About time

[ritaxis]

Finally, a prominent linguist is taking the offensive against the odious Strunk and White. I've hated this stupid writing guide forever and forever, and for most of that time I felt alone, even heretical.

I am so looking forward to a better approach to teaching writing.

Comments

[redbird]

The things I find Strunk and White good for is possessives (specifically, I agree with them that the possessive of Charles is Charles's and the possessive of Jones is Jones's), and the advice that when in doubt, recast the sentence.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Where is a cogent account of the arguments against it?

[zeborah]

Geoffrey Pullum has fulminated against it for a number of years; he reviews it in the Chronicle of Higher Education and there are piles of posts on Language Log about it. I rather like this one about one of its many self-refuting rules; this links to more critical opinions.

But basically the arguments boil down to: many of the rules S&W provide for "good writing" are not followed by people even in their days who we acknowledge as "good writers". And many of them aren't followed by S&W themselves.