Strunk and White's The Elements of Style deals only with style in the narrow sense. It gives advice on grammar, word choice, appropriate use of different syntactical constructions and similar topics. It is liberally illustrated with examples, with correct and incorrect usage in parallel, and has a whole section on common mistakes.

"Strunk and White" is a classic and a favourite of proscriptivist "grammar nazis", but as a description of how English works it's now sorely out of date.

"much of the content of The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White is about a hundred years old (Strunk was born in 1869 and had published the first volume of this slim book by 1918); its advice is often ludicrously old-fashioned, rooted in claims about 'correctness' that cannot be taken seriously." (Huddleston and Pullum, A Student's Introduction to English Grammar)

June 1994

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Related reviews:

- books about the English language