{"id":488,"date":"2009-04-11T11:31:02","date_gmt":"2009-04-11T18:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/?p=488"},"modified":"2009-04-11T11:31:02","modified_gmt":"2009-04-11T18:31:02","slug":"strunk-and-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/2009\/04\/strunk-and-white\/","title":{"rendered":"Strunk and White considered harmful?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Whoa. Check out <a href=\"http:\/\/chronicle.com\/free\/v55\/i32\/32b01501.htm\">this<\/a> brutal takedown of the beloved <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/020530902X\/dubinkoinfo-20\">The Elements of Style<\/a>. Even though I generally have little patience for grammar nazis, I couldn&#8217;t stop reading things like<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>The Elements of Style<\/em> does not deserve the enormous esteem in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges from limp platitudes to inconsistent nonsense.<\/p>\n<p>and on the popularity of the book<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">This was most unfortunate for the field of English grammar, because both authors were grammatical incompetents. Strunk had very little analytical understanding of syntax, White even less. Certainly White was a fine writer, but he was not qualified as a grammarian.<\/p>\n<p>The article goes on to cite numerous examples at various levels of pedantry.<\/p>\n<p>Many people including myself appreciate straightforward guidelines, a framework in which to think about good and bad ways to put prose together. Strunk and White does this better than anything else I&#8217;ve seen. Effective writing leaps off the page&#8211;picky rules can go leap elsewhere. As for me, I&#8217;ll stick with Strunk, though not as a religion. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0767903099\/dubinkoinfo-20\">Sin and Syntax<\/a> is another great roadmap to the wonderful wacky English language. -m<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Whoa. Check out this brutal takedown of the beloved The Elements of Style. Even though I generally have little patience for grammar nazis, I couldn&#8217;t stop reading things like The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous esteem in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges from limp platitudes to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[30],"tags":[701,704,698,702,699,703,700,1167],"class_list":["post-488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-grammar","tag-guidelines","tag-prose","tag-rules","tag-strunk","tag-syntax","tag-white","tag-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8eo8l-7S","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":489,"href":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions\/489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubinko.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}