Quotes · verified word for word in the text
William Strunk quotes
10 quotes from 1 of William Strunk’s books on this site, book by book. Each quote is copied exactly from the book’s text in this site’s reader (the Project Gutenberg e-text named under each book) and links to its passage; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against that text. Quotes we could not find in a book we host are not listed.
Elements of Style
Omit needless words.
Vigorous writing is concise.
Make the paragraph the unit of composition: one paragraph to each topic.
Make definite assertions.
Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, non-committal language.
The position of the words in a sentence is the principal means of showing their relationship.
The writer must therefore, so far as possible, bring together the words, and groups of words, that are related in thought, and keep apart those which are not so related.
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.
Prefer the specific to the general, the definite to the vague, the concrete to the abstract.
As a rule, begin each paragraph with a topic sentence; end it in conformity with the beginning 17