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From: chabot@amber.DEC
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Chris's Major Conniption
Message-ID: <3943@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 17-Oct-84 15:23:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.3943
Posted: Wed Oct 17 15:23:50 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 18-Oct-84 19:24:36 EDT
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acf4!greenber  ==  >
> Have you ever read a book called _The Elements of Style_, by William Strunk
> and E.B. White??? 
>
> What a marvelous book!! It puts each and every one of your puny arguments
> out to lunch.  It too discusses when a rule can be discarded.  It doesn't
> encourage it, though.  And I'll take even third-grade english-book content
> as superior to advice you give.  

I feel safe saying that most people who have continued their education into
college have heard of this guide.  But a large clue to using this book can
be found in its title: the word "style".  It presents a style that the authors
consider to be a good model of effective written English communication, but
certainly not the *only* style to follow.  To guide the student of the book,
there is indeed a list of rules to follow--but these are certainly not hard and
fast rules of written English, but merely the guidelines the authors suggest
and demonstrate and argue.  

Teachers do this business of creating commandments out of suggestions...a
somewhat lamentable practice in that it doesn't necessarily directly force the
less-inquisitive to figure out the reasons behind the rules.  I had teachers
insist as forcefully as Strunk does in White's anecdotes on certain arbitrary
although useful rules all sorts of lower school disciplines--not just grammar.
[I still retain a peculiar method of writing a cursive "x" one English teacher
demanded...perhaps out of affection.]

But anyway, to take Strunk and White as the Law of the Language is as ridiculous
as any other failure to discern advice from "gospel".

I have a certain fondness for Fowler's book, myself...


Most sincere apologies for such a wicked, wicked flame,
L S Chabot
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