The Elements of Style

Strunk wrote the original for his Cornell students in 1918 and E. B. White, who had been one of them, revised and expanded it in 1959. It is under a hundred pages and consists of numbered rules with examples. The sections cover elementary rules of usage, principles of composition, matters of form, commonly misused words and expressions, and White's chapter on style. The most cited instructions include omit needless words, use the active voice, put statements in positive form, use definite and concrete language, keep related words together, and place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end.

White's final chapter argues that style cannot be taught directly, that it emerges from the writer rather than being applied to the writing, and that a writer should place themselves in the background and write in a way that comes naturally.

The book has been criticised seriously by linguists. Geoffrey Pullum's essay identifies rules that are factually wrong about English grammar, including the treatment of the passive voice where several of Strunk's own examples are not passive, and argues that the prescriptions have made generations of writers anxious about constructions that are perfectly standard. The usage section reflects mid-century American preferences presented as rules.

It remains useful as a discipline rather than as a description of English. The instruction to remove unnecessary words and to prefer concrete language improves nearly all writing. The rules should be treated as defaults to depart from deliberately rather than as grammar.