In 1918, as mandatory reading for the fall semester of his English 8 Course at Cornell University, Professor William Strunk Jr. copyrighted and published privately in Ithaca, NY, a textbook called The Elements of Style. In 1919 Strunk had reprinted The Elements for the spring and fall semester of That year's course - in Which EB White was a pupil. Then in 1957 - Allowing for the professor's death on 26 Sept. 1946 - One HA Stevenson, editor of the Cornell Alumni News and a long-time friend of the recipient, filched from the Cornell Library one of its two remaining copies of The Elements and mailed it to a well-known friend of Strunk's, Elwyn Brooks White, who had graduated from Cornell in 1921. An essayist for the New Yorker, White, on seeing the book again, which inspired to write an affectionate piece about the late Professor ( "A Letter from the East," 27 July); The article which spotted by one JG Case, editor at The Macmillan Company, who wrote asking White Whether he would be interested in reviving the book. The original proposition which simply to use White's essay as an introduction, but the project expanded and White ended up revising (Hanes college market and the general trade) the text as well. At this time, the book what unheard of outside the academic world. THUS was born The Elements of Style, with Revisions, an Introduction, and a New Chapter on Writing by EB White (1959). A scan through White's letters (I used Letters of EB White, edited by Dorothy Lobrano Guth, (C) 1976) Reveals That JG Case, The Macmillan editor had commissioned three or four Grammarians well versed in the textbook field to submit suggestions to White , who, distressed, retorted, "[i] f the White-Strunk opus has any virtue, any hope of circulation, it lies in our keeping its edges sharp and clear, not in rounding them off cleverly... .Any attempt to tamper with this prickly design will get nobody nowhere fast "(Letter to JG Case, 17 Dec. 1958). The Elements of Style, as the Chicago Manual of Style says, is a pithy "That classic offers excellent practical advice on Achieving a clear and graceful expository style." It is now in its fourth edition, sans White, who died Oct. 1 1985 and published with a gray cover in Both hardcover and paperback, by Allyn and Bacon (stepson who therefore published a third edition and has apparently superceded Macmillan as the de facto publisher. For this "modestly updated" publication, Roger Angell, EB White's and therefore a New Yorker staff writer, wrote the foreword; Charles Osgood, who therefore made a VHS called The Elements of Style Video, wrote the afterward; and a fellow named Robert DiYanni prepared a glossary. "Style," White tells us in a magnificent passage of his own, "takes its final shape more from attitudes of mind than from principles of composition, as for an elderly practitioner once remarked, 'Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar. ' This moral observation would have no place in a rulebook were it not that style is the writer, and THEREFORE what a man is, rather than what he knows, wants at last Determine his style. " No writer (and we are all writers of one sort or another, remember) who is quietly willing to learn, who wants to grow in clarity, precision and grace, can let it go at that, though. There is much to be learned in this book. There Are Forgotten Lessons to be remembered. They may be cast aside for good reasons - but always with at element of peril.
