In Order to Move the Photo Down a Bit
That isn’t my sole purpose, of course, but it does play a part.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m currently reading the essays of E.B. White. They are great. It is a volume of essays that he chose and edited himself. He really was a wonderful writer.

One essay of the book deals with his remembrances of his professor and friend Will Strunk. He was asked, after the essay originally appeared in 1957, to revise and amplify the Elements of Style so that it might be reissued. White said that this task, which he thought would take him a month’s time, took over a year to complete. White said of Strunk’s little book, “Its vigor is unimpaired, and for sheer pith I think it probably sets a record that is not likely to be broken.”

I wonder what Strunk would think of all of the writing on the internet when I read a quotation from him like this:

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 subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

What do you think?