Everything I Learned as an Undergrad I Could have Concisely Read in The Elements of Style

I just finished The Elements of Style for my book editing class. It was the best writing book I’ve ever read, which made me mad. Where had this book been this time last year when I was writing my undergraduate thesis in creative writing?

In my writing classes, I had a notebook where I carefully wrote down what the professors said were writing dos and don’ts. When thesis time came, I combed through the entire big fat notebook for pearls of wisdom and compiled them into a logically ordered list. I revised my creative work based on that list.

The whole process of pearl farming was time consuming, frustrating, and when I was finished I felt like I had consolidated the worth of my student loans into a four page—single spaced, 12 point Times New Roman—document. As part of my thesis, I edited the document and gave it to everyone in class as reference material. What I should have given them was a copy of The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, and a free afternoon to read the short book.

I had no formal grammar training in my creative writing program, no editing class, and I wish I had. In fact, I’d had no grammar lessons since middle school. I knew what sounded good, and I knew there must be rules and style guides, but I didn’t know how to go about finding them. I thought that’s why I was going to school, to learn these secrets that I found out today are concisely bound into a book that I can slip into my purse.

So, read the book if you haven’t already. My list might be worth my undergraduate education, but The Elements of Style is worth my graduate study.