Word: strunkian
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Revise & Rewrite. The great Strunkian theme: "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subject in outline, but that every word tell...
...Student White (One Man's Meat, The Second Tree from the Corner) is more than qualified to add his own exhortations to the professor's lecture. Some of White's Strunkian reminders: Do not overwrite. Do not overstate. Do not explain too much. Avoid fancy words. Revise and rewrite. Perhaps above all, shun the modern euphoria of Old Spontaneous Me ("Stay out of the act"). To White, style cannot be separated from sense: "The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one . . . Young...
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