The Elements of Style: by William Strunk Jr. | Summary & Analysis

The Elements of Style is a prescriptive American English writing style guide in numerous editions. The original was composed by William Strunk Jr., in 1918, and published by Harcourt, in 1920, comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary principles of composition", "a few matters of form", a list of 49 "words and expressions commonly misused", and a list of 57 "words often misspelled". E. B. White much enlarged and revised the book for publication by Macmillan, in 1959. That was the first edition of the so-called "Strunk & White", which Time named in 2011 one of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923.

In The Elements of Style (1918), William Strunk concentrated on specific questions of usage—and the cultivation of good writing—with the recommendation "Make every word tell"; hence, the 17th principle of composition is the simple instruction: "Omit needless words." The 1959 edition features White's expansions of those sections, the "Introduction" essay (derived from his magazine feature story about Prof. Strunk), and the concluding chapter, "An Approach to Style", a broader, prescriptive guide to writing in English.

The Elements of Style summary