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From the Copy Editor's Desk

Bliss Cochran

Cleaning Up Your Language with Strunk & White

Here's a slender book of writing advice that not only deserves a place next to your computer, but a thorough reading: Strunk & White's "Elements of Style."

An English instructor named William Strunk Jr. originally self-published this collection of writing guidelines for his students in 1919. E.B. White (of "Charlotte's Web" fame) first encountered it as a required text in Strunk's classroom at Cornell. (Strunk's original book reportedly is still available in e-book form.) Thirty-eight years later, MacMillan Publishing asked White to update it, after Strunk's death. So the two never actually collaborated, though they knew each other. Now it's in its fourth edition and another contributor, Roger Angell, has revised it once again.

A dry, boring text you want to consult only for emergency grammatical question? Far from it! At less than 100 pages, it's a short read, and sure to help you learn to overcome the mediocre and keep your writing fresh. A few examples:

• If a writer's style ever leaves you feeling a tad queasy, perhaps she broke this rule: "Do not overwrite. Rich, ornate prose is hard to digest, generally unwholesome and sometimes nauseating..."

• Not to mince words, White called qualifiers such as 'rather,' 'very,' 'little,' and 'pretty' "the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words..." (So cut that pretty little sucker out right now.)

• Have you been dressing up your prose with every descriptive word you could find? Instead, "write with nouns and verbs...not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place."

• If you struggle to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition, you'll be delighted to know that "time...has softened that rigid decree... Not only is the preposition acceptable at the end, sometimes it is more effective in that spot than anywhere else...a matter of ear." The same goes with the choice between "me" and "I": sometimes judgment calls for the former, as in "The worst tennis player around here is me." The alternative, they agree, sounds stilted.

• You also have permission, depending on judgment again, to split infinitives, as in "I cannot bring myself to really like the fellow." It's a matter of avoiding stiffness and formality.

• There's a crucial difference between two very often-confused words: effect and affect. "Effect, as a noun, means 'result'; as a verb, means 'to bring about,' (or) 'to accomplish' (not to be confused with affect, which means 'to influence'). They didn't supply examples, so I will: "Screaming at a teenager only has the effect (result) of inspiring a murderous rage in him." "We plan to effect (to bring about) several changes in the coven's rituals this equinox festival." "Dude, I smoked a little pot at the rave, but I swear it didn't affect (influence) my driving."

• Here's another one you might not have known: "farther serves best as a distance word, further as a time or quantity word."

• When is a dash appropriate? Some writers are so fond of them, they use them to string together sentences, add explanatory clauses, even to replace quote marks. Mr. Strunk says, "A dash is a mark of separation stronger than a comma, less formal than a colon, and more relaxed than parentheses...Use a dash only when a more common mark of punctuation seems inadequate.

Not only inappropriate words, but indiscriminate dashes, exclamation marks, italics, quote marks, commas, all-caps and apostrophes can doom an otherwise well-written piece to rejection in the professional publishing world. It's a rare editor who is willing to weed them out and perhaps even explain why they need correcting. So if your work is destined for publications beyond T-zero Xpandizine where we're all in learning mode, you'd do well to invest in and investigate the wisdom of Strunk and White.

Now a confession: it's been decades since I last consulted "Elements of Style" and I had forgotten what entertaining reading it can be. But then, the authors couldn't expect us to make good use of it to write our own entertaining works if their guidelines put us to sleep. I found myself wishing I'd had an instructor like William Strunk, or a fellow student like E.B. White, as my mentor.

Next month: Hot off the press, a contemporary style book you'll want to keep next to your Strunk & White, if you can put it down long enough.

The T-Zero Xpandizine Copy Editor
Bliss Cochran