The Elements of Style

This week I started reading The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White.  I bought it at the MU bookstore “just-for-fun” a while ago to gain a better knowledge of grammar and sentence structure. Most students probably would read this kind of book only if required.  But as a journalist, I understand the power of the written word, and that a mastery of the English language gives further force to a story. It’s a small book–only about the size of my hand –with a neutral gray cover and fewer than 100 pages, but over the past 50 years it’s been praised.

“Buy it, study it, enjoy it,” says a review for by the New York Times. “It’s as timeless as a book can be in our age of volubility.”

As I prepare for working on the copy desk at the Columbia Missourian next semester, I want to  know as I can,  so I can enhance each writer’s story rather than hinder it. I’ll know to “keep related words together” (rule 20) and to “place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end” (rule 22). I did pretty well last spring in my copy editing class, but there is always more to learn.

Knowing the inner workings of language won’t just help me as a copy editor, but as a writer, which is ultimately toward what I aspire. I want to write in a way that makes “every word tell.”

Other grammar books on my list for the upcoming semester:

-The Elephants of Style, by Bill Walsh

-Lapsing into a Comma, by Bill Walsh

-Sin and Syntax, by Constance Hale

Chalk can’t quell the quill

I have a horrible habit of getting in trouble for being too inquisitive. When I was in the fifth grade, my teacher became so fed up with my thirst for extra knowledge that he decided to give me a quota every day. He would mark a white chalked tally in the upper left hand of the blackboard, and when I hit my limit of ten I should be quiet. It never quelled my curiosity.

That anecdote disappeared from my memory until about a year ago, when I was looking back on why I wanted to be a journalist. One thing is certain: the drive is still present a decade later.

But it’s not just the pursuit of knowledge in itself, but a quest to share the voices of humanity through the written word.