Numerous books bemoaning the demise of the English language can be found gracing bookshop shelves - from Lynne Truss's
Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The zero tolerance approach to punctuation to John Humphrys
Beyond Words and
Lost for Words. There are as many words in praise of the English language, such as David Crystal's
The Stories of English.There are books that tell us how to use the English language; books that tell us how we used to use the English language
(Melvyn Bragg's The Adventure of English), and books that tell us what to do if we don't know how to use the English language or don't understand how to read the books about the English language (Patricia T O'Connor's
Woe is I: A Grammarphobe's Guide to better English in plain English) to name but a few.
There's no doubt about it: books about words are big business. And it's no wonder that writers get themselves tied up in knots.
As a writer and editor a fair proportion of my book collection is given over to books related to words, language, writing, grammar and style - some new, some not so new. Recently I rediscovered Strunk and White.
William Strunk Jr
wrote The Elements of Style as a course textbook and privately printed it in 1919. It was published in 1987, has gone through three editions and over ten million copies of the 'little book' have been sold.
The Elements of Style is divided into five succinct sections covering:
- Elementary rules of usage
- Elementary rules of composition
- A few matters of form
- Words and expressions commonly misused, and
- An approach to style.
Despite being written for American readers, there is much that is of relevance to English readers. The section of style provides some useful pointers, including the advice to 'write in a way that comes easily and natural to you, using words and phrases that come readily to hand'. I know people who follow Strunk's advice to the word:
'Quite often the writer will discover serious... flaws... calling for transpositions. When this is the case, he can save himself much labour and time by using scissors on his manuscript, cutting it to pieces and fitting the pieces together in a better order.'
Who needs a computer anyway? Scissors and glue can be so much fun!
