The Elements of Style
William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White · 1959
The Elements of Style (1959) is a book by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White on Writing & Copywriting. A Cornell professor's private grammar handbook, revived by his student E.B. White, distilled into a few dozen rules on usage, composition, and style that turn cloudy prose into clear, vigorous, concrete writing.
The shortest book that will make you a measurably better writer, and the one nearly every good writer in English has already absorbed.
Two of the ideas you’ll keep
The Clif summary of The Elements of Style pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first two.
- "Omit needless words" is the book's spine: every word should tell. Constructions like "the question as to whether," "there is no doubt but that," and "the fact that" are padding that a stronger phrase ("whether," "doubtless," or nothing at all) replaces outright.
- Prefer the active voice. "My first visit to Boston will always be remembered by me" is, in Strunk's words, less direct, less bold, and less concise than "I shall always remember my first visit to Boston", and the gain compounds across a whole page.
The other 5 — and the full 11-minute summary — are in the app.
What’s inside: 9 chapters
The whole summary runs about 11 minutes, read or listened to.
- The Little Book and How It Survived
- Elementary Rules of Usage: The Comma and Its Discontents
- The Paragraph as the Unit of Composition
- Use the Active Voice
- Omit Needless Words
- Be Definite, Specific, Concrete
- Words and Expressions Commonly Misused
- An Approach to Style: White's Twenty-One Reminders
- Why the Little Book Still Wins Arguments
Finish The Elements of Style tonight.
Read or listen to the full summary in about 11 minutes, then keep the ideas with a minute of review a day. Start with the 2-minute quiz — no card required.
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