A WORD, PLEASE:Strunk and White is just a guide

To read the back cover of Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style,” you’d think it was God’s gift to the English-speaking world — “excellent,” “timeless,” “delightful,” “ … should be the daily companion of anyone who writes for a living and, for that matter, anyone who writes at all.”

That’s a lot of sunshine blowing around. But something about the beloved nature of this little book has always sat funny with me. For one thing, it’s one of few working stylebooks that doesn’t get updated. As a result, some of its advice is ridiculously out of date. For example, Strunk and White tell you that you can’t use “nauseous” to mean “feeling ill.” They say it means only “sickening to contemplate.” Yet, pretty much every other stylebook abandoned this position years ago.

But out-of-date entries are only part of what has bothered me about Strunk and White. There was something more, something I couldn’t put my finger on until very recently.

The epiphany began as I was cruising the writing reference shelves of my local bookstore (looking for tax breaks, of course) and came across an unfamiliar-looking book with a familiar title, “The Elements of Style.” But this wasn’t Strunk and White. It was just Strunk — the original version, which E.B. White later updated. So I coughed up the $3.95 (which could accidentally appear as $39.95 on my 2007 tax return), and embarked on a thorough examination of both “Elements of Style.”

My conclusion: We’ve been duped.

Here’s an example of something you’ll find in the original “Elements of Style” by William Strunk Jr.: “Headings. Leave a blank line, or its equivalent in space, after the title or heading of a manuscript. On succeeding pages, if using ruled paper, begin on the first line.”

Ruled paper? That doesn’t sound like a stylebook written for journalists, editors, business writers and novelists. On the contrary, it sounds like class-specific direction from a teacher to his students. And indeed, it is.

As many are aware, Strunk was a professor at Cornell University. White was his student, who went on to become a professional writer. Strunk wrote the guide for his students, but, in the absence of any equally handy-dandy guide, it caught on like wildfire.

Then, sometime after Strunk’s death, an opportunity for profit reared its head. A publisher called on White to update the book and, ever since, it’s been a massive seller to people like you, me and countless writers who don’t know this book is not gospel.

White added about fifty pages to Strunk’s original guide, and omitted quite a few things as well — all with the goal of making this book more universally useful (and thus universally marketable). But it wasn’t written for you and me, as an introductory note by Strunk once made clear.

“This book … aims to lighten the task of instructor and student by concentrating attention … on a few essentials.”

You won’t faint with surprise when I tell you that this passage landed on White’s cutting-room floor.

And that prior passage? The one with that tells us how to format something on ruled paper? Well, in an attempt to make Strunk’s advice to his students marketable to you and me, White bumped it down the list of instructions. Then he added, “If the manuscript is to be submitted for publication … “ Yet Strunk’s original rule had nothing to do with publishing. It had to do with how he wanted his students to hand in their papers.

There’s lots of great writing advice in Strunk’s little book and in Strunk and White’s, too. But unless you’re in a Cornell student in a parallel universe where it’s still 1920, “The Elements of Style” is not gospel.