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[akashiver]

In which we discover that everyone hates Strunk and White

I found an old copy (3rd edition) of Strunk and WEhite once in an office in a soon-to-be-demolished campus building. I had a flick through it and consigned it to the "toss" pile. But to be fair, I don't know what the field of grammar/style books was like when S&W came out. Most of its basic advice is recycled (albeit in more elaborate, better explained form) in recent comp texts; if at the time, it was the best/only manual available, than that's how it was.

This was a fun (and illustrated!) personal essay: And the Pursuit of Happiness

Comments

[birdgirl78.livejournal.com]

awwww the S&W kind of makes me sad. Yes, we* all know enough to know when to uphold and when to suspend grammar rules, but MOST people don't. I still find S&W valuable in the sense that one must first know all the rules in order to understand when to bend or break them. Poor unloved grammarians.

*defining "we" as the kind of academic and/or intellectual who gets asked to write a blurb for the 50th bday of S&W. Or the canaries in the coal mine of American education