What Do Others Think?

After looking at other classmates’ reactions to Style Toward Clarity and Grace and Elements of Style I found a pretty common theme in that mostly everyone found Williams’ take on style to be more helpful in the long run than that of Strunk and White’s. I enjoyed reading Elizabeth’s blog specifically because we had similar thoughts about the two texts. I am a bit of a grammar nerd, so I enjoyed the grammar tips and misused word section of Strunk and White’s text and was really glad to see that Elizabeth appreciated those areas of the book as well.

Yet, she mentioned a couple of things in her blog that I had thought about during the readings but failed to comment on in my own blog. She states: “in reading Elements of Style I felt like my own personal writing style was being attacked while “standard”, clear and concise writing was preferred. While I felt attacked and defensive, I didn’t understand why my writing style was considered so inferior. I think that individual writing style distinguishes one reader from the next and I didn’t like being told to follow the standard.” I think she makes a good point about feeling attacked by Strunk and White for having a writing style that strays from their rules and guidelines. As I’ve said in my blogs, I am a “wordy” and lengthy writer by nature, so I also felt as though Strunk and White were pointing a disciplinary finger at me as well, especially in the “Principles of Composition” chapter. But for some reason, maybe because I’m so used to being a student and being “taught,” I felt as though Strunk and White knew what they were talking about and that I should value their opinions on elements of style. But after reading Elizabeth’s blog, my initial defensive feelings came back to me and were validated in a way, so now I’m starting to wonder if I was a bit too easy on Strunk and White. After all, I think I’m a good writer and that being wordy isn’t necessarily a bad thing as long as readers are not distracted or frustrated by it.

Overall, I think the strong point of Williams’ text is how thorough it is in describing all of the elements of style. Elizabeth points this out as well, discussing Chapters 6 and 7 specifically as I did in my blog. I think that I benefited from Chapter 6 the most because sometimes getting to the point quickly and clearly is a challenge for me. So, I appreciated the fact that Williams took the time to discuss making points in introductory paragraphs, main paragraphs and conclusions because he was very specific. Elizabeth seemed to have many similar ideas as I did in comparing Williams with Strunk and White, so it was enjoyable to read her blog. She pointed out some interesting things that I had thought about, but since she was the one who actually gave those thoughts a voice I especially appreciated her comments.