For 50 years, writers and editors have relied on a pocket-size grammar
reference book entitled The Elements of Style, but commonly referred to
as "Strunk and White" for its authors, William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White.
You probably recognize the name E.B. White as the author of Charlotte's
Webb, Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan. The Pulitzer Prize
winning author also wrote for The New Yorker for six decades.
The 1959 publication was actually White's edited and updated rewrite of Strunk's
1918 grammar guide. Strunk had been White's English professor at
Cornell.
The Elements of Style is the best-known and most widely used grammar
guide, having sold more than 10 million copies. But not everyone is
enamored of it.
In an essay for Chronicles of Higher Education in April, University of
Edinburgh English professor Geoffrey K. Pullum shreds Strunk and White.
Pullum's view: "(B)oth authors were grammatical incompetents."
Pullum writes: "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 then picks the volume apart, particularly the authors'
misunderstanding of active and passive voices.
Pullum concludes: "Several generations of college students learned
their grammar from the uninformed bossiness of Strunk and White, and
the result is a nation of educated people who know they feel vaguely
anxious and insecure whenever they write 'however' or 'than me' or
'was' or 'which,' but can't tell you why. The land of the free in the
grip of The Elements of Style.
"So I won't be ... toasting 50 years of the overopinionated and
underinformed little book that put so many people in this unhappy state
of grammatical angst. I've spent too much of my scholarly life studying
English grammar in a serious way. English syntax is a deep and
interesting subject. It is much too important to be reduced to a bunch
of trivial don't-do-this prescriptions by a pair of idiosyncratic
bumblers who can't even tell when they've broken their own misbegotten
rules."
The entire article can be found at:
http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/25497
Although Pullum is on target, I still recommend that you keep a copy of
Strunk and White handy.
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2 comments:
Some of the rules in in The Elements of Style helped me. When I applied them, I got published. I still use those rules working on my 4th novel. Great blog. Best
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Pullum seems to enjoy stemming a small wave on the incoming tide called the evolution of language. After all, we are talking about style here, not Newton's Law of Gravity, and I have a variety of style manuals in my library. Perhaps Elements of Style has a few issues, even some contradictions. Still, it remains an important guide to writing and far from a list of arcane, hard and fast rules likely to come out of Pullum's work. Inflexible rules are a curse for writers. Like you, I'll keep my Elements of Style close. As for the professor and what are his good intentions, I suggest a few pints to lessen his rage against the tide.
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