I don't know if any of you have this little beauty on your book shelf or not, but The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White is one of those books, more of a manual, that many writers cite as the end-all-be-all correct way to write. Wanda gave me a copy when I was in the Wilkes writing program and it has served me well. Funny, the main thrust of the book has to be that, like Calvin Klein, brevity rules. Faulker famously quipped that you must be able to "kill your darlings," referring to the necessary skill of being able to cut from your prose that which you think is so clever, witty, or elegant but may not fit with the piece you are writing--or worse yet, may not actually be any of those things. But clearly E.B. and Billy weren't referring to men of our aptitude and supreme vocabulary because we find great pleasure in qualifiers and ornamental language. As I read this article on Slate, I thought you all would enjoy it too. I particularly like how this writer dissects sentences and explains how their meaning would change had words simply been positioned differently. I hope this finds you all in good health and good nature. I truly wish I could have been involved in the Portrait discussion as Oscar Wilde was a tremendous writer who somehow turned a play into a novel with style and grace. Great selection, Brother Pompous. I enjoyed it thoroughly. (I probably didn't need the "thoroughly," but we are the M-O-freakin'-P.
The Importance of Sentence Construction
