Damned fine, Bob. Thanks for posting the link.
quote:
White purports to be talking about “style” but is really advocating a particular style. It is a style of absence: absence of grammatical mistakes, breeziness, opinions, jargon, clichés, mixed metaphors, wordiness and, indeed, anything that could cloud the transparency of the prose and remind readers that a real person composed it. [Ben Yagoda]
[...]
If “Strunk and White” were a movie, it would be a blockbuster, but I find its hallowed status disturbing. White seemed to share this concern and later wrote, “I felt uneasy at posing as an expert on rhetoric, when the truth is I write by ear, always with difficulty and seldom with any exact notion of what is taking place under the hood.” In an apparent attempt to temper Strunk’s commanding book sections, White’s introduction spends a lot of ink providing anecdotes that humanize Strunk, yet undermine his credibility. [Mignon Fogarty]
