tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post6788538127527624165..comments2024-01-06T10:36:04.084-05:00Comments on A Commonplace Blog: The Elements of StyleD. G. Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10659136455045567825noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-72638572137315975592009-11-06T10:17:14.041-05:002009-11-06T10:17:14.041-05:00Absolutely. Robert Graves and Alan Hodge’s Reader ...Absolutely. Robert Graves and Alan Hodge’s <i>Reader Over Your Shoulder</i> (1943) is the book I depend on. The authors include specimen texts, which illustrate the stylistic blemishes they are criticizing. Much less dogmatic than Strunk and White as a consequence.D. G. Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10659136455045567825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-55125719044337401622009-11-05T23:20:22.592-05:002009-11-05T23:20:22.592-05:00Can someone recommend alternatives to The Elements...Can someone recommend alternatives to The Elements of Style?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-51592895740328718102009-11-02T13:38:23.509-05:002009-11-02T13:38:23.509-05:00Thanks for the links to the Language Log, Jake.
G...Thanks for the links to the Language Log, Jake.<br /><br />Geoffrey K. Pullum’s five-year-old <a href="http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001913.html" rel="nofollow">post</a> on “Fossilized Prejudices about ‘However’ ” was personally fascinating to me, because (as a quick check of this blog’s archives confirmed) I never, never, never use the adverb <i>However</i> to start a sentence.<br /><br />Pullum traces Strunk’s dogmatic injunction against starting a sentence with the adverb to turn-of-the-century literature, in which it almost invariably fell into the “second position.”<br /><br />Who knows where I learned the usage? In a response, Mark Liberman <a href="http://158.130.17.5/~myl/languagelog/archives/001914.html" rel="nofollow">finds</a> that, in his later works, Henry James uses the similar connective adverb <i>nevertheless</i> almost never in the “clause-initial position.”<br /><br />About the time that I was getting serious about my prose, I was also reading heavy doses of late James. But it is just as likely that, in idiosyncratically refused to start a second with a connective adverb, I may only be identifying myself as Strunk’s disciple, dutifully repeating his dogma without even thinking about it.<br /><br />Neither usage—in first or second position—is better or any more correct than the other. The problem starts when one or the other is <i>declared</i> better or correct, on no other basis than a preference for a certain way of writing. Pullum’s conclusion is worth quoting for its pungency as well as its validity: <br /><br />“This isn’t about English grammar or about good writing style. It’s about orneriness and crotchetiness and the petty conservativism of people who regard themselves as guardians of some sort of literary establishment but haven’t really got a very good eye for syntactic generalizations.”D. G. Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10659136455045567825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-76050023843903636752009-11-02T10:38:25.868-05:002009-11-02T10:38:25.868-05:00Whenever I read about Elements of Style, I'm r...Whenever I read about <em>Elements of Style</em>, I'm reminded of <a href="http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001913.html" rel="nofollow">Language Log's posts</a>, which include vastly more invective than necessary but are nonetheless entertaining, perhaps for the reason of invective.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-3729398399465312652009-11-02T10:14:00.639-05:002009-11-02T10:14:00.639-05:00In The Sound on the Page: Style and Voice in Writi...In The Sound on the Page: Style and Voice in Writing, by Ben Yagoda (HarperResource, 2004), page xxi, Harold Bloom is <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=wE0erG8IfRUC&pg=PR21&dq=%27It+is+a+shirtsleeve+doctrine+of+writing.%22#v=onepage&q=%27It%20is%20a%20shirtsleeve%20doctrine%20of%20writing.%22&f=false" rel="nofollow">quoted</a> as saying: <br /><br />"It [i.e. The Elements of Style] outlaws everything that I care for in writing, in literature, in the act of writing. It tries to pretend it's against the overly baroque, but what it's against is what I would say is imagination itself."<br /><br />"It is a shirtsleeve doctrine of writing. It's based upon a kind of false social contract, a mock civility, combined with that wretched thing, a mock humility. Why the appeal? I'm afraid it's a social dialectic. If you can get yourself to write like that and admire writing like that, then you must be a gentleman or gentlewoman, rather than a parvenu. I had a creepy feeling as I browsed in it. Those qualities which the latter half is rejecting, and which are my essence as a human being, a writer and a teacher-- those are exactly the qualities Yale would not tolerate in me. That tells me what this is. The genteel tradition-- or the Gentile tradition-- is what Strunk and White comes down to."Dave Lullhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01053227199985293516noreply@blogger.com