Elements Of Style

The Elements of StyleThe Classic Style ManualBrand New CopyNew EditionThis book aims to give in brief space the principal requirements of plain English style. It aims to lighten the task of instructor and student by concentrating attention (in Chapters II and III) on a few essentials, the rules of usage and principles of composition most commonly violated. In accordance with this plan it lays down three rules for the use of the comma, instead of a score or more, and one for the use of the semicolon, in the belief that these four rules provide for all the internal punctuation that is required by nineteen sentences out of twenty. Similarly, it gives in Chapter III only those principles of the paragraph and the sentence which are of the widest application. The book thus covers only a small portion of the field of English style. The experience of its writer has been that once past the essentials, students profit most by individual instruction based on the problems of their own work, and that each instructor has his own body of theory, which he may prefer to that offered by any textbook.CONTENTSIntroductoryElementary Rules of UsageForm the possessive singular of nouns by adding 'sIn a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the lastEnclose parenthetic expressions between commasPlace a comma before a conjunction introducing a co-ordinate clauseDo not join independent clauses by a commaDo not break sentences in twoA participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subjectElementary Principles of CompositionMake the paragraph the unit of composition: one paragraph to each topicAs a rule, begin each paragraph with a topic sentence; end it in conformity with the beginningUse the active voicePut statements in positive formUse definite, specific, concrete languageOmit needless wordsAvoid a succession of loose sentencesExpress co-ordinate ideas in similar formKeep related words togetherIn summaries, keep to one tensePlace the emphatic words of a sentence at the endA Few Matters of FormWords and Expressions Commonly MisusedSpellingExercises on Chapters II and III