The Elements of Style

The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr.
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This book is evil. You don't have to believe me. Read a professional linguist's opinion: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/50years.pdf

I hate this book more than any other book I've ever read.

I had a history professor who was an ardent fan of this book. When I turned in my first paper in the class, he complained that I used the passive voice too often. Since I actually like to read about linguistics as a hobby and know what the passive voice is, I analyzed my paper and found only five passive verbs in the six page paper, which didn't seem like an excessive amount.

But I figured it is his class and I should do what is asked of me. So for my next paper I only used the passive voice once (for a sentence like "He was born in 1843 in Midland, Texas." or some such thing). The paper came back marked "You use the passive voice too much."

OK, I thought, that is crazy, but still, it is his class, I'll humor him. The next paper had zero instances of the passive voice. I wrote awkward and non-standard sentences like "The voters of Alabama elected him governor." and "His mother gave birth to him in 1878."

The paper came back marked "You use the passive voice too much." This was completely baffling. So I ask him to please point out any instance of the passive voice. Instead, he gave me an assignment to read this book before my next paper was due.

It turned out, that like Strunk and White, he didn't actually know what the passive voice was or why it was bad. This book does tell writers to not use the passive voice, but some of the examples they give aren't in the passive voice. And, like most of the rest of the rules in the book, they frequently violate their own rules throughout the book.


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