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The Elements of Style
The Elements of Style
The Elements of Style
Audiobook1 hour

The Elements of Style

Written by William Strunk Jr

Narrated by Victor Craig

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

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About this audiobook

First published in 1918, ‘The Elements of Style’ is an American English writing style guide, which have since become an essential tool for writers and educators in its numerous editions down the years. The rules of ‘The Elements of Style’ are rooted in common sense and tradition. The original comprised “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 greatly enlarged and revised the book for publication by Macmillan in 1959. That was the first edition of the so-called Strunk & White, which Time magazine named in 2011 as one of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 27, 2020
ISBN9781518909672
Author

William Strunk Jr

William Strunk, Jr. (1869-1946) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the eldest of William and Ella Garretson Strunk's four children. Strunk excelled in school, eventually earning a bachelor's degree from the University of Cincinnati and a PhD at Cornell University. He then attended the Sorbonne and the Collège de France from 1898-99 where he studied morphology and philology. Strunk began his academic career teaching mathematics at Rose Polytechnical Institute in Terre Haute, Indiana from 1890-91, then returned to Cornell and taught English there for 46 years. In 1922 he published English Metres, a study of poetic metrical form, and began writing he critical editions of various classical works. Strunk joined a literary group called the Manuscript Club which held Saturday night meetings to discuss writing and literature. There, Strunk met and became friends with a young aspiring writer, Elwyn Brooks ("E.B.") White. In 1918, Strunk published The Elements of Style, but originally only intended it to be used by his Cornell students, who nicknamed it "the little book." In 1935, Strunk and Edward A. Tenney revised the manuscript and re-published the guide for wider distribution as The Elements and Practice of Composition. Years later, after Strunk had passed away, E.B. White - now working at the New Yorker - praised the "little book" in his column, calling it a "forty-three-page summation of the case for cleanliness, accuracy, and brevity in the use of English." As a result of the new attention White's praise generated for Strunk's manuscript, Macmillan and Company commissioned White to revise the 1935 edition for republication. The resulting book became an immediate hit. Since The Elements of Style (now credited to both Strunk and White) was originally republished in 1959, sales of the book - and subsequent editions - has exceeded ten million copies and the book is often referred to simply as "Strunk and White." William Strunk retired from Cornell in 1937 and in 1945 he suffered a mental breakdown, diagnosed as "senile psychosis." He died less than a year later at the Hudson River Psychiatric Institute in Poughkeepsie, New York.

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Yes, great work, amazing simply I wanna say , ,
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Very good guide on How to write elegantly. Very good suggestion.