William Strunk Jr. · 105 pages
Rating: (60.8K votes)
“To achieve style, begin by affecting none.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by. A writer is a gunner, sometimes waiting in the blind for something to come in, sometimes roaming the countryside hoping to scare something up.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud!" (William Strunk) ... Why compound ignorance with inaudibility?”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“When a sentence is made stronger, it usually becomes shorter. Thus, brevity is a by-product of vigor.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“Never call a stomach a tummy without good reason.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“A single overstatement, wherever or however it occurs, diminishes the whole, and a carefree superlative has the power to destroy, for the reader, the object of the writer's enthusiasm.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“It is an old observation that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation. Unless he is certain of doing as well, he will probably do best to follow the rules. After he has learned, by their guidance, to write plain English adequate for everyday uses, let him look, for the secrets of style, to the study of the masters of literature.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“Many references have been made in this book to 'the reader,' who has been much in the news. It is now necessary to warn you that your concern for the reader must be pure: you must sympathize with the reader's plight (most readers are in trouble about half the time) but never seek to know the reader's wants. Your whole duty as a writer is to please and satisfy yourself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one. Start sniffing the air, or glancing at the Trend Machine, and you are as good as dead, although you may make a nice living.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“I remember a day in class when he leaned forward, in his characteristic pose - the pose of a man about to impart a secret and croaked, "If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud! If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud! "This comical piece of advice struck me as sound at the time, and I still respect it. Why compound ignorance with inaudibility? Why run and hide?”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“Consciously or unconsciously, the reader is dissatisfied with being told only what is not; the reader wishes to be told what is... If your every sentence admits a doubt, your writing will lack authority.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“Writers will often find themselves steering by stars that are disturbingly in motion.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“1. Make the paragraph the unit of composition: one paragraph to each topic.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“Flammable. An oddity, chiefly useful in saving lives. The common word meaning "combustible" is inflammable. But some people are thrown off by the in- and think inflammable means "not combustible." For this reason, trucks carrying gasoline or explosives are now marked FLAMMABLE. Unless you are operating such a truck and hence are concerned with the safety of children and illiterates, use inflammable.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“If you have received a letter inviting you to speak at the dedication of a new cat hospital, and you hate cats, your reply, declining the invitation, does not necessarily have to cover the full range of your emotions. You must make it clear that you will not attend, but you do not have to let fly at the cats. The writer of the letter asked a civil question; attack cats, then, only if you can do so with good humor, good taste, and in such a way that your answer will be courteous as well as responsive. Since you are out of sympathy with cats, you may quite properly give this as a reason for not appearing at the dedicatory ceremonies of a cat hospital. But bear in mind that your opinion of cats was not sought, only your services as a speaker. Try to keep things straight.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“Negative words other than not are usually strong:”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“The situation is perilous, but there is still one chance of escape.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“This book is intended for use in English courses in which the practice of composition is combined with the study of literature. It aims to give in a 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. The numbers of the sections may be used as references in correcting manuscript.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“1. Form the possessive singular of nouns with 's.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“3. Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“Try - Takes the infinitive: "try to mend it," not "try and mend it." Students of the language will argue that 'try and' has won through and become idiom. Indeed it has, and it is relaxed and acceptable. But 'try to' is precise, and when you are writing formal prose, try and write 'try to.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“This rule is difficult to apply; it is frequently hard to decide whether a single word, such as however, or a brief phrase, is or is not parenthetic. If the interruption to the flow of the sentence is but slight, the writer may safely omit the commas. But whether the interruption be slight or considerable, he must never omit one comma and leave the other. Such punctuation as”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“5. Do not join independent clauses by a comma.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“The language is perpetually in flux: it is a living stream, shifting, changing, receiving new strength from a thousand tributaries, losing old forms in the backwaters of time.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“The audience, which had at first been indifferent, became more and more interested.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“2. As a rule, begin each paragraph with a topic sentence; end it in conformity with the beginning.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
“As the American poet, Marianne Moore, said: "There is a great deal of poetry in unconscious fastidiousness.”
― William Strunk Jr., quote from The Elements of Style
William Strunk Jr.
Born date July 1, 1869
See more on GoodReads
“The souvenir hunters were prowling among them, carefully ripping insignia off tunics, slipping rings off fingers, or pistols off belts. There was Souvenirs himself, stepping gingerly from corpse to corpse, armed with his plyers and a dentist flashlight that he had had the forethought to purchase in Melbourne. I stood among the heaps of dead, they lay crumpled, useless, defunct. The vital force was fled. A bullet or a mortar fragment had torn a hole in these frail vessels, and the substance had leapt out. The mysteries of the universe had once inhabited these lulling lumps, had given each an identity, a way of walking, perhaps a special habit of address or a way with words or a knack of putting color on canvas. They had been so different then, now they were nothing, heaps of nothing. Can a bullet or a mortar fragment do this? Does this force, this mystery, I mean this soul, does this spill out on the ground along with the blood? No. It is somewhere, I know it. For this red and yellow lump I look down upon this instant was once a man. And the thing that energized him, the word that gave to airy nothing a local habitation and a name, the word from a higher word this cannot have been obliterated by a quarter inch of heated metal. The mystery of the universe has departed him and it is no good to say that the riddle is solved. The mystery is over because it has changed residences. The thing that shaped the flare of that nostril, that broadened that arm now bleeding, that wrought so fine that limply lying hand, that thing exists still and has still the power to flare that nostril, to bend that arm to clench that fist exactly as it did before. Because it is gone you cannot say it will not return; even though you may say it has never yet returned-you cannot say that it will not. It is blasphemy to say a bit of metal has destroyed life, just as it is presumptuous to say that because life has disappeared it has been destroyed. I stood among the heaps of the dead and I knew-no, I felt that death is only a sound we make to signify the Thing we do not know.”
― Robert Leckie, quote from Helmet for My Pillow
“God, Jaden! You are going to screw yourself into a corner if you don't talk to him. This is like, a crossroads. You're always going to look back and wonder if things could've been different, and this love story is going to turn into a tragedy. Your tragedy. You two deserve a chance to be happy together, and the only thing keeping you apart right now is YOU.”
― Katie Klein, quote from Cross My Heart
“So this is pain. So this is wretchedness. So this is misery. I never knew. -Jack”
― Melissa de la Cruz, quote from Keys to the Repository
“My life is up to me to define. I needed to make my own dreams come true.”
― Kaira Rouda, quote from Here, Home, Hope
“Only adults had nervous breakdowns in those days, so the methods of survival for boys who refused to join the system were animal cunning, “internal immigration” as the Germans call it, or simply getting the hell out. I practised the first two, then opted for the third and took myself to Switzerland.”
― John le Carré, quote from A Murder of Quality
Burning Dawn
Heritage
Cape Cod Promises
Public Enemies: Amer...
Restoration
Getting the GirlBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
