Reddit Reddit reviews The Elements of Style (4th Edition)

We found 29 Reddit comments about The Elements of Style (4th Edition). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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The Elements of Style (4th Edition)
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29 Reddit comments about The Elements of Style (4th Edition):

u/way_fairer · 19 pointsr/AdviceAnimals

You and OP need this book.

u/oditogre · 13 pointsr/bookclub

>but I'd highly recommend getting a decent grammar book and learning English grammar properly.

Strunk & White - The Elements of Style. It's cheap (and probably available at damn near any library), you can probably read it in a day, and it will cover the bases for most things you'll need if you're not being explicitly tested on the fine details of the language. If OP is still in school, it's also very, very likely that at least one English teacher in their school has a copy.

You can read the original text by Strunk here for free, if you're seriously hard-up for cash. It is now nearly a century old, but it's still a fine reference.

u/ALooc · 12 pointsr/NoSleepOOC

I took a look at your previous posts, here some pointers.

First: Basics.

  • Formatting - make your text readable by using paragraphs. Press Enter TWICE to make a line break on Reddit - else most people will just skip over your posts.
  • Use proper grammar and sentences - e.g. a slash doesn't belong in your story ("restaurants/fast food places"). Use an "and" or "or" instead.
  • Spellcheck - "resturaunts". If you want people to read your stories you have to do them the favor of proofreading your own posts. At least use Word, LibreOffice or Google Drive to write your stories, they have a spellcheck built in.
  • Make it a story. Think of books; a book never starts with "Alright. So a little backstory" and then goes on to excuse that "The backstory is longer than the actual story, sorry." Instead start the way a tale would be told. Start with action or at least an image that the reader can see and feel.
  • Use written language, not spoken language and style. Cut out words like "alright", "so", that are mere oral filler words and shouldn't appear in written text (unless appropriate). Words that don't add meaning should not be in your writing.

    Second: Writing.

  • Story flow. Honestly I don't understand your last story. There are too many breaks in continuity and too many unnannounced location and character switches.

    > Mom walks up to me and says I looked a little disoriented, and I just say its nothing. I don't know why, but that creeped me out.

    What creeped you out? Your mom's asking you? Or the events before?

  • It would be good if you read some more fiction and try to look out for basic writing standards. Again line break, this time for dialogue. Dialogue without line break is very hard to read.

    > "Hey! I thought it would be fun to go see a movie, so we are going to the 10 o'clock showing of the new star trek movie tonight. I can't wait to see you and your brother again." He said. "Wow. Okay..." I said. Not even a hello or goodbye.

    much easier:

    > "Hey! I thought it would be fun to go see a movie, so we are going to the 10 o'clock showing of the new star trek movie tonight. I can't wait to see you and your brother again." He said.

    > "Wow. Okay..." I said.

    > Not even a hello or goodbye.

    Lastly: Make us hear and feel things. Give us a chance to feel what you feel

    > When I hear tapping. And then water. Then, without warning, the toilet flushes in a bathroom that has always been manual flush. I hear walking, she shadows, the lights flicker, and I hurry up to wash my hands and get out.

    This should be three or four paragraphs rather than four sentences. Where does the tapping come from? How loud is it? How did you notice it first?

    What does "And then water" mean? You heard water flowing somewhere? You saw water on the floor, running into your stall?

    You hear WALKING and you tell us nothing about it? Silent? fast? did you see feet? Did it sound like bare feet or hard soles?

    You need to paint a picture that we can see, hear, smell and touch.

    That is the actually my main point: How to format your writing and spellcheck should be the minimum and are required for any story to be worth reading. Learn that, there is no way around it. Look at stories you like and see why they are good - your formatting should never be in the way of your story.

    But what you need to practice is to paint that picture. Try to sit down and describe one simple mundane thing. Try to describe, as in-depth as possible, what it feels like to sit on your chair. Describe the scene you see out of your window - not just "there's a house", instead make that house visible for someone thousands of miles or hours away. Try to describe what your mother's footsteps on the corridor sound like. Where are they? How does the volume change? Are they hurried or does her heel strike the floor hard? Are they louder if she carries heavy objects?

    When you are able to do that you can take the stories you wrote and develop them from a summary of your experience into a full-blown story. Tell the tale, and of course feel free to add some more fiction to make it creepier. Maybe you did see feet, or maybe you did hear something soft rubbing along the window or door or maybe even your stall. Don't limit yourself to "reality".

    tl;dr (1) Learn proper formatting - simply by reading more and by trying to figure out when and where it works and when and where it doesn't. Look at a book or story you enjoy and see how the paragraphs are layed out. Also get yourself a copy of Strunk & White. (2) Practice painting that picture (in all senses, not just visually). Then you will get places :)
u/thewatchtower · 11 pointsr/MLPLounge

I'm assigning you some required reading.

The Blue Book of Grammar

The Only Grammar Book You'll Ever Need

The Elements of Style

Thank me later.

u/charugan · 9 pointsr/writing

It isn't a website, but Strunk and White is an incredibly valuable resource for any writer.

u/TomOwens · 6 pointsr/compsci

I minored in technical communication, and the books we used in the writing-oriented classes were Technical Report Writing Today, Handbook of Technical Writing, and Elements of Style (Strunk and White).

Of these, the handbook and Elements are more rule-oriented and don't really get into the details of putting together a document. I'd recommend something like Technical Report Writing Today, though. It talks about identifying your audience, different styles, visual features, visual aids, presentations, instructions, informal reports, formal reports, feasibility reports, proposals, user manuals. It doesn't get into a whole lot of depth, but it provides enough information to get you started in a whole bunch of areas.

u/drzowie · 6 pointsr/space

Yes, yes. Here we have a case of snarky grammar nazis being right. Screw up your grammar, screw up your meaning. Go away from this a wiser person, mass922, and read your Strunk & White. Surely, you'll think it as cool as I (do).

u/striker111 · 5 pointsr/IWantToLearn

The Lively Art of Writing is absolutely amazing. It's enjoyable to read and the techniques can really help you write well. It gave me a great understanding of how to write a persuasive essay.

After that, Elements of Style is also an excellent reference on the finer points of writing, and can help you clear up some confusions you have.

I'd recommend working through The Lively Art of Writing first, just to put some practice and thought into how to communicate effectively. The second book is more for polish, but nevertheless still very good.

u/Werefrog · 3 pointsr/SanJoseSharks
u/terrifyingdiscovery · 3 pointsr/write

First, congratulations on having written something. Many of us end up thinking about ideas and never taking the time to get them down. My critique is rather heavy in tone, but I want to be clear: that doesn't mean your piece is without merit. Keep writing.
I think you can safely call the piece fiction.
Your grammar is generally fine. That's based on a quick read-through. Your best friend here is a copy of The Elements of Style.

"An" instead of "a" in the last sentence, paragraph six. That sentence is also a rather long, clunky fragment. I don't mind fragments, especially if they have a certain punch to them. This fragment does not. Avoid it and others like it.
The only other grammatical change I'd recommend is in paragraph five: "They would've to do..." While "would" and "have" do combine to make that contraction, it feels out of place with the infinitive "to do." Instead, try, "They'd have to do..."

It's difficult to critique something both unfinished and this brief. I will say that the opening is generic and uninteresting. It strikes that unpleasant balance of being unimaginative and over-reaching. Your idea, when you start writing about it, is more engaging. Would you consider shaving the first few paragraphs down to one or two? Alternatively, you could open with a very short (I'm talking 1-2 sentence) exposition on the technology.
I hope that is helpful.

u/[deleted] · 3 pointsr/writing

Alright, here's some advice from a guy who's supposed to be writing a paper at this very moment:

  1. Nothing is original, so everything is a cliche. If it's not, wait 5 minutes and it will be.
  2. "Hatred toward overused cliches" won't get you anywhere. Hate directed at your writing is paralyzing to the creative process and limits your scope. Fantasy is a genre that is dependent on borrowed mythologies, histories, species, and tropes. Wandering down this path you could say that George RR Martin or Robert Jordan are hack writers because both of them have swords and horses in their books.

  3. Learn to be less critical and more forgiving. Your initial writing should be uncensored and unedited. The goal is to have as little interruption between your thoughts and the words appearing on the screen/page. Most people have writer's block because they are afraid of some component of the process, ie "this sucks, no one will buy it" or "I don't know what I want to write about". My current project got started by looking at the different objects in my environment and writing a story around them. There's loads of advice on generating ideas... not so much on throwing out your personal hangups.

  4. Throw out your personal hangups. Seriously. Be aware of what pisses you off or frustrates you and let it go. Don't even give it a second thought.

  5. Make a loose schedule and start to hone it. What I mean to say is make yourself write twice a day, for a small amount of time. The only rule is that whatever you write has to be in the same word doc or journal or notebook. Organization is important... took me years to realize the mistake of having a gazillion documents across multiple hard drives and dozens of notebooks and yellow pads.

  6. Find the medium that works best for you. Do you work best talking ideas out loud? Use an audio recorder. How about pens? Are you a pencil guy? What does your keyboard feel like? I recently dropped $80 bucks on a SIIG mechanical keyboard because I realized how important it was that I have something that gave me a satisfying typing experience. Become aware of your kinesthetic needs.

    So that's what I've got off the top of my head. Mostly, don't be too hard on yourself. Writing is an imperfect science and a daunting art form-- especially when you've spent your whole life being lied to by movies, teachers, and society. Writing should be imperfect on the first go. Don't be hard on yourself and you'll get through the block.

    Finally I recommend you pick up these two books:

    Writing Without Teachers:

    http://www.amazon.com/Writing-without-Teachers-Peter-Elbow/dp/0195120167/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311006335&sr=8-1

    Elements of Style:
    http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-4th-William-Strunk/dp/0205313426/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311006291&sr=8-1

    Good luck!
u/yourdadsbff · 2 pointsr/mildlyinteresting

Well, every grammar rule is technically "made up" and subject to (sometimes glacial) change. Besides, if grammar has its rules, then style has its elements that can often be as important as "legal" ones. This is true not just in grammar but also in life; for instance, wearing sweatpants to a job interview is almost certainly a bad idea that will leave a poor impression on the person who interviewed you, though there's probably no formal rule against doing so. It's a style choice, but an important one. Therefore, we teach many of these style choices as veritable rules, seeing as how instances requiring adherence to formal rules of grammar are often some of the most important (e.g. term papers, cover letters, official report drafts).

So while using fewer as opposed to less in this instance may not be following an iron-clad grammatical rule, in my experience the distinction becomes a self-evident stylistic choice in actual cases of ambiguity.

When the meaning of a given phrase is not ambiguous, such as "Ten items or less," then yes, I'd say it's nit-picky to offer such a "correction." But take Zequi's sentence above:

>Lately, I find less and less people correcting my grammar

I think most of us get the gist of it. Still, I spy a bit of ambiguity. Does "less and less" refer to the number of people correcting Zequi's grammar or to the number of (noticeable) grammar errors he makes at all? The distinction may be slight, but it's still a distinction.

TL;DR I need a life.

u/reevision · 2 pointsr/teaching

Pick up a copy of good ole Strunk and White. You can also check out Grammar Girl and Purdue's Online Writing Lab. Also, don't feel bad about not knowing all the ins and outs of grammar; most English teachers have to brush up from time to time.

u/ruzkin · 2 pointsr/writing

I wouldn't have passed this. Your writing is incredibly flowery, your description is overwrought while managing to convey absolutely nothing, you adverb and adjective all over the place...
Sorry to be harsh, but you need to pick up some books on the absolute basics of fiction writing. I recommend:
http://www.amazon.com/Scene-Book-Primer-Fiction-Writer/dp/0143038265/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291362532&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Writing-10th-Anniversary-Memoir-Craft/dp/1439156816/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1291362561&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-4th-William-Strunk/dp/0205313426/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291362620&sr=8-1

u/Biskmatar · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

A writer's bible.

Elements of Style, 4e by Strunk and White. Best writing comp/grammar book out there.

u/CoreyWW · 2 pointsr/BeachCity

So I'm basing this off of what's in Elements of Style which is the best reference book I have for grammer and writing questions like this. According to that, you write " 's " after it regardless of if the name ends in an s. So even though "Lapis's Ford Windstar" might look slightly unusual, it is correct on a technical level.

Though if you didn't like the sound of it you could always write "Lapis Lazuli's Ford Windstar" as well.

u/weekendblues · 2 pointsr/writing

Not fucking bad at all. There are a few changes I would make with pacing and a couple of minor spelling/punctuation mistakes, but I think this is quite a nice piece of writing with good voice that tells a story relatively well. This is the kind of thing that with a bit of editing can really be quite good. Forget about your SAT scores and college placement and all of that; keep writing. If you really want to master grammar and common usage, pick yourself up a copy of The Elements of Style and read it cover to cover.

u/witeowl · 1 pointr/Teachers

Strunk & White's The Elements of Style

Also, for teaching grammar, I highly recommend Jane Bell Kiester's books. A great deal of my conscious knowledge of grammar (I often joke that I learned proper grammar through osmosis) comes from having to prepare to explain to students why one thing is right and another is wrong.

u/the_lust_for_gold · 1 pointr/comic_crits

Your spelling and grammar need a lot of work, especially around the website. Clear spelling and grammar allow the reader to understand what you are saying. You can have the best story in the world, but if no one can understand it you won't get far.

Working on your spelling will also help to create an air of professionalism. People are entrusting you with their finances when you ask them to buy your comic online. Proper spelling and grammar will help you seem dedicated, trustworthy and serious about your series and its readers.

The Elements of Style by Strunk and White are a nice and easy to read introduction to things you should or should not be doing grammatically. As you write, try to read the sentences out-loud to yourself as a narrator would. Make sure they still make sense and are easy to understand even when spoken out loud. Most desktop office software has spellcheck included, along with most web-browsers. Even if you can't get Word, there's a program called "Open Office" that you can download for free, and it works the same way. See if you can hire a friend to check over your writing for you after you have finished your own edits.

I don't intend to be overly harsh, but I don't want to be disrespectful by mincing words with you either-- the artwork is poorly executed and generic looking. It's not the worst art I've ever seen, but you could be doing a lot more. Anatomy, perspective, composition design, character design and paneling are all things that you need to work on, and it's great that you're getting experience by doing this comic. Just do as much reading as you can (go to the library in addition to looking up tuts online) and get as much practice as you can get. I think that doing something like life drawing would help you a lot with your action poses...Have you seen the different things on the sidebar?

u/ScotchDream · 1 pointr/writing

You could check this out.

Every time I'm chatting and trying to say something as fast as possible I press enter/send after every sentence (or single coherent thought). Maybe if you broke it up into multiple lines without adding punctuation and put it in a block quote. Maybe even add time stamps from the chat or other formating IM has. Would make it more legible at least.

edit: You should also get this just because.

u/selectrix · 1 pointr/books

Let's not forget The Elements of Style.

u/GNG · 1 pointr/gaming

> just go ahead and send me a list of the arbitrary little rules you'd like me to follow and I'll do my best.

Sure, try this one.

> If there were fewer classes then maybe I could agree with this, but the problem is that while there are a good number of characters it's for a large variety of classes, meaning you might only have two or three of a class at a time. This makes it riskier to sacrifice one.

I think the choice is usually less severe than that. One consequence of the profusion of classes available is that you'd be very hard-pressed to use all of them in one playthrough. Going back to FE7, Serra and Priscilla each represent the only unit of their class available, and so are quite different by the end of the game, despite starting out very similar. As a result, you'd rarely use both of them under normal circumstances. So while sacrificing one early on may cut you off from a class entirely, it won't really hinder you significantly.

u/SultanObama · 1 pointr/politics

> it means that it's reasonable to question the independence of WaPo's reporting on issues that may impact/involve the CIA.

You didn't stipulate that in your original post. Your post indicated generic reporting on any abstract item without restrictions to matters related to the CIA specifically.

I guess this is a good lesson as to why you should be clear when making a thesis. If you're still having a hard time understanding I recommend this for better writing.

Be sure to study for your AP exams.

u/lonewolfandpub · 1 pointr/writing

I'll do you one better. I'll give you my damn playbooks.

Elements of Style and Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook. They have the fundamentals that'll take you to the beer league championships and beyond. Once you've got them down, you'll be in excellent shape.

u/bovisrex · 1 pointr/writing

Three steps, in no particular order:

  1. Go to Amazon or a good used book store and pick up Warriner's English Grammar and Composition. This has to be the best in-depth grammar course. Here's a link to the Grade 12 edition.

  2. The Elements of Style is an amazing reference that fits in your laptop bag, backpack, or pen tray of your desk. I wouldn't want to learn English grammar from this book, but once you know it, it's a good tool to refine and hone your skills with it.

  3. Learn another language. I remember when I first started studying Italian and came across a chapter on gerunds and had to learn what the bloody hell a gerund was before I could learn the Italian method. And most of the things you mentioned, I learned how to do in English because I was learning them in other languages.
u/littlewren42 · 1 pointr/booksuggestions

If you want to read something with a different voice and very unique style, there's always Nabokov's Pale Fire. For something much more technical, you should consider checking out Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. It was assigned reading in one of my classes along with Strunk & White, and they both really helped me out.

u/milesabove · 0 pointsr/jobs

Congrats. As an unemployed redditor searching desperately, it's good to know that even somebody with such little attention to grammar can get a job.

If you used capital letters as superfluously as you have above, and then went on to misuse apostrophes to indicate plural nouns in the same words, then there must be hope for a pseudo-grammar nazi such as myself.

In closing, good luck, godspeed, and if you happen to get the jobs for which you're interviewing and they involve writing anything ever, check out this book.

...And if you don't get the job, care to pass on the employer's info?

u/ZoomaBaresAll · 0 pointsr/occupywallstreet

Thanks for your thoughts. Please read this.