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Elements of Style quotes
11 quotes from Elements of Style by William Strunk. Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #37134 (public domain in the USA), the text this site’s reader shows. Each quote is copied exactly from that text and links to its passage in the reader; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against the reader’s text.
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
Do not join independent clauses by a comma.