(www.inkthinkerblog.com) — In Saturday’s Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley discussed his relationship with “style,” which, he said, is not a word that describe the newspaper industry’s “ungrammatical, unlovely attempts to compress as much information as possible into as little space as possible” despite the fact that we call it “AP style.” According to Yardley, true style, real style, is something you find in Strunk & White’s Elements of Style. “I have been a Strunkaholic for almost as long as I have been a journalist, though no doubt there have been times when one would never have known it from my prose,” he said.
The language takes a daily beating, often from people who, as both Strunk and White point out, are more interested in appearing elegant and erudite than in actually being so, people who believe that pompous, inaccurate language is evidence of deep thought and noble purpose. The truth is the opposite.
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Tags: freelance writing blog, freelance writing, freelance, writing, communications, strunk and white, elements of style, jonathan yardley, washington post, strunkaholic, kristen king, inkthinker
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It was my belief that the primary purpose of writing was to convey the ideas of one person to another in a way they understood. Grammar is a subjective matter. Who decided that Strunk & White is still the standard for communication? A bunch of frustrated college English teachers.
It has been my experience that the subject of Grammar has been poorly taught. When I was in college is was presented as a punishment. I still dread thought of English 101.
I think after reading this post I’ll have nightmares for a week. LOL