Readers: One of the bibles of writing is “Elements of Style,” a small but vital manual for simple, clean, powerful writing. It’s likely most of your writing colleagues have copies. Eliot owns three. The book was written by William Strunk Jr., professor of English at Cornell University. Its first edition topped out at just 33 pages. But each page is gold. Decades later, and after Strunk’s death, former student  E.B. White, who would become an essayist and novelist (''Stuart Little,'' ''Charlotte's Web'' ), revised the book. It has sold millions of copies, and versions are available online for the cost of lunch. 

Strunk’s first edition came out in 1918! That’s more than a century ago. Good advice for good writing is timeless.

Here are some of the book’s directives:

• “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 part.”

• “Do not overwrite; do not overstate; avoid the use of qualifiers; do not affect a breezy style; use orthodox spelling; do not explain too much; avoid fancy words; do not take shortcuts at the cost of clarity; prefer the standard to the offbeat; make sure the reader knows who is speaking; do not use dialect; revise and rewrite.''

• “Clarity, clarity, clarity… select a word whose meaning is clear.’’

• “Use the active voice. The active voice is usually more direct and vigorous than the passive: “I shall always remember my first visit to Boston.” This is much better than “My first visit to Boston will always be remembered by me.”

•“Revise and rewrite.”

And:

•“We approach style in its broader meaning: style in the sense of what is distinguished and distinguishing:

“Times like these try men’s souls.”

“How trying it is to live in these times!”

“These are trying times for men’s souls.”

“Soulwise, these are trying times.”

Or:

“These are the times that try men’s souls.”

Do these nuggets of advice sound familiar? It’s just what we’ve been saying in this blog. But now you heard it from Elements of Style. That’s pretty darn near gospel.

Watch this on video! https://youtu.be/ZnK3wcm9mmw

Next time: Using, utilizing, accessing, applying the thesaurus for fun, entertainment, amusement, diversion.

Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong," features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police.” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com

Haven’t signed up for our newsletter yet? Do it now! And tell your friends!