elements of Style</em>,
not in any edition. To do so is pedagogically lazy, intellectually
unconscionable, and budgetarily miserly (colleges should be employing
intelligent writing tutors who have taken a course in the structure of
English). Yet right across the curriculum, professors unthinkingly
recommend obeisance to Strunk’s mediocre compilation of don’t-do-this
maxims (which I suspect in many cases the professors barely remember and
have never examined closely). A hundred years of this is enough.
Especially since there are modern alternatives, like <em>Style: Toward Clarity and Grace</em> by Joseph Williams and <em>The Sense of Style</em> by Steven Pinker.</p>
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<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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