Elements of Style - Couverture souple

The Elements of Style is an American English writing style guide. It is one of the most influential and best-known prescriptive treatments of English grammar and usage in the United States. It originally detailed eight elementary rules of usage, ten elementary principles of composition, and "a few matters of form" as well as a list of commonly misused words and expressions. Updated editions of the paperback book are often required reading for American high school and college composition classes. William Strunk, Jr. (July 1, 1869, Cincinnati, Ohio – September 26, 1946, Ithaca, New York) was Professor of English at Cornell University and is best known as the author of the first editions of The Elements of Style, a best-selling guide to English usage. This book, printed as a private edition in 1918 for the use of his students, became a classic on the local campus, known as "the little book", and its successive editions have since sold over ten million copies. In his first edition, Strunk describes the book as follows: "It aims to lighten the task of instructor and student by concentrating attention ... on a few essentials, the rules of usage and principles of composition most commonly violated." This original was revised in 1935 by Strunk and Edward A. Tenney and published under the title The Elements and Practice of Composition. After Strunk's death, it was again revised by E. B. White, an editor at The New Yorker who had been one of Strunk's students. This 1959 edition of The Elements of Style (often referred to as simply Strunk & White) became a companion to millions of American writers and college freshmen. Strunk earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Cincinnati in 1890, and Ph.D. at Cornell University in 1896. While he taught English at Cornell for forty-six years, the only other book Strunk wrote was English Metres (published locally in 1922). Better known as an editor, Strunk edited important works by authors including William Shakespeare, John Dryden, and James Fenimore Cooper. He served as literary consultant to the 1936 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film version of Romeo and Juliet. Strunk married Olivia Emilie Locke in 1900, and they had two sons and a daughter.

William Strunk Jr. (July 1, 1869 – September 26, 1946) was an American professor of English at Cornell University and author of the The Elements of Style (1918). After revision and enlargement by his former student E. B. White, it became a highly influential guide to English usage during the late 20th century, commonly called Strunk & White. In 1935–36, Strunk enjoyed serving as the literary consultant for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film Romeo and Juliet (1936). In the studio he was known as "the professor," in part because, with his three-piece suit and wire-rim spectacles, he "looked as though he'd been delivered to the set from MGM's casting department." In 1918, Strunk privately published The Elements of Style for the use of his Cornell students, who gave it its nickname, "the little book." Strunk intended the guide "to lighten the task of instructor and student by concentrating attention ... on a few essentials, the rules of usage and principles of composition most commonly violated." In 1935, Strunk and Edward A. Tenney revised and published the guide as The Elements and Practice of Composition (1935). In his New Yorker column of July 27, 1957, E. B. White praised the "little book" as a "forty-three-page summation of the case for cleanliness, accuracy, and brevity in the use of English."Macmillan and Company then commissioned White to revise the 1935 edition for republication under Strunk's original title. His expansion and modernization sold more than two million copies. Since 1959, total sales of three editions in four decades has exceeded ten million copies. In 1900, Strunk married Olivia Emilie Locke, with whom he had three children, including the noted musicologist, Oliver Strunk. William Strunk retired from Cornell in 1937. In 1945 he suffered a mental breakdown, diagnosed as "senile psychosis," and died less than a year later at the Hudson River Psychiatric Institute in Poughkeepsie, New York. Strunk's Cornell obituary noted that his friends and former students remembered "his kindness, his helpfulness as a teacher and colleague, [and] his boyish lack of envy and guile."