From The Chronicle of Higher Education:
April 16 is the 50th anniversary of the publication of a little book that is loved and admired throughout American academe. Celebrations, readings, and toasts are being held, and a commemorative edition has been released.
I won’t be celebrating.
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 inconsistent nonsense. Its enormous influence has not improved American students’ grasp of English grammar; it has significantly degraded it.
. . . .
After Strunk’s death, White published a New Yorker article reminiscing about him and was asked by Macmillan to revise and expand Elements for commercial publication. It took off like a rocket (in 1959) and has sold millions.
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. Despite the post-1957 explosion of theoretical linguistics, Elements settled in as the primary vehicle through which grammar was taught to college students and presented to the general public, and the subject was stuck in the doldrums for the rest of the 20th century.
Notice what I am objecting to is not the style advice in Elements, which might best be described the way The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy describes Earth: mostly harmless. Some of the recommendations are vapid, like “Be clear” (how could one disagree?). Some are tautologous, like “Do not explain too much.” (Explaining too much means explaining more than you should, so of course you shouldn’t.) Many are useless, like “Omit needless words.” (The students who know which words are needless don’t need the instruction.) Even so, it doesn’t hurt to lay such well-meant maxims before novice writers.
Even the truly silly advice, like “Do not inject opinion,” doesn’t really do harm. (No force on earth can prevent undergraduates from injecting opinion. And anyway, sometimes that is just what we want from them.) But despite the “Style” in the title, much in the book relates to grammar, and the advice on that topic does real damage. It is atrocious. Since today it provides just about all of the grammar instruction most Americans ever get, that is something of a tragedy. Following the platitudinous style recommendations of Elements would make your writing better if you knew how to follow them, but that is not true of the grammar stipulations.
. . . .
For me to report that I paid my bill by saying “The bill was paid by me,” with no stress on “me,” would sound inane. (I’m the utterer, and the utterer always counts as familiar and well established in the discourse.) But that is no argument against passives generally. “The bill was paid by an anonymous benefactor” sounds perfectly natural. Strunk and White are denigrating the passive by presenting an invented example of it deliberately designed to sound inept.
After this unpromising start, there is some fairly sensible style advice: The authors explicitly say they do not mean “that the writer should entirely discard the passive voice,” which is “frequently convenient and sometimes necessary.” They give good examples to show that the choice between active and passive may depend on the topic under discussion.
Sadly, writing tutors tend to ignore this moderation, and simply red-circle everything that looks like a passive, just as Microsoft Word’s grammar checker underlines every passive in wavy green to signal that you should try to get rid of it. That overinterpretation is part of the damage that Strunk and White have unintentionally done. But it is not what I am most concerned about here.
What concerns me is that the bias against the passive is being retailed by a pair of authors so grammatically clueless that they don’t know what is a passive construction and what isn’t. Of the four pairs of examples offered to show readers what to avoid and how to correct it, a staggering three out of the four are mistaken diagnoses. “At dawn the crowing of a rooster could be heard” is correctly identified as a passive clause, but the other three are all errors:
- “There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground” has no sign of the passive in it anywhere.
- “It was not long before she was very sorry that she had said what she had” also contains nothing that is even reminiscent of the passive construction.
- “The reason that he left college was that his health became impaired” is presumably fingered as passive because of “impaired,” but that’s a mistake. It’s an adjective here. “Become” doesn’t allow a following passive clause. (Notice, for example, that “A new edition became issued by the publishers” is not grammatical.)
Link to the rest at The Chronicle of Higher Education and thanks to Meryl for the tip.
In fiction things are a bit more loosey-goosey. There’s a lot of leeway for a signature style. I say you should know the rules first. I read Strunk and White a hundred times over, easy. But then do your own thing in your fiction. Whatever conveys the story best.
I think this is a big part of the problem that at least some people have with it. It was a book aimed at scholastic/professional writing, yet many people (even editors/proofreaders) try to blanket apply all of the ‘rules’ in it to fiction as well. It’s in large part what people have done with the book that much of the backlash is about.
I don’t understand why criticizing this little white book has become so fashionable.
It probably represents a rejection of those who say we shouldn’t use passive because Elements Of Style says we shouldn’t use passive.
The entire article appears to me to be fundamentally based on a fallacy: post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Yes, it is true that American college students’ grasp of grammar, on the average, is dire. It is also true that The Elements of Style came out shortly before the decline began.
Why has nobody mentioned that these things do not stand in even the slightest causal relation? Strunk & White did not cause American students to flunk grammar. For that matter, bad grammar from American students did not cause Strunk & White. During the 50 years after that mostly harmless little book was published, the majority of American schools virtually stopped teaching grammar altogether. If the average modern collegiate American knows nothing about grammar, it is because the average modern collegiate American came fresh from a school that was careful not to broach the subject.
During the 50 years after that mostly harmless little book was published, the majority of American schools virtually stopped teaching grammar altogether.
True. Although “careful not to broach the subject” implies they were acting by stealth. Nope, teachers were brazen about it; issuing a statement and everything: they decided not to teach grammar. The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) claimed their stance was because students had a right to their own language, and teaching grammar is oppressive because it means there’s a right and wrong way to write and speak. Certainly that decision and its consequences would be a worthy topic for a rant in the “Chronicle of Higher Education.”
The council’s decision looks to be part of a 20th century trend of doing away with standards, especially in education.
The section is not titled “Don’t use the passive voice.” It is titled “Use the active voice.” Strunk and White do not say that these are four examples of passive voice. They say:
Then they give four really good examples of what they mean.
They weren’t writing a linguistics book. They were writing a guide to help college freshmen improve their writing skills.
I love The Elements of Style. It gave me a good foundation. It showed me that there is strong writing and weak writing, and it taught me to see the difference. I don’t understand why criticizing this little white book has become so fashionable. I guess haters gonna hate.
Correct and incorrect are irrelevant to me. I happen to use several of the little book’s aphorisms often. I try to omit needless words, but deciding which words are needless is so hard. I have to know what I am trying to say and to whom I am trying to say it. I don’t care at all about correct grammar, but I most of what I read follows patterns that I follow because they feel right to me. For instance, I have no problem with passive voice and split infinitives, but I usually avoid them because a spade is a goddam manure shovel for me. I am compelled by some demented alien’s tractor beam to say exactly what I mean as precisely as I can. And continually thwarted by a small white toad in my liver.
I’m Australian and have never read any of the style manuals, but I have read the ‘classics’ most of my life, and I cheered all the way through the OP’s article.
I’ve never understood the vendetta against perfectly good, grammatical forms. Advising writers not to use the passive voice, or adverbs, or split infinitives is akin to telling a carpenter not to use a hammer, or a vice, or a pair of pliers. Tools are there to be used. Learning how to use them can be taught via a book, or it can be learned by watching a master at work. For writers, that means /reading/.
Of course, one must watch when writing for an international audience. Even when they all speak “English.”
“Vice” means something rather different on this side of the world, after all…
-grin- I’ve watched Miami Vice, so I’m aware of the criminal meaning of ‘vice’, but surely Americans must have a tool to clamp down whatever they’re working on too??
In America, that tool is a “vise.” (Although I imagine many Americans unconsciously use the British spelling since that’s the way it sounds.)
Aaaah! Thank you. I should have realised it was a spelling issue. One day, archeologists are going to have conniptions over our spelling divide. 🙂
over the years, Ive learned there are formal, semi formal and informal ways to write, as labeled by whomever.
I think most of us just write. Often in whatever dialect of english we speak. Except for college and academic papers which are a formal ball where one has to dress the words according to protocol.
The little book, I’ve read and there are some things in it that concern my country-isms so to speak.
And, I think it is a good guide esp for those just learning english, and for school papers, and it is superceded in some ways by the big foots; chicago style manual etc.
There are times to write wrong. I do all the time. But its part of my region, and I keep it intact. I dont clean up good. [see what i did there]
And, those who follow the little book or the big style manuals are a different tribe than mine, but related. I can speak their language if/when needed. But I prefer my own to connect rather than to appear somewhat uniform.
Some time ago, I spent four years helping students with their academic English at a small university here in Scotland. Many of them had been at an even smaller college and then come to the university for the final two years of their degree. For some it was the first time anyone in the family had gone to college or university (tuition fees are paid by the government in Scotland) but they were plunged straight into academic writing and they certainly needed some help! The organisation I was working for – a charitable foundation – had lots of good online material – style guides and essay guides –
developed by other tutors and the students found it helpful, but there was nothing to beat the one-to-one sessions I could give them. At this early stage they weren’t supposed to have academic opinions so they had to say things like ‘evidence shows’ and ‘research has demonstrated’ But at least they became aware of what they were doing and how they were really playing a game. I think it made them better able to see when other people were playing a game too. And heaven knows we need to question so much of what we’re told as fact when it turns out to be opinion. Oddly enough, I think it made them a lot more confident about using their own true voices when it came to other kinds of writing.
theywere luckyto have you Catherine. THIS is invaluable to have taught them : “But at least they became aware of what they were doing and how they were really playing a game. I think it made them better able to see when other people were playing a game too. And heaven knows we need to question so much of what we’re told as fact when it turns out to be opinion.”
I’d never been able to understand where the irrational horror of the passive came from (we’re much more laid back about it in the UK) until I came across Elements of Style a little while ago. Have to say, I thought it was an unhelpful book to say the least: prescriptive, old fashioned, seemingly unaware of how language changes and develops, and full of questionable rules. I always switch off Microsoft’s irritating style underlinings as well. And that’s without embarking on the significant and interesting differences between US and UK English.
I appreciate your insights Catherine. And agree, Microsoft grammar/styles is like a scoldy schoolmarm to me. lol. If I turn it on, the pages are littered thick with underlinings [and suggestions that break cadence, and meaning often]
Used to happen to me too!
I do use the grammar checker – once, at the very end.
As with typos, I am perfectly capable of inadvertently writing what I do not mean.
Of course, as with typos, it does not catch many things that another human being may.
I’m with you, Catherine. Studying linguistics gave me a much greater tolerance for errors that used to drive me crazy when I was more interested in being right than really understanding how communication works.
Proper language use is about conveying your meaning as clearly as possible in context… and context changes with time, audience, and venue. ‘lol, no u’ is spot-on perfect in the right context, just like the passive voice is a legitimate vector for meaning.
*shrug* As long as I’m getting my point across, I’m happy. 🙂
Ah, proper language versus good storytelling. I must admit, I giggled when I read a story of yours that used warmth and “coolth.” Because no matter what a pedantic grammarian might say, it made perfect sense and flowed well.
It’s a real word in the dictionary!
Etymology:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=coolth
I don’t use it facetiously, admittedly.
I know! Tolkein used it, but we had it pounded into us that “Coolth is not a real word!” right along with “Ain’t is not proper English! You will not use it in this classroom, or you will lose a letter grade from your paper!”
She had an eye-twitch whenever someone said “y’all”, as well. Or ended sentences with a dangling preposition. Heaven forfend you used “like, y’know” when giving a presentation. (On the other hand, after passing her, I never had a problem with properly written reports for the rest of college!)
So you made me giggle.
Hmph. Y’all is TOTALLY a valid word.
Y’aaaawwwwwlllllll. 😉
I say it all the time. To me, it just flows better, and sounds politer, than “you all,” which has always sounded accusatory or insulting to me.
It’s amusing that the Amazon listing for Strunk & White contains an obvious metadata error.
Perhaps the fifth edition will have a rule similar to “always proofread your metadata”. 🙂
The book is Elements of Style, not Elements of Grammar.
+1
Boom.
You say that as if they’re disparate things. Grammar produces style, and style affects grammar.
I’d say related but different. I can write with perfect grammar but lack style. They’re closely related, but still two different things.
When we covered passive voice in English class, I asked why all of our textbooks were written that way.
The answer was “a trip to the office and suspension for being a smartass.”
While I don’t hate The Elements of Style to the degree of the OP, i do dislike it intensely—mostly because I’ve met many people who idolize it and treat it as the resource for English grammar, using it to “prove” things that…often demonstrate that the person didn’t understand what the book was actually saying.
TEoS can be useful for some writing styles and some types of writing. Others, it sabotages—yanno, like any other stylistic advice ever given about writing.
But its many “rules” are essentially “rules of thumb“—generalizations that can help a lot (in the right context) that it then elaborates on or illustrates the nuances of.
In other words, the biggest problem in TEoS, in my opinion, is that it omits a number of transitions to clearly connect what it says with what it shows, or even the context about which it’s speaking.
The way that people misapply it to writing styles unrelated to what it was designed to address is another problem altogether. Ironically enough, this problem is encouraged and exacerbated by the writing style used in TEoS.
While there is certainly good writing and bad writing, and good style and bad style, at the end of the day the english language belongs to people and not to academics. If people decide to speak a certain way or use a certain construct, their decisions are what count.
A good case in point is “hopefully”. It’s well known why the current incorrect use is incorrect but people do it anyway, and they’re going to keep doing it correctness be damned, and in the end they will win. The language belongs to the people who speak it, period.
I’ve never much liked that argument: people speak or write this way or that way, and “their decisions are what count.”
It’s one thing to say there isn’t much that can be done to alter people’s habits. It’s something else to fall into grammatical antinomianism.
As late as my high school years, there still were many people who used “ain’t.” There still are some today but far fewer. Back then, “ain’t” was incorrect English. It still is.
Last week I was on a hike and passed two young women. Literally, every sixth word out of the mouth of one of them was “like.” That’s incorrect usage too, but, again, not much can be done about it, and I certainly wouldn’t complain to people using “ain’t” or “like” (in that way).
But I’m not going to pretend that there aren’t standards. Language “belongs to the people who speak it”? To me, that’s a sentence with almost no meaning, other than to claim that there aren’t standards at all.
I’ve never much liked that argument: people speak or write this way or that way, and “their decisions are what count.”
It’s not an argument. We can observe it. That’s where language comes from.
Our decisions are also what count. Linguistic drift doesn’t just happen; it is the result of people’s choices, and one person – a Shakespeare, a Voltaire, or a Martin Luther, for instance – can measurably influence the development of a language with millions of speakers. It behoves us to try our best and not merely give in to what appears to be the fashion of the moment.
A doctrinaire descriptivist says, ‘You must go along with the majority, no matter how badly it mucks up your own message.’ A doctrinaire prescriptivist says, ‘You must go along with what I conceive to be the rules, no matter how badly that mucks up your message.’ A sensible person (such as they used to have in the Middle Ages) says, ‘Study rhetoric, child, and learn the methods that work best for communicating the message you have to convey.’
Our decisions are also what count.
Of course they do. The aggregate of all our decisions moves language.
I can English good and don’t afraid of anything.
That’s the spirit, laddie.
You meant to say, “don’t afraid of nothing.”
*shrug*
I’ve never studied or read about grammar outside of grade school. I just read so much that I naturally picked up the usage of proper grammar. I can tell you where any sentence is wrong just by the sound of it but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you the technical name of the error. This also helps me to avoid conforming to stupid grammar rules that are outdated and unnecessary just because a book said to do it.
I’m exactly the same way. I’ve never once found a “style guide” that didn’t sound archaic to me, and none of my readers have ever complained about my writing style.
Nice article. I’ve had Elements of Style sitting on my shelf for years but still haven’t gotten around to reading it. I’ve certainly heard many of the ‘rules’ presented in it many times, though. I remember any use of “was” getting dinged as a passive voice in college papers. Even now, people like writers and editors, who should know better, try to ding me or others for “passive voice” as if A) it is always wrong and should never be used, and B) they have no idea that past progressive tense exists. I’ve also found the popular demonizing of adjectives and adverbs to be annoying, as those word forms can be quite useful.
People, as a whole, really like books of rules which condense complex concepts down into a list of easily-remembered dos and do nots. Especially really short books. Following such rules might take one from being a bad writer to being a decent writer, but it does seem to me that to be a great writer, you need to have a much more nuanced understanding of the language you’re writing in–something you’ll never get by simply following a list of rules someone else wrote.
Yes, quite an interesting article. I think he makes his points very well. I certainly think that any book which presents itself as an authority on how all people should write should itself be open to grammatical/stylistic critique.
Cherryh’s Law:
No rule should be followed off a cliff.
I’m not really competent to agree or disagree with this article as I dropped out of school halfway through grade 10. I went back to school, but journalism doesn’t focus on grammar or creative writing per se.
I use some fairly passive voice in some of my works. It has come to seem more and more natural, and there are times when the text requires that we back off from the ‘over-active’ voice. I wasn’t attempting to contradict grammarians when I did that, it just seemed to work well enough for what I was doing.
I like The Elements of Style. It is MUCH shorter than The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Good grammar isn’t all that hard. I refer to my copy of The Handbook of Good English, too, when I want to check some point.
I’m a big fan of the book. I’m also a big fan of doing your own thing, to a certain extent, in order to find your own author voice.
It’s a balance.
I had an excellent education in grammar. I also grew to hate the color red.
I leave the grammar checking completely off when writing, as well as the spell checker. Yes, I commit a few errors – but I also usually write so that the meaning comes through.
It is much easier to just run the “style checks” through once, and decide whether the “suggestions” will clarify the meaning – or, and more often – cloud it with clumsy constructions that are correct by the manuals but are terrible writing.
If you read the whole thing (don’t bother) there is also the claim to authority, “I’ve studied (x) for 50 years and these guys are just wrong.”
His examples include analysis of three authors works (Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Lucy Maud Montgomery’s popular novel Anne of Avonlea) as if they are the bellwethers for 19th and 20th century writing. [string of foreign epithets here for emphasis, followed by orotund anglo-saxon cursing for quite some time… I strongly disagree with Geoffrey K. Pullum’s choices and opinion].
“So I won’t be spending the month of April toasting 50 years of the overopinionated and underinformed little book that put so many people in this unhappy state of grammatical angst. I’ve spent too much of my scholarly life studying English grammar in a serious way. English syntax is a deep and interesting subject. It is much too important to be reduced to a bunch of trivial don’t-do-this prescriptions by a pair of idiosyncratic bumblers who can’t even tell when they’ve broken their own misbegotten rules.”
Its clear that Studgy McStudge has been masquerading as the head of linguistics and English language at the University of Edinburgh for much too long. Sit down, wild man, and let the yout’s take their places at the podium.
… as if they are the bellwethers for 19th and 20th century writing.
I didn’t read that as the point of those examples at all. Rather, the point of those particular names is that they are well known to anyone reading the article, as opposed to more obscure examples, and it’s quicker to name three good examples vs. 20 others. How many people have heard of, e.g., Samuel Richardson vs. Wilde, Stoker, and Montgomery? Even for the “Chronicle of Higher Education” I suspect the latter three names are more recognizable, no? At least one of those latter three names is guaranteed to be recognized by anyone else. So in that context, why not use them?
More to the point: would anyone seriously argue that all of those particular writers didn’t know how to write? Or that their use of the language was out of sync with the language as used in their time?
If the three authors he mentioned used a word or grammar correctly for their time, then it is suspect for Strunk & White to claim that the use of those words / grammar is improper, and it could be reasonably taken as evidence that Strunk & White didn’t do the research.
I’m genuinely curious: How would you have had the OP make the “did not do the research” argument? Who should he have used as examples, if not those three? Which authors and sources should he have used to illustrate his claim that Strunk and White “did not do the research”?
Wow! The sanctimonious, oh so superior snootyism in the OP is a tsunami of you-know-what. Such a Special Snowflake the author is.
Disclaimer: I have several copies of TEOS and have found them very worthy of re-reading occasionally to keep my writing/editing chops sharp and focused.
I fail to see how the author of this article could be viewed as snooty”, “sanctimonious” or “special snowflaky”. He has an opinion about a book, defends his opinion and gives arguments, many of them. Maybe he is wrong, but at least his argument seems solid.
I am myself not an English native-speaker and I have not read TEO. Mostly my english teachers in school had learned or perfected their English in the UK rather than in the US. So I guess I can have no opinion myself on this book.
But I do have a question : is there an equivalent book for the British ? Is it revered, or vilified ?
It seems to me that both the OP and JFB are making fun of someone’s ‘rules’ on how to write, as in one person’s rules don’t always work for another.
Marquejaune:
The British equivalent is H. W. Fowler’s “A Dictionary of Modern English Usage,” first published in 1926. (That edition still is in print, I think.) The book has gone through several editions with several editors and has changed considerably. Today it’s mostly known as “Fowler’s Modern English Usage.”
Thank you! I was hoping someone would answer this question. I’ve heard of that book, but didn’t know it was specific to Britain. I grew up watching British TV, I read British authors, I grew up next door to Canada and watching their TV — sometimes my grammar and spelling instincts are not necessarily American. I like knowing if I’m wrong-wrong vs. just a style preference: grey vs. gray rather than “greigh.”
Well done, I’m genuinely unable to tell if serious or sarcasm 🙂
But either way, the OP’s points look legit and I agree with him about the passive voice construction. There is a right time, right use for it, especially when the “actor” in an event isn’t nearly as important as the event itself, or the person it happened to. My teacher liked to use this example as a good time to use the passive:
Lassie got hit by a car.
That’s okay because Lassie is more important (in terms of reader interest) than the driver of the car. Naturally I raised my hand and asked,
“But what if Timmy was driving the car?”
Anyway, I consider it a good “shibboleth” test: if a would-be editor rejects every use of the passive then they’re not a good editor. If an editor recognizes the Lassie factor, then good. Another acceptable instance, which the OP hints at, is called the “known-new” factor that’s explained here.
And I like it in dialogue to suggest a character is shady: “Yeah, the peanut butter got eaten,” says the guy who ate the peanut butter and didn’t want to confess, even after his cousins pointed out the streak of peanut butter on his cheek.
I have Strunk & White, which I was grateful to get as contest swag, because the book pointed me to the existence of style and grammar manuals in the first place. It still comes in handy when I need to refresh my memory for some things.
Ah yeah, the old “mistakes were made” thing. It can be very useful when you’re trying to avoid revealing (or admitting to) the actor.
You have my lols good sir.