Strunk and White

I am, for many reasons, greatly indebted to the authors of The Elements of Style. I offer here a toast to them. May their writing instruct another generation to write more clearly.

“Show! Don’t tell!” Mr. White shouted. He wrote the words on the black board. Turning to face the class, he glared. Two hundred freshmen eyed him back. Their eyes were glazed over. One yawned. Another snored.

Mr. White took term paper off of the stack on his desk, and read, “Susan was happy today. The people she met also felt happy, it seemed to her that the world was an interesting place full of fun and very unique adventures.” He dropped the paper into the trash. He spat out, “Jennifer, what is the problem with ‘very unique’?”

The a girl in the middle of the room stared back. The color drained from her face. “Uh…” She stammered.

“Very unique. If something is unique then there is only one of them. Something is either unique or not unique. It can’t be very unique.” Mr. White chided. On the board he scrawled out “Rule 13: Delete useless words!”

Grabbing another paper from the stack he read: “The game was going so well, but Jena was hit by the ball. She got angry and James got hit by the bat that was thrown by Jena.” He paused, tossed the paper into the waste basket with its comrades, and growled, “Stuart, what is the problem with this… this thing?”

Stuart responded with a snore. The yardstick cracked down on his desk. He opened his eyes and yawned.

Stuart looked around the room, a long haired man who was dressed in an half buttoned, un-tucked shirt and baggy pants was lecturing in front of the class. He listened for a few minutes to the lecture, promptly got bored with his teachers command to ‘feel what you write’, and went back to sleep.

Stuart smiled at Mr. White, and chirped back, “Rule 10: Use the active voice.”