Elements of Style, Strunk & White: A Review

Some of us had The Elements of Style forced upon us. Others of us sought it out for it's fabled wisdom and exacting measures of good and effective writing. This small book by William Strunk and his student E.B White is as concise as it counsels, but has an austerity about it that leaves you feeling uncomfortably constrained, even unsatisfied. And despite it's generally sound advice, you can't help feeling that strict adherence to its Procrustean set of rules might produce writing that is lacking, bereft of the richness, depth, complexity or whimsy that might make it more enjoyable, even more effective. Yet, it still sits on my desk, and I still consult it from time to time.

Peter Wood offers a thoughtful review of a new book on the subject, Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style, By Mark Garvey (Touchstone 2009). Wood offers clear, balanced, insightful observations in his treatment of Garvey's 240 page work. For openers:

Strunk's is the voice of stern minimalism, a reaction against overstuffed Victorian furniture and a culture blurred into rhetorical complacency. Strunk (1869-1946) was a near contemporary of the famously laconic Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)—one of the few observations about Strunk's Great Rule that Mark Garvey does not make in Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style...

"Omit needless words"—the gnomic Rule Thirteen in William Strunk's original 1918 self-published edition of The Elements of Style—is the kind of advice that means less and less the more you think about it. Which words are needless? What need are we talking about? Just conveying information or mood, too? Sublunary matters or glimpses of God?

Strunk's exposition of Rule Thirteen seems sensible, at least initially:

'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.'

But these sentences soften under steady gaze. Vigorous writing is not always concise. Gibbon is not concise. Dickens can be, but isn't always. Unnecessary sentences abound in good writing, or some kinds of good writing—the kind that is companionable, humane, allusive, and willing to treat the reader as a friend, not a customer.

--"What Are Words Worth?" a review by Peter Wood, The American Conservative (1.01.10)

But Wood sympathizes with Garvey's efforts to get past Elements "fundamentalism" and to the heart of what Elements at its best is, to see how it can best be understood and used as a guide to better writing. Wood continues:

Garvey, however, is at his best in those passages where he attempts to take the heft of Strunk's preference for the spare. The Elements of Style, he says, "embodies a worldview." He explains:

'It is a book of promises—a promise that creative freedom is enabled, not hindered, by putting your faith in a few helpful rules; the promise that careful, clear thinking and writing can occasionally touch truth; the promise of depth in simplicity and beauty in plainness; and the promise that by turning away from artifice and ornamentation you will find your true voice.'

Garvey is surely right to locate the enduring appeal of The Elements of Style in these largely unspoken promises. He is also right to pick out "Omit needless words" as the pivot of the Strunkian universe. That three-word command, he says, "continues to ring like a Lao Tzu aphorism at the book's center." I have known academic colleagues in whom this Zen-like rule, in its exacting, Bauhaus-on-the-page austerity, has taken full possession. They comb and re-comb every paragraph seeking perfect nudity. They do not rest until every vestment is torn away and every noun and verb stands blushing naked. And what remains is indeed clear and readable, like tracks in the desert sands.

Garvey never quite comes to terms with the desertification of English prose wrought by Strunk & White cultists. Perhaps it is because he is himself a devotee—though not the hard-core sort whose adoration of the purging of needless words leads their prose ever closer to that epitome of concision, the white pages of the telephone book. Instead, Garvey pleads the case that, rightly understood, Strunk's edict is capacious. It allows for good writing of many types and in many voices. Rule Thirteen is about clearing away clutter, uprooting obstacles, and bringing blessed order to the roiling chaos of our unfinished thoughts.

When Garvey urges this winsome Strunk—Strunk-the-judicious—my heart melts. But then I wonder: why have so many earnest people studied The Elements of Style and come away convinced that good writing involves squeezing every last drop from the grapefruit and then eating the rind? Do Strunk and his famous student E.B. White bear no responsibility for this heresy? After all, they preached a creed of clarity. Shouldn't their book be clear about its purpose? But if Garvey is right, a lot of readers have gone astray in The Elements of Style. They have imagined it a fundamentalist sect, when it is truly just an older brother's counsel.

With the sort of balance and freedom that Mr. Wood champions, I would recommend The Elements of Style to anyone who has not read it, young and old alike. You could do much worse than to give due consideration to Rule Thirteen, among the many others, but recognize that it is really best viewed as general guidance on how to strengthen writing, not denude it.

http://www.amconmag.com/article/2010/jan/01/00047/

Gag Reflex

Associate Press

WASHINGTON - The little town of Libby, Mont., isn't mentioned by name in the Senate's mammoth health care bill, but it's one of the big winners in the legislation, thanks to the influence of Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont. After pushing for years for help for residents of the area, thousands of whom suffer from asbestos-related illnesses from a now-closed mineral mining operation, Baucus inserted language in a package of last-minute amendments that grants them access to Medicare benefits.

He didn't advertise the change, and it takes a close read of the bill to find it...Here's a look at some other winners in the latest version of the legislation, which was expected to survive an initial test vote in the Senate around 1 a.m. Monday.

WINNERS

• Nebraska, Louisiana, Vermont and Massachusetts. These states are getting more federal help paying for a proposed Medicaid expansion than other states are. In the case of Nebraska — represented by Sen. Ben Nelson, who's providing the critical 60th vote for the legislation to pass — the federal government is picking up 100 percent of the tab for the expansion, in perpetuity.
• Beneficiaries of Medicare Advantage plans — the private managed-care plans within Medicare — in Florida. Hundreds of thousands of them will have their benefits grandfathered in thanks to a provision tailored by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., that also affects a much smaller number of seniors in a few other states.
• Longshoremen. They were added to the list of workers in high-risk professions who are shielded from the full impact of a proposed new tax on high-value insurance plans.
• A handful of physician-owned hospitals being built around the country — including one in Bellevue, Neb. — which would be permitted to get referrals from the doctors who own them, avoiding a new ban in the Senate bill that will apply to hospitals built in the future. Chalk up another win for Nelson.

--"Who wins, who loses in Senate health bill," Associated Press, as reported on msnbc.com (12.20.09)

I am a supporter of healthcare reform legislation. More, I support universal health care. Most of you know that. And I have been understanding and patient with our federal sausage-making legislative process. I understand that healthcare reform will be an iterative process, probably taking several legislative steps to achieve something inclusive enough, fair enough, and cost accountable. And for the first step we have to be satisfied with some basic healthcare coverage reforms and a significant increase in inclusiveness. Cost containment and reduction will necessarily be addressed in a later step. You've heard this before.

But with such a critical, weighty social policy issue as this, I expected the political maneuvering and negotiating tactics to be based on principled policy differences reflecting the ideological spectrum, and honest differences about the most pragmatic approaches to implementing needed change. I didn't expect open, unabashed pork-barrel exploitation and abuse of position and process from Democrats for whom this legislation is so important as a policy matter and measure of the administration's success--especially with the vote count teetering on the crumbling edge of success or failure. And it was mostly the "pragmatic," moderate Democrats, the swing votes, that most "pragmatically" exploited their position and the situation. I'm just sick.

By 2003, the Iraq War, and considering everything else a polarized and polarizing Bush administration and Republican Party had wrought, I was fully disabused of any lingering sense of identity as a moderate Republican. But yes, I had also undergone some changes in social views and policy orientation on my own. I would thereafter be a registered independent--and I have been. But over recent years, it's been clear that my policy advocacy relates mostly to universal education and health care, and well-regulated commercial (including financial) markets, the financial system, and the warming global environment. Shouldn't I just admit that I am a perfect fit with the Democratic Party, and likely the liberal Democrats at that?

Perhaps. But as I look back over this ugly healthcare legislative process--the progress achieved, and all that remains to be done--please do not allow me to forget for a moment what a bunch of self-interested, power-mongering scumbags our federal legislators are, regardless of political party affiliation. Statesmanship and stewardship of the national interest is now fully captive to the narrow political interest of those who live and work only to be re-elected again. But it has always been so, you say. Yes, but not to this extreme degree, not in matters this important to society.

So please do me a favor. Don't allow me to ever think thoughts about being a registered Democrat or Republican, or anything else. I'm counting on you, really. For now, I necessarily function without clear identity at the margin of organized politics, much as I necessarily function without clear identity at the margin of organized religion. It's how my gag reflex works.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34502819/ns/politics-health_care_reform/

Residents of Sunshine States Happiest

They never stop reminding you, do they? Those friends and family that live in the South, Southwest and West, they just want to make sure the rest of you bear in mind how much nicer it is living in year-round sunshine. Of course, the rest of you have your reasons for not being there--some would say your rationalizations--for why life is just as good wherever else you are. You're quick to point out that life in those places of wintry snow and cold can be fuller, richer for the distinct seasonal changes and their experiential diversity. You can even be a little smug about it, if not entirely convinced or convincing.

But now I too have to make my confession. We have been spending more of each year in Florida, and less in Rhode Island--and liking Florida more and more. Oh, You still can't beat RI in the summer and early fall. But the rest of the time? I have to be honest, it's Florida the other 7-8 months a year. I'm just saying...

And now comes new research that throws more light onto the whole issue of regions, climate and personal happiness. And guess what? It appears that those sunnier states and regions really are the places where people are happiest. Sorry to carry this news to all my old friends living in the Northeast, but "Sunshine states are the happiest, study shows," An Associated Press article reported on msnbc.com (12.17.09) provides a review of the research and implications:

Associated Press:

WASHINGTON - People in sunny, outdoorsy states — Louisiana, Hawaii, Florida — say they're the happiest Americans, and researchers think they know why.

A new study comparing self-described pleasant feelings with objective measures of good living found these folks generally have reason to feel fine. The places where people are most likely to report happiness also tend to rate high on studies comparing things like climate, crime rates, air quality and schools.

The happiness ratings were based on a survey of 1.3 million people across the country by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It used data collected over four years that included a question asking people how satisfied they are with their lives. Economists Andrew J. Oswald of the University of Warwick in England and Stephen Wu of Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., compared the happiness ranking with studies that rated states on a variety of criteria ranging from availability of public land to commuting time to local taxes.

Rounding out the happy five were Tennessee and Arizona. At the other end of the scale, last in happiness — is New York state.

Probably not surprisingly, their report in Friday's edition of the journal Science found the happiest people tend to live in the states that do well in quality-of-life studies. Yet Oswald says "this is the first objective validation of 'happiness' data," which is something he says economists have been reluctant to use in the past.

He said he has been asked if the researchers expected that states like New York and California, which ranked 46th, would do so badly in the happiness ranking. "I am only a little surprised," he said. "Many people think these states would be marvelous places to live in. The problem is that if too many individuals think that way, they move into those states, and the resulting congestion and house prices make it a non-fulfilling prophecy."

Besides being interesting, the state-by-state pattern has scientific value, Oswald explained. "We wanted to study whether people's feelings of satisfaction with their own lives are reliable, that is, whether they match up to reality — of sunshine hours, congestion, air quality, etceteras — in their own state. And they do match."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34469042/ns/health-behavior/

How, Why December 25th?

There is no clear understanding or provable basis for how or why the Christian Church came to celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25th. And it appears no more likely that Jesus was born on December 25th than any other date of the year. Most of us probably know that or have heard it. Still, many Christians and Christian traditions have their preferred understandings and explanations, of course. And that's just fine with me.

A thorough and informative review of the issue and the possible explanations is provided in "How December 25th Became Christmas," by Andrew McGowan in Biblical Archaeology Review (January/February 2010). And he offers an intriguing alternative explanation as well. Some excerpts:

How did December 25 come to be associated with Jesus' birthday? The Bible offers few clues: Celebrations of Jesus' Nativity are not mentioned in the Gospels or Acts; the date is not given, not even the time of year. The biblical reference to shepherds tending their flocks at night when they hear the news of Jesus' birth (Luke 2:8) might suggest the spring lambing season; in the cold month of December, on the other hand, sheep might well have been corralled. Yet most scholars would urge caution about extracting such a precise but incidental detail from a narrative whose focus is theological rather than calendrical....

The extrabiblical evidence from the first and second century is equally spare: There is no mention of birth celebrations in the writings of early Christian writers such as Irenaeus (c. 130–200) or Tertullian (c. 160–225). Origen of Alexandria (c. 165–264) goes so far as to mock Roman celebrations of birth anniversaries, dismissing them as "pagan" practices—a strong indication that Jesus' birth was not marked with similar festivities at that place and time. As far as we can tell, Christmas was not celebrated at all at this point...

In about 400 C.E., Augustine of Hippo mentions a local dissident Christian group, the Donatists, who apparently kept Christmas festivals on December 25, but refused to celebrate the Epiphany on January 6, regarding it as an innovation. Since the Donatist group only emerged during the persecution under Diocletian in 312 C.E. and then remained stubbornly attached to the practices of that moment in time, they seem to represent an older North African Christian tradition.

In the East, January 6 was at first not associated with the magi alone, but with the Christmas story as a whole. So, almost 300 years after Jesus was born, we finally find people observing his birth in midwinter. But how had they settled on the dates December 25 and January 6?

There are two theories today: one extremely popular, the other less often heard outside scholarly circles (though far more ancient).

The most loudly touted theory about the origins of the Christmas date(s) is that it was borrowed from pagan celebrations. The Romans had their mid-winter Saturnalia festival in late December; barbarian peoples of northern and western Europe kept holidays at similar times. To top it off, in 274 C.E., the Roman emperor Aurelian established a feast of the birth of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), on December 25. Christmas, the argument goes, is really a spin-off from these pagan solar festivals. According to this theory, early Christians deliberately chose these dates to encourage the spread of Christmas and Christianity throughout the Roman world: If Christmas looked like a pagan holiday, more pagans would be open to both the holiday and the God whose birth it celebrated.

Despite its popularity today, this theory of Christmas's origins has its problems. It is not found in any ancient Christian writings, for one thing...

There is another way to account for the origins of Christmas on December 25: Strange as it may seem, the key to dating Jesus' birth may lie in the dating of Jesus' death at Passover. This view was first suggested to the modern world by French scholar Louis Duchesne in the early 20th century and fully developed by American Thomas Talley in more recent years. But they were certainly not the first to note a connection between the traditional date of Jesus' death and his birth.

Around 200 C.E. Tertullian of Carthage reported the calculation that the 14th of Nisan (the day of the crucifixion according to the Gospel of John) in the year Jesus died was equivalent to March 25 in the Roman (solar) calendar. March 25 is, of course, nine months before December 25; it was later recognized as the Feast of the Annunciation—the commemoration of Jesus' conception. Thus, Jesus was believed to have been conceived and crucified on the same day of the year. Exactly nine months later, Jesus was born, on December 25.

This idea appears in an anonymous Christian treatise titled On Solstices and Equinoxes, which appears to come from fourth-century North Africa...Augustine, too, was familiar with this association. In On the Trinity (c. 399–419) he writes: "For he [Jesus] is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since. But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th."...

Connecting Jesus' conception and death in this way will certainly seem odd to modern readers, but it reflects ancient and medieval understandings of the whole of salvation being bound up together...The notion that creation and redemption should occur at the same time of year is also reflected in ancient Jewish tradition, recorded in the Talmud...Thus, the dates of Christmas and Epiphany may well have resulted from Christian theological reflection on such chronologies: Jesus would have been conceived on the same date he died, and born nine months later...

How did December 25 become Christmas? We cannot be entirely sure. Elements of the festival that developed from the fourth century until modern times may well derive from pagan traditions. Yet the actual date might really derive more from Judaism—from Jesus' death at Passover, and from the rabbinic notion that great things might be expected, again and again, at the same time of the year—than from paganism...

But in the end, it matters not at all to my faith, my worship, my indwelt relationship, whether Jesus was born on December 25th or any other date. It matters only that I have a time, that I take the time, to honor that faith and relationship, to offer my special worship to Him in recognition of that special time and special gift. So December 25th serves me perfectly well for every personal and spiritual purpose. And why shouldn't it?

http://www.bib-arch.org/e-features/christmas.asp

Facebook: Faux Friendship?

From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

We live at a time when friendship has become both all and nothing at all...As the anthropologist Robert Brain has put it, we're friends with everyone now.

Yet what, in our brave new mediated world, is friendship becoming? The Facebook phenomenon, so sudden and forceful a distortion of social space, needs little elaboration. Having been relegated to our screens, are our friendships now anything more than a form of distraction? When they've shrunk to the size of a wall post, do they retain any content? If we have 768 "friends," in what sense do we have any? Facebook isn't the whole of contemporary friendship, but it sure looks a lot like its future. Yet Facebook—and MySpace, and Twitter, and whatever we're stampeding for next—are just the latest stages of a long attenuation. They've accelerated the fragmentation of consciousness, but they didn't initiate it. They have reified the idea of universal friendship, but they didn't invent it. In retrospect, it seems inevitable that once we decided to become friends with everyone, we would forget how to be friends with anyone. We may pride ourselves today on our aptitude for friendship—friends, after all, are the only people we have left—but it's not clear that we still even know what it means.

---"Faux Friendship," by William Deresiewicz, The Chronicle Review (12.7.09)

And that's just the way it sometimes seems, doesn't it? Of course, there would be many who would take exception and umbrage to the quote above--and more to the opinions, the provocations, in the remainder of the article. Among them would be my daughter and many of her friends, and many of the 50- to 60-somethings who find Facebook a social, emotional Godsend. It's all about connecting and reconnecting for them, which in itself is not such a bad thing.

But for me, the jury is still out, but not by much. I've been on the FB site for about three months, but remain there primarily because of contact or access to only a few old friends who otherwise were not so accessible. I have 13 "friends" on Facebook; those are the only ones I have found there, anyway. And most of them are also on my group e-mail lists and have access to my blog site. Yes, and too often my Facebook page is just a place to post an abbreviated version of my lengthier blog posts to be read by people who have likely already seen them. And for those few others, the Facebook post is often so abbreviated that it loses most of its content and impact. But yes, I also get to passively stay current on some aspects of some people's lives. Some of it can be of interest, sometimes. And, there are also the pictures, the little photo albums that represent them and their lives. I often like the pictures.

Oh, and yes, I am too aware that my open Facebook profile page is also a place for any time-traveling voyeurs out of my past to find that my appearance is still holding up fairly well for a 60-something, thank you very much, and that I have managed enough success in life to avoid landing on public assistance. Vanity. Worse, vanity toward people I hardly know and likely won't have any contact with now or ever. They just want to look through the window, and I am happy to let them do it. I think I could do without that, don't you?

So, for the most part, I am sympathetic to the position and arguments of the author, Mr. Deresiewicz. I think that in large part, for many people, he is right. Most of my friends are not on Facebook--for all the reasons the article cites, I suspect. Those people that are there so often appear just passive observers of the banality of other people's everyday lives, people they are often not really close to and don't really care that much about. Don't read that as an insensitive or misanthropic sentiment. It's just that there are people who really are friends, people we share or have shared our lives with to a meaningful extent, and most others who are not. The rest are passing acquaintances, at best. Let's be real about it.

And more, at my wife's urging, I have more than once buckled up to my computer to chase down some once-close friend I shared life with in the long-ago past--a classmate, a Marine buddy, a mentor, or colleague--only to find that what we once shared was very much in the past, and could not be meaningfully carried forward to today. As I wrote in an essay a few years ago about such experiences, "I still love you and miss you—but in that time, place or cause we once shared together. And I'm still grateful for that time together, what it meant to me then and what it means to me now." But in too many cases, that was then, and this is now.

And then there is the PR aspect of Facebook, the all-but-blatant commercial or professional functions it serves for so many who operate under the guise of just staying in touch with their vast network of "friends." Please. Anyway, the article covers all that and much more.

But don't misunderstand. I am not against Facebook. I'm on it, after all. I recognize that for many people it is a meaningful, important part of their social lives--for some, it may even be indispensible and irreplaceable. For many others, it may provide a healthy complement to active, vital face-to-face friendships. Then, for those real friends separated increasingly by time and distance, it is likely a reasonable and welcome option.

Let's just be clear about what it is and what it isn't. As for me, I live with a palpable sense of unease about phenomena such as Facebook, the aspects of them that promise more than they are, and more, that actually deter you from realizing that promise: real friendship. And so, every couple weeks, it seems, I'm considering anew whether it isn't mostly a waste of my time--and whether I wouldn't be better off just working a little harder to stay in touch with those few other friends through e-mail, my blog, an old-fashioned phone conversation or, better yet--if possible--over a cup of coffee, lunch or dinner. Mr. Deresiewicz makes the point in his own way.

So information replaces experience, as it has throughout our culture. But when I think about my friends, what makes them who they are, and why I love them, it is not the names of their siblings that come to mind, or their fear of spiders. It is their qualities of character. This one's emotional generosity, that one's moral seriousness, the dark humor of a third. Yet even those are just descriptions, and no more specify the individuals uniquely than to say that one has red hair, another is tall. To understand what they really look like, you would have to see a picture. And to understand who they really are, you would have to hear about the things they've done. Character, revealed through action: the two eternal elements of narrative. In order to know people, you have to listen to their stories.

Give the article a fair reading, if you would. If you are on Facebook, you might reconsider from time to time whether it plays a balanced, meaningful role in your relationships with real friends. Obviously, I do. (But, as of today, I'm still there.)

http://chronicle.com/article/Faux-Friendship/49308/?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

Love Is No Game

I first read this on a poster on a friend's wall in Okinawa 41 years ago. It was written by the 20th-century Indian spiritual master Meher Baba, quoting, in part, the 14th-century Sufi poet Hafiz:

True love is no game for the faint-hearted and weak,
It is born of strength and understanding.
[And quoting Hafiz,]
Only a person with his life up his sleeve
Dares kiss the threshold of love.

I was so taken by it--mesmerized, really--that I spent quite some time trying to learn more of both men and their writings. And I have carried those verses with me all these years, unfailingly conscious of them. And as my faith journey carried me home, as I was given over to Christ anew, these words carried no less truth or meaning for me. For whether we are wrestling with the challenges--the joys, frustrations or pain--of love in interpersonal relationships, or the identity-challenging or changing deeper waters of spiritual love--agape love, unitive Love--this wisdom serves us well. And somehow, it seems to offer more as we experience more, as we understand more, as we grow more intimate with Him.

[Posted to Hyde Park's Corner and, in part, to facebook]

A Right Prayer

Somehow, on a soft, rainy Saturday morning overlooking the lagoon at Vanderbilt Beach, when all is peace and right in this place, this is the right prayer thought for my day; this provides a doorway and a silent medium that nonetheless speaks.

Praying*

by Mary Oliver

It doesn't have to be

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try

to make them elaborate, this isn't

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice may speak.

[* from Thirst, Poems by Mary Oliver (2006)]