{"id":762,"date":"2017-07-30T02:49:27","date_gmt":"2017-07-30T01:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/?p=762"},"modified":"2017-08-19T02:53:48","modified_gmt":"2017-08-19T01:53:48","slug":"the-elements-of-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/?p=762","title":{"rendered":"The Elements of Style"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This little book, <\/span>the Elements of Style<\/span><\/i>, originally by William Strunk and later revised and expanded by Elwyn Brooks White. Strunk taught an English course with the original version of this book as the required textbook at Cornell University in 1919. White was one of the students took that class. Decades later, White was asked to revise and contribute to a new edition of this book, after Professor Strunk passed away. <\/span><\/p>\n

The version I am holding in hand now is the fourth edition from 1999. Multiple sources have informed me that this book has been broadly adopted as one of the required readings for certain college classes in the USA. In my opinion, anyone who communicates in English would benefit greatly from this book. <\/span><\/p>\n

It is my general observation that in the business setting we generate and circulate far too many badly written, confusing at best, and often misleading notes and documents. We do so on the grounds that we do not have spare time to improve our writings or the luxury to do so in a fast-paced work environment. Bad writing unfortunately often leads to a great loss of productivity. Unwillingness to improve one\u2019s language skill and laziness to communicate with clarity is evil, as it adds a great burden on the readers. I highly recommend reading this book. I envisage myself revisiting it many times again in future. <\/span><\/p>\n

The process of reading this book was filled with both delight and anxiety. I have been frightened and ashamed that many errors and bad practices of written English listed here were committed by me previously. I have also discovered many jewels of good practices. <\/span><\/p>\n

Chapter one covers the elementary rules of use of the English language. I spotted one misuse often made immediately. It is \u201cCharles\u2019s friend\u201d, not \u201cCharles\u2019 friend\u201d. That is the first rule: form the possessive singular of nouns by adding \u2018s. People also often confuse \u201cit\u2019s\u201d the contraction of \u201cit is\u201d with \u201cits\u201d, the possessive. Another mis-use I committed often many years ago and Daniel Rueckert helped me to overcome is: do not join independent clauses with a comma when forming a single compound sentence from multiple clauses that are grammatically complete and not joined by a conjunction. The correct punctuation is a semicolon. <\/span><\/p>\n

Chapter two focuses on principles of compositions. The book suggests: <\/span><\/p>\n