Beyond the Elements of Style

More on Strunk & White

Well, I’m clearly not the only one celebrating the anniversary of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style: The New York Times has weighed in, with a kinder, gentler approach than the review I cited in my last post.

My favorite part? This story:

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers,” Dorothy Parker once wrote, “the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of ‘The Elements of Style.’ The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

And then there’s this gem:

White argued that Strunk had also been motivated by sympathy for the writer’s victims: “Will felt that the reader was in serious trouble most of the time, floundering in a swamp, and that it was the duty of anyone attempting to write English to drain this swamp quickly and get the reader up on dry ground or at least to throw a rope.”

So you can pay your money and take your pick of reviews, but no matter what anyone says, it’s staying on my shelf. My friend Rachel once told me that her favorite book in the world is Emily Post, because she can look at it and be reassured that somewhere there’s a place with all the answers. An illusion, perhaps, but a comforting one.

So choose your favorite illusion of perfection and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Nothing “Beyond” Here

Well, in view of the title of my blog, I feel obligated to pause and note the 50th anniversary of Strunk and White’s famous contribution to the world of writing, The Elements of Style.

A recent article by Geoffrey Pullum in the Chronicle of Higher Education waxes, it has to be said, less than wildly enthusiastic about the book. “The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous esteem in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges from limp platitudes to inconsistent nonsense. Its enormous influence has not improved American students’ grasp of English grammar; it has significantly degraded it.”

Pullum is, in fact, just warming to his topic.

The book’s toxic mix of purism, atavism, and personal eccentricity is not underpinned by a proper grounding in English grammar. It is often so misguided that the authors appear not to notice their own egregious flouting of its own rules. They can’t help it, because they don’t know how to identify what they condemn.

“Put statements in positive form,” they stipulate, in a section that seeks to prevent “not” from being used as “a means of evasion.”

“Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs,” they insist. (The motivation of this mysterious decree remains unclear to me.)

And then, in the very next sentence, comes a negative passive clause containing three adjectives: “The adjective hasn’t been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place.”

The reality is, as Pullum points out, that not only is The Elements of Style not in fact about style, its advice on things grammatical is pretty awful. He is neither the first nor the only person to point this out.

His is not the only opinion on the book; Michael Leddy has a different take on … well, on Pullum’s take.

Geoffrey K. Pullum’s recent piece on William Strunk and E.B. White’s The Elements of Style, is snarky and sensational enough to appeal to a reader suspicious of a dos-and-don’ts approach to writing. How refreshing to be told — by a grammarian no less — that Strunk and White are “grammatical incompetents,” “idiosyncratic bumblers,” purveyors of “uninformed bossiness” and “misbegotten rules.”

“My evidence,” Leddy says, “is anecdotal, but I have never had a student mention Strunk and White as a significant part of her or his writing education. The Elements of Style now seems far more popular outside the world of English instruction (particularly among tech types, whose work writing code would foster respect for clarity and concision).”

And yet the book lies anchored in our consciousness in the same way our mothers’ voices replay in our heads, with rules and admonitions half-learned, helf-rejected, and still able to instill guilt. Its slender size gives students the illusion that matters of style and grammar can be encapsulated in a few chapters, and at least one of its authors can be connected to real-life literature (E.B. White’s wonderful Charlotte’s Web and The Once and Future King), both of which considerations could contribute to its long life.

So … if it’s not a style guide and it’s a dreadful grammar book, what is the point? For those of us who make our livings with words, it is, perhaps, part of our history. Uncle Ernie may have been the black sheep of the family and Grandmother’s teeth may have been crooked; but we embrace them as part of who we are. In the same way, perhaps, The Elements of Style might be part of who we are, as well. Not consulted with any frequency, but reassuring to have on our library shelves. And anyone would have to admit that the illustrated version is a lot of fun!

For now, both versions are staying on my shelf. Much of my own academic work was in history, so there is a part of me that believes in seeing where we came from … as long as we keep looking to the future. And that will keep us … beyond the elements of style!

POSTSCRIPT: My own favorite style manual? Joseph Williams’ Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace.

Amazon Reconsiders

As we all know by now, Amazon listened and responded to the expressions of concern over its recent apparent censorship activities. It’s unclear (and probably always will be) exactly what happened to the listings of books deemed to be adult-themed over this past weekend, and the debates will probably continue for some time. At the end of the day, however, I think we can come away with a few important things to remember:

• The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
• Corporations do not and never have had your best interests at heart.
• Bugs can and do happen.
• Corporations will respond to pressure when it appears that actions they have taken will affect their financial bottom line.

Bear all that in mind, and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Literary Censorship

One of the acknowledged components of totalitarianism is the restriction of access to officially banned literature. But that term tends to refer to a given government’s plan; Amazon has taken the concept international and capitalist by making the decision (on behalf of its users, naturally) as to what ought to be read, and — more importantly — what ought not to be read.

Of course, the company has no authority to be sure that the material it deems offensive is not published. It simply is making sure that no one can access that material.

According to a story in the Seattle PI, Amazon’s move goes beyond censorship and actually takes a political stand:

As of around 4 pm on Sunday, plugging the search term “homosexuality” into Amazon returned top links to A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality and You Don’t Have To Be Gay.

And an open letter to Amazon from writer Kassia Krozser added,

I can buy a book on training fighting dogs (something so offensive my stomach hurts just looking at the cover image), but specific types of human relationships are suddenly taboo?

While Amazon is blaming a glitch for what happened, according to Publisher’s Weekly, that does nothing to explain the letter that one author received from Amazon in response to his protest of the exclusion of material from Amazon’s search terms:

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

And even Publisher’s Weekly itself admitted that “whether a glitch or new policy, titles like James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room and Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain are among the those that have lost their sales ranking.”

I don’t suppose that I need to underline any of this: banning books, no matter how you try to justify it, is still banning books. I’ve written to Amazon, not wearing my hat as an author of books, but as a frequent buyer: if there were ever a reason to move one’s internet business to Powell’s, it seems that this is it. Please think about doing the same: censorship is wrong, no matter how you dress it up. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Not Ready For Prime Time: E-Prime

Or maybe it is, and it’s me who’s not ready for prime time. In any case, I’ve been struggling a bit with the concept of E-Prime ever since a colleague on one of my subscription lists called my attention to it.

E-Prime is English for people who want to be extraordinarily clear in terms of meaning, and really don’t care what the content sounds like (or, possibly more importantly, reads like).

From the Wikipedia article, always a good place to start (but never to end) research:

By eliminating most uses of the passive voice, E-Prime encourages writers and speakers to make explicit the agent of a statement, possibly making the written text easier to read and understand.
E-Prime is used as a mental discipline to filter speech and translate the speech of others. For example, the sentence “the movie was good”, translated into E-Prime, could become “I liked the movie”. The translation communicates the speaker’s subjective experience of the movie rather than the speaker’s judgment of the movie. In this example, using E-Prime makes it harder for the writer or reader to confuse a statement of opinion with a statement of fact.

Frankly, some of it sounds like a fad diet. There are “allowed” words and words that are “not allowed.” One may never, ever, ever use the high-fat verb “to be.” Presumably one should also experience the same guilt when slipping back into saying the forbidden “is” word that one does when snagging that piece of forbidden chocolate cake.

Robert Anton Wilson in Toward Uniderstanding E-Prime notes:

Korzybski felt that all humans should receive training in general semantics from grade school on, as “semantic hygiene” against the most prevalent forms of logical error, emotional distortion, and “demonological thinking.” E-Prime provides a straightforward training technique for acquiring such semantic hygiene.

Indeed, those interested in semantics have long been discussing the problem of the verb “to be,” inviting along the way some wordplay (To Be In Their Bonnets) and inspiring a new way of editing (E-Prime As A Revision Strategy).

I’m already hearing the voices of some of my writing students and clients, who have experienced (ad infinitum, ad nauseaum) my calls to tighten their writing. “Isn’t this what you’re talking about?”

Well, no.

There’s a difference between tightened, good writing and writing that removes the ability to make it sing. Or, as one of my correspondents would have it, “If is was good enough for the Bard, it’s good enough for me.” Ambiguity is often the very stuff of great literature, and that requires access to all of our vocabulary and myriad ways of using it.

Perhaps here, as elsewhere in life, context is everything. I don’t want flowery writing in the manual that accompanied my new DVD player (where, due perhaps to the writer’s lack of command of any English—E-Prime or otherwise—the directions are far from clear); but I just finished reading the superb novel Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott, and was overwhelmed not only by her ability to tell a wondrous story, but by the language with which she told it. And I like that feeling. I want it again, the next time I open a book and take the time to revel in the sheer sensuality of words.

Perhaps the best last word on E-Prime is by the witty and wonderful Elisha Webster Emerson, who gives a lively history of the E-Prime movement and her own take on it in A Review in E-Prime. While you’re there, stay for a few minutes and read other articles on the blog: they are truly well worth your attention. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!