Are you new on Steemit or in blogging in general and struggle to juggle with your thoughts? Are you someone for whom English is not the native language but still want to use it as best as you can? Or do you want to give vigour to your writings and catch the - legendary short - attention span of the Steemit users?
Well, friends, if you answered YES to even only one of these questions, I have a book for you: The Elements of Style.
Conceived by the professor William Strunk Jr as a concise American English style guide for his Cornell student, it was published in 1918 and would have stayed an obscure little college manual if 38 years later one of Strunk’s students (EB White) was not commissioned to revise it in order to make it commercially viable.
Since then, the “little book” has grown to a respectable size, sold ten million copies in three editions, and helped people ever since to achieve the most lucid prose possible. And believe it or not, it’s a joy to read.
The philosophy of William Strunk Jr can be summed up in this paragraph:
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. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
For the non-native English speakers (like myself) there are some useful reminders about English syntax, from the most basic:
To the most obscure and the less respected nowadays:
It may seem as trivial stuff and you may feel yourself above all these considerations, but these rules are necessary and useful once you attack the core concept and objective of this little book: to achieve the maximum effect with the minimum number of words.
To achieve that, Strunk recommends several basic methods, among which:
This is true not only in narrative concerned principally with action but in writing of any kind. Many a tame sentence of description or exposition can be made lively and emphatic by substituting a transitive in the active voice for some such perfunctory expression as there is or could be heard.
Consciously or unconsciously, the reader is dissatisfied with being told only what is not; the reader wishes to be told what is. Hence, as a rule, it is better to express even a negative in positive form.
the surest way to arouse and hold the readers attention is by being specific, definite, and concrete.
Rich, ornate prose is hard to digest, generally unwholesome, and sometimes nauseating.
The proper place in the sentence for the word or group of words that the writer desires to make most prominent is usually the end.
Rather, very, little, pretty — these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words.
and above all else:
Of course, there is absolutely no reason why these prescriptions should be followed by each and everyone of us. Each subject, each article, each writer has his/her own voice and style.
This book was devoted to help English students to form their thoughts and to master their own idiom and their own train of thoughts as best as possible, but there is no denying the usefulness and the stimulation of this little book.
It will really challenge you to find the most adequate way to put your sentences on the paper, with the shortest sentences, in the clearest way. Your prose will improve. Your readers will approve.
You can easily buy it online and trust me it is worth every single word! But you can also very easily find it for free in a 30 seconds search on Google ;)
NB: All quotes are from the book by Strunk and White.