The Elements of Style
William Strunk Jr. wrote the original booklet for his Cornell English students in 1918, and his former student E. B. White revised and expanded it for a general audience in 1959. The result is a short, opinionated guide organized around rules of usage, principles of composition, and matters of form, closing with White's essay on writing plainly and well. It is famous for its brevity, its emphasis on active verbs and concrete nouns, and its command to omit needless words. Generations of newspaper editors, professors, and speechwriters have used it as a first pass on any young writer's prose. It is short enough to read in an afternoon and durable enough to sit on a desk for a career.
What you might want to know about The Elements of Style
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
The famously slim style guide that has taught generations of writers to omit needless words.
Swisher has cited it on her podcasts and in interviews as the single most useful book about writing she owns, and she recommends it to young journalists as the first thing they should read.
Some usage rules feel dated, but the core principles about brevity, verbs, and clarity have aged remarkably well.
The Elements of Style was written by William Strunk Jr., published in 1959 by Pearson.
The Elements of Style is 105 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Elements of Style takes most readers about 2 hours to finish.
The Elements of Style is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.