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statico (5018)

statico
ian.langworthNO@SPAMgmail.com
http://langworth.com/
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PAUSE-ID: IAN [cpan.org]

Co-author of Perl Testing: A Developer's Notebook [oreilly.com]

Journal of statico (5018)

Monday February 28, 2005

09:45 AM

the elements of style

[ #23424 ]

I recently received The Elements of Style as a gift. It's exactly what I've been looking for -- I'd call it, "English: This Missing Manual."

In my "English" courses throughout high school or college, I've only been taught how to be an opinionated expert on reading comprehension. Why don't they use this book?

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One of the best-written books in the English lang (Score:1)

by davebaker (4482)

You're right! It's a classic. You generally don't see it except in journalism and similar writing classes, though.
E. B. White is the same author who did Charlotte the Pig and so much wonderful work for The New Yorker magazine.
Isn't that the book that says "Avoid needless words (period)" ?
- Re:One of the best-written books in the English la (Score:1)
  
  by statico (5018)
  
  Yep :)
  
  --
  qw(Ian Langworth)
- Re:One of the best-written books in the English la (Score:2)
  
  by lachoy (1663)
  
  That's "Charlotte's Web", which along with "Trumpet of the Swan" and "Stuart Little" are children's literature classics.
  - Charlotte the Pig? (Score:1)
    
    by davebaker (4482)
    
    Sheesh. Segfault at my end.
    Maybe I was thinking of Freddy the Pig -- the series by Walter Brooks -- I loved those as a kid!
The anti marketing-speak (Score:1)

by dug (2501)

When I worked for a dot-com I often fantasized about binding several copies [1] together and using the bundle to spank the marketing department.

1. Strunk and White took their own advice when writing "Elements of Style", which left a single copy too thin to use as a paddle.
The Secret Manual of Editors (Score:1)

by chromatic (983)

If every author I worked with read the book and did what it said, my job would be so much simpler. Also, if I didn't have to deal with terrible, horrible HTML output from word processors....