Well lo and behold, today is the 50th anniversary of that magical little compendium The Elements of Style. True to form, The New York Times highlighted the day and let five grammargicians have their way with it–and their way, frankly, was not so kind. You can read the article here.
Nevertheless, I’m going to stick my own grammatical neck out and say it: if you want to break the rules, you need to learn the rules first. Struck and White are, as far as I’m concerned, the A#1 resource for learning to piece together a concise piece of writing that is well structured and clearly states an idea. I’ve been known to hand it to students who are 13, 14 years old (and even sometimes those about to graduate high school) as a great little guide for Getting What You Mean On Your Paper.
God bless the crafty writers with their beautiful prose, but if you’re looking for the basics and great examples of what you might do versus what you should do as you learn to write, The Elements of Style is still where it’s at.
