Happy Birthday Professor Strunk

Today is the birthday of William Strunk, Jr., college professor and grammarian. You might recognize the name. Most writers do. Professor Strunk (b. 1869) taught English at Cornell University and wrote a tiny book on grammar meant to ease the burden on professors and students struggling with the rights and wrongs of writing prose. The book was all of 43 pages long. Elements of Style might not have been large in size but it was huge in impact. That was in 1918.

In 1959 a one time student of Professor Strunk revised and published the book again. That student was E.B. White who would go on to make his own name in the literary field as an essayist and columnist of The New Yorker and Harper’s Magazine and as author of such books as Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web.

I first saw Elements of Style while walking through a mall with my wife. I was still a young man and beginning to rediscover my love of writing. Standing outside a bookstore in the mall I met a woman doing a book signing. She was the first working writer I had met. She chatted with my wife and I and I asked some questions. When she heard that I had a longing writing she reached into her purse and pulled out a well-worn copy of Elements of Style and waved it at me.

“You must have this,” she said. “I carry it everywhere. When I’m in line at the grocery store, I read a few lines. I’ve had this for years.” I could tell.

Of course, I bought a copy I still have decades after meeting her.

The book is longer now because White added material, but it is still the smallest grammar/writing book I am aware of. Ask any working writer if they have “Strunk and White” and you’ll see them smile and say, “Yes.”

William Strunk said, "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts."

Both Strunk and White are gone now, but their work lives on after them—and there is another lesson in that.

Alton Gansky

Comments

[Richard Mabry]

Al,
I agree with you about the importance of Strunk & White. This book is more important to a writer than his/her computer. It was one of the first writing books I bought and is the one I consult most often.

[Kay Day]

I have the same issue that you pictured. I want the one with the Basset Hound on it though. Cute is always good.