#Strunk and White

[idroolinmysleep]

Well I’m in the apostrophe + s camp because of Strunk & White (it’s the first rule in the book, in fact), which agrees with The New York Times and The Washington Post, but AP’s own house style goes the other way. Whatever. Fight on, people.

[espadieros]

I will rag on the English language as much as the next guy, because this professor was right.

Or as Strunk and White said in Elements of Style (to the best of my memory), "Feel free to ignore everything in this book rather than write something inelegant."

[kagenoneko]

I find this to be an interesting article. Such an odd place for this kind of this article.

[calicojack1718]

Autism Appreciation Month: The Way of the Mask, Navigating the Neuroconvergent World

Being autistic in the neuronomral world is dangerous. If an autistic person wants to have a job or relationships with neuronormal people, we need to mask our autism. It is a sad reality.

Mia Culpa Blogging and blogs are a fragile thing, especially when the blogger is a full-time citizen and only a part-time blogger as I am. When last we left it, I had returned from China with the four months of salary that #COVID-19 and ridiculous Chinese bureaucracy had forced me to leave there in 2020, but also, with a cold. The week after returning, I managed to get to work everyday, but was…

[orcboxer]

I definitely recommend reading classic literature but if you're like me you gotta do it with a buddy or two so you can talk about it together. It also helps if you look up the historical/cultural context and learn why it became a classic, even if you just skim the sparknotes on it. I swear to god you'll get so much better at media literacy and writing in general.

[yesthatsatumbler]

AFAICT the problem is that Standard English does exist, but the Standard English doesn't (unlike the situation with Italian, Croatian, or Icelandic; I'm not sure to what extent this is true for German, French, or Spanish, all of which are spoken in multiple major countries) - that is, there's about two dozen (maybe more) different claims to Standard English, from Orrm to Wijk (and maybe a few even later than that - Rosenfelder in particular might qualify).

AFAIK probably the only one of those with lasting influence to the present day is Noah Webster's standard, though Brigham Young's standard also has some extant currency, and I guess Strunk & White's standard would count if we ignore how incomplete it is.

The mid-18th century, but yes. AFAIK post-1776 there's been no attempts to impose a cross-national standard on English that didn't flop so horribly that they hardly count.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writers on Writing: William Strunk Jr. & E. B. White

11 Elementary Principles of Composition

Choose a suitable design and stick to it.

Make the paragraph the unit of composition.

Use the active voice.

Put statements in positive form.

Use definite, specific, concrete language.

Omit needless words.

Avoid a succession of loose sentences.

Express coordinate ideas in similar form.

Keep related words together.

In summaries, keep to one tense.

Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end.

From "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk Jr. & E. B. White

E. B. White holds the rare distinction of being admired both by adults, for such breathtaking essays as “Here is New York" and “Once More to the Lake," and by children, for such wondrous stories as “Charlotte's Web" and “Trumpet of the Swan." White is also revered by writers for bringing us The Elements of Style, a classic on the art of writing good prose, in any form. White actually just tweaked and arranged publication of the book, which was originally a privately printed text by one of his professors, William Strunk Jr.

[gtunesmiff]

Vonnegut’s 8 rules for writing with style:

1. Find a subject you care about

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about.  It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style. I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way - although 1 would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.

2. Do not ramble, though

I won't ramble on about that.

3. Keep it simple

As for your use of language: Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound.  ‘To be or not to be?’ asks Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story ‘Eveline’ is just this one: ‘She was tired.’ At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do. Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and earth.’

4. Have the guts to cut

It may be that you, too, are capable of making necklaces for Cleopatra, so to speak. But your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.

5. Sound like yourself

The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child.  English was the novelist Joseph Conrad’s third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench. All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens not to be standard English, and it shows itself when you write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue. I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.

6. Say what you mean to say

I used to be exasperated by such teachers, but am no more. I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say. My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that I would become understandable — and therefore understood. And there went my dream of doing with words what Pablo Picasso did with paint or what any number of jazz idols did with music. If I broke all the rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean, and strung them together higgledly-piggledy, I would simply not be understood. So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style writing if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood. Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.

7. Pity the readers

Readers have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately. They have to read, an art so difficult that most people don’t really master it even after having studied it all through grade school and high school — twelve long years. So this discussion must finally acknowledge that our stylistic options as writers are neither numerous nor glamorous, since our readers are bound to be such imperfect artists.  Our audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient teachers, ever willing to simplify and clarify, whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales.

8. For really detailed advice… go read The Elements of Style

For a discussion of literary style in a narrower sense, a more technical sense, I commend to your attention The Elements of Style, by Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White. E. B.

~ from How to write with style: 8 non-obvious insights from the master of personality || Nathan Baugh

[sigmastolen]

"we open with gratitude for the invitation to join this conversation, for and to the editors staging the conversation in this specific way -- a way (which is here) that, we sense, is reaching toward us, and at the same time is a way of knowing, in itself, that is right alongside a way of being in relation. such a reaching and knowing, such a relation, grounds this conversation in generosity and presence.

"and it is our luck to express some thoughts here in this space, together, which, for us, is a way of breathing that had come to be here as writing, an expression that is listening and learning, unfolding; [...]"

the whole fucking chapter is like this

i am going to gouge out my eyes

is this??? what the fucking conservative pundits?? are complaining about re: academic elites??????? i mean i know it's not but i am a fucking liberal academic elite and i can feel myself beginning to boil with anti-intellectual anti-sjw anti-fucking-snowflake rage

who is out here letting this unreadable woo-woo sentimental garbage be published in an actual book? (again, i mean, i know-- the editors' names are right there)

am i too irony poisoned for this reading?

[transmutationisms]

every now and then i see someone using inquire/enquire or insure/ensure in ways i would normally not and i never know if i'm out of touch with current common usage or if they are

[prophecydungeon]

14, 15, 17. For the write meme. :3c

14. What's the worst writing advice you've ever come across?

strunk & white's elements of style.

15. If you could choose one of your fics to be filmed, which would you choose?

hmm... i think i have to give this to P vs NP, because when i was writing it, i had some really really specific visuals and scenery in mind; i'm not usually Extremely Visual when writing, but this fic has a lot of visuals tied to it in my brain. it's functionally a Road Trip Fic and a lot of road-trip-ness was actually directly inspired by the area i live in now, well before i moved here, and i think about it every time i take a long drive just for fun; that's what a lot of this fic would be if it were filmed, and it'd be cool as hell.

17. Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order?

oh, very much out of order, lmao. i get hit with inspiration very much at random and i ride the wave whenever it happens, plus i often end up moving around entire sections, so really nothing happens from start to finish when i write.

[disco-horse]

me, seeing someone describe Strunk & White as a good resource:

[ineffable-gallimaufry]

i saw the dungeon masters guide at the bookstore and i was like "hell yeah lemme see how much it costs" . $50. i need to kill wotc

[therehavebeenstranger]

hey tumblr come here a second. sit down. that's not what a run on sentence is.

a sentence being long does not make it a run on. a sentence containing many punctuation marks, provided that they are used correctly, is not a run on sentence. if a sentence has two or more independent clauses incorrectly joined by punctuation, it is a run on sentence. that's it. for example, if i had written “if a sentence has two or more independent clauses incorrectly joined by punctuation it is a run on sentence,” that WOULD be a run on sentence because i omitted a necessary comma. you are not being grammatically rebellious if you write long sentences--and that's fine! the point of this kind of grammar, the kind that is actually GRAMMAR and not STYLE, is sentence clarity. a long sentence can be a beautiful tool and you don't want to deprive your reader of their ability to understand it, nor deprive yourself of the ability to write a better one--for example, challenge yourself to write a long periodic sentence (which is a sentence that concludes with its independent clause) and then to rewrite it as a long cumulative sentence (which begins with its independent clause--i know, doesn't it seem like the names should be swapped?) and see how the effect is altered! english grammar is one of those cases where the more you know the rules, the more fun you can have.

everyone hate my loquacious swag. its always "why did you make this sentence so long" and "why do you use so many commas and em dashes" and never "how did you come up with run on sentence" or "writing that run on sentence looked fun"

[griseldabanks]

A novelist friend compares the rules of grammar, punctuation, and usage to a sort of old-fashioned etiquette. He says that writing is a bit like inviting someone to your house. The writer is the host, the reader the guest, and you, the writer, follow the etiquette because you want your readers to be more comfortable, especially if you're planning to serve them something they might not be expecting.

- Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer

[midmorninggrey]

There's gotta be a name for that drop in your gut when you remember proper writing requires silly things like "tenses" and "grammar."