The Elements of Style: Difference between revisions
Content deleted Content added
No edit summary |
No edit summary |
||
Line 37:
🧾 '''4 – A Few Matters of Form.''' A manuscript page is prepared with small, regular decisions: leave a blank line after a heading; write dates and serial numbers in figures or Roman numerals—August 9, 1918; Chapter XII; Rule 3; 352nd Infantry—and keep the surface neat. Parentheses behave as detachable parts: the sentence outside is punctuated as if the parenthesis were absent, while the words inside take their own marks unless the last is a question or exclamation. Formal documentary quotations come after a colon and sit within quotation marks, while quotations that are direct objects or in apposition take a comma instead; examples range from a constitutional clause to lines attributed to La Rochefoucauld and Aristotle. References belong in parentheses or footnotes with compact notation rather than in the sentence body, and they omit words like act, scene, line, book, and page when other cues suffice; the model formats a Bible passage (2 Samuel i:17–27) and a play citation (Othello ii.iii. 264–267, iii.iii. 155–161). Syllabication at line ends follows sense and legibility: divide only when real syllables remain and avoid leaving awkward single letters. These moves make pages uniform across authors and assignments, reducing guesswork for readers and typesetters. The mechanism is conventional signaling: standardized spacing, numerals, and reference styles transmit structure before the words are even read. ''Do not spell out dates or other serial numbers.''
🚫 '''5 – Words and Expressions Commonly Misused.''' On a marked page of student prose, familiar formulae crowd the margins— as to whether, the fact that, case, factor, feature, interesting, one of the most— and the remedy is not a swap of synonyms but a full recast. The section sorts offenders into three groups: forms that are bad English (“like I did”), forms often defended but generally disfavored (the split infinitive), and formulas that should be rebuilt rather than patched. It then works case by case: All right is always two words; but is needless after doubt or help; can is ability, not permission; case is usually superfluous; compare to draws likenesses while compare with invites discrimination; consider meaning “believe to be” is not followed by as; data is plural. Due to belongs as a predicate or modifier to a noun; effect (result/bring about) is kept distinct from affect (influence); etc. closes lists rather than hides missing specifics; fact names what can be verified. The list trims vagueness and redundancy (He is a man who…, kind of or sort of, line/along these lines, most for almost) and sets idiom and position (however mid‑sentence; like with nouns and pronouns, as before clauses; near by as adverbial only; oftentimes archaic; one of the most a threadbare opener). It regularizes grammar and form—possessive before a gerund (my asking), people versus the public, possess versus have, the often needless respectively, the standard shall/will contrast— and checks padding such as student body and system. Thanking you in advance is flagged as officious; very is rationed; while is not a stand‑in for and or but; whom is not to replace who when the pronoun is a subject; worth while is restricted to actions; would yields to should in first‑person conditionals. The entry on they bars a plural pronoun for distributive antecedents like each or anybody. The aim is precision through reconstruction: when a stock phrase blurs meaning, rebuild the sentence so the thought is direct and testable. The mechanism is a sequence of micro‑edits—choose the exact idiom, strike padding, and restore standard grammar—so each connective, pronoun, and modifier earns its place. ''Less refers to quantity, fewer to number.''
🔤 '''6 – Spelling.''' In a compositor’s proof, unaccepted simplifications such as tho for though distract the reader and waste attention; spelling rests on general agreement rather than private experiment. The section notes that for most words the agreement is settled, and in the immediate list rime for rhyme is the lone allowable variant. “Words Often Misspelled” gathers common traps—ecstasy, embarrass, separate, siege, shepherd, playwright, principal and principle, rhythm, sacrilegious, seize, villain—alongside near‑twins like coarse/course and affect/effect. A short rule doubles a single final consonant after a stressed short vowel before ‑ed and ‑ing (planned, letting, beginning), with coming named as an exception. It prescribes hyphens for to‑day, to‑night, and to‑morrow, but not when written together. It also keeps certain compounds and pronouns in two words—any one, every one, some one, some time (except formerly)—and normalizes forms that drift in practice (impostor, occurred, opportunity, parallel, prejudice, privilege, repetition, rhyme, rhythm). Spelling here is a reader’s aid: standard forms smooth the surface so sense moves without friction. The mechanism is shared patterns and minimal exceptions—fixed lists, light rules, and a few cautions—that keep attention on meaning rather than letters. ''Write any one, every one, some one, some time (except in the sense of formerly) as two words.''
📝 '''7 – Exercises on Chapters II and III.''' Practice begins with a history paragraph to punctuate: in 1788 the King’s advisers and the summoning of the States‑General, troops massed at Versailles, and the Paris militia seizing arms at the Invalides and the Bastille. A second passage tracks Byron’s 1809 tour through Portugal, Spain, Albania, Greece, and Turkey and the 1811 publication of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, to be punctuated and balanced. Students then explain differences between two printings of a couplet from Lyrical Ballads (1798 versus 1800), learning how a comma or spelling shift alters sense. The next set asks for diagnosis and correction of punctuation—nonrestrictive clauses mis‑commad, an advertisement fragment that needs completion, a two‑sentence split where one would serve, and a Jerusalem travel note about twenty‑six Russian pilgrims that requires structure. The longest section collects everyday faults to repair: dangling participles, ambiguous modifiers, off‑kilter comparisons, misused while and however, and missing series commas; examples range from Count Cassini’s conference conversations with Sir Arthur Nicholson to a Dean’s difficulty explaining a student’s offense and a fire‑kindling narrative with potato‑stalks and dry chips that needs trimming. Business‑style closers on earnings and “status of affairs” test concision without sacrificing accuracy. The point is disciplined application: fix what is on the page until grammar, punctuation, and emphasis hold together. The mechanism is immediate, concrete rewriting that turns rules from Chapters II and III into habits the hands can perform.
== Background & reception ==
| |||