Prof. Strunk's parvum opus

Some blame a lenient high school system, others the Internet, and some the very use of computers themselves — for the supreme luxury of instantly deleting words and moving entire paragraphs around on a whim was once the stuff of science fiction for anyone who learned to make that quick brown fox jump over the lazy dog on a manual typewriter. To strike the wrong key on one of those archaic contraptions often meant starting over, so people were naturally more careful about what they wrote and how they wrote it. Spelling, grammar and effective use of language played a more dramatic and prominent role in the act of writing.

Of course there is no excuse for careless writing today, for we still have one of the most effective tools on the craft at our disposal — a 50-year-old manual so thin and unassuming that those who leaf through it are often shocked by the breadth of its contents. Whether you write for the New Yorker or a newsletter for your children's soccer league, 'The Elements of Style' by Strunk & White remains essential equipment.

Co-author White is of course E.B., best remembered today as creator of the children's classic 'Charlotte's Web'. In the late 1950s, he was commissioned to update and revise a small text written and published privately back in 1918 by his old Cornell University English professor, William Strunk Jr.

Dubbed by White "Will Strunk's parvum opus," the tiny book on proper English usage had always impressed White for its uncanny brevity and veins of what he described as “rich deposits of gold.”

From the first chapter, in which Strunk teaches us that it is proper to write “Dickens’s novel” rather than “Dickens’ novel,” to White’s breezy concluding essay “An Approach to Style,” the entire lesson is given in well under 100 pages.

The Strunk-White hybrid first came out in 1959 and quickly carved a big niche for itself in a decidedly unsaturated market. Since then it has been commonly — and affectionately — referred to in classrooms and publishing offices as simply the "Strunk & White." As it celebrates its half-century milestone, still very much in print (an illustrated fourth edition appeared in 2005), the little book still holds its own on bookstore shelves among an array of newer stylebooks and writers' manuals. To this day, professors hold up 'The Elements of Style' to their students and preach with all due conviction, "This is the book you need. Eat with it. Sleep with it. Take it home to meet your parents. And read it from cover to cover as often as you can."

Fifty years from now, will this little gem still be floating around in cyberspace, making itself available to anyone who wishes to celebrate the English language by composing basic, effective sentences that omit needless words and clearly express the writer’s meaning?

As one who has turned to 'The Elements of Style' with faithful consistency over the years — and admittedly broken many of its simplest rules whenever I haven’t — I can only say I hope so.