the gospel according to Elwyn Brooks White

The book lists for at least half of my writing classes included "The Elements of Style" by Strunk and White under the "optional" category. When you're shelling out half of the money left to your name for a gen ed textbook, "optional" falls into the "luxury" category.

Then one semester, a professor I admired said she re-read "The Elements" every single year, since it was a quick read. And the next time it came up on a list, I forked over the extra $8.

That's not to say I ever got around to reading it.

It is on my permanent list of things I intend to get around to, such as passing page 200 of "The Brothers Karamozov," returning that overdue book, paying that bill, washing the dishes. I know I'll like it -- it's about punctuation and rules and concisenessity and composition in general.

So I restarted it again this evening. The "White" in Strunk and White is E.B. White. I can't help but imagine Charlotte spinning commands on relative clauses into her web.

White reworked a style handbook privately published by his college English professor, Will Strunk.

"Will felt that the reader was in serious trouble most of the time, floundering in a swamp, and that it was the duty of anyone attempting to write English to drain this swamp quickly and get the reader up on dry ground, or at least to throw a rope."

Hear, hear. I have a sudden urge to hold a red pen and a college writing paper.

"He disliked the word 'forceful' and advised us to use 'forcible' instead. He felt that the word 'clever' was greatly overused: 'It is best restricted to ingenuity displayed in small matters.' He despised the expression 'student body,' which he termed gruesome, and made a special trip downtown to the 'Alumni News' office one day to protest the expression and suggest that 'studentry' be substituted -- a coinage of his own, which he felt was similar to 'citizenry.'"

I admit, though, that part of what trips me up is the vocabulary. I don't know grammatical terms! Excepting my final semester of college, I never had formal education in grammar. Already, I've no clue what an antecedent is, and I'm making educated guesses on relative clauses. The nightmare of the conjunction (or was it the adverb?)is coming back to me -- there was at least one term I just never could understand. I was taught it incorrectly.

Anyhow, in the next couple of days I shall write you about the spelling bee protest I once observed.