The Elements of Style: Fourth Edition
N**E
Wish I had known of this as a student!
Homeschool parent here. Two high school kids, two younger kids. All will be using this book! Why didn’t I have this when I was a student! Concise resource. Only issue is this edition could use better spacing or formatting. Some of the examples bleed together when they would be more clearly stated on separate lines or with semicolons or the like between them.
G**S
The classic guide for writing, and I do mean "The"
I purchased this Kindle edition 30 March 2020. It is the Fourth Edition, by both Strunk & White, exactly as the cover says. This is a classic. The classic. I almost never give a five-star review. There is no more influential style manual for writing American English, unless it is the U.S. Government Printing Office's style manual, or perhaps The Chicago Manual of Style. I have all three and use all three. Where they conflict, I usually follow Strunk & White. I purchased this Fourth Edition because I finally noticed how out of date my Second Edition was getting. In addition, I am getting The Elements of Style 2018. No, not because of some OCD compulsion, but because I would like multiple points of view on some issue every so often, or find only one manual covers a particular matter.There, is of course, also "the" dictionary, which comes in very usefully on a lot of issues. I prefer both the Oxford Dictionary of American English and the Random House Dictionary of American English. The Oxford Dictionary is what the Kindle Reader uses )unless you the user, have changed that).There you have it, a small pile of references that can get you through almost anything. There is another iconic reference, intended for academic writing, that is more authoritative on matters like citing scholarly sources, but I do not remember its title now and am not able to get up to go look at it. I also recommend The Secretary's Handbook, which is very handy for correspondence and such. It overlaps with the GPO's style manual and it is up to you to decide which is more appropriate in any places where they conflict.Always strive to be clear. Easy to say, but we sometimes need a lot of help to accomplish that. Sometimes I still fall short.
B**U
Short, to the point and enjoyable
More than a reference book, the Elements of Style is a good, and, yes, fun read and a bedside companion.I work in part in communication, and this books keeps me focused on what counts: getting the message across precisely and without distractions.I got it for my 16-year-old daughter, a speaker of English as a second language, as I am, for she is assaulted with half-cooked social media posts and short-hand colloquialisms, and might have use for a beacon in style and clarity.The one subject where it lags is gender identity. Seeing how the jury is still out on this one, let's wait until a proper set of rules or habits emerges before we judge, for this is still today a fast-moving target.Love it.
G**I
Unnecessarily big
The space between each element is a bit distracting. The lines are long with big spaces between them; suddenly, you have small paragraphs tightly packed together. Visually, it is just weird.The cover too is a bit of a bummer. It is a cheap copy in all the sense of the word. But the rest is all right. Content is great and there, if you're willing to overlook these details.
C**E
Short and informative. Very good.
The book was full of useful information.It was short and informative.I finished the book in one day but will keep thinking about its contents for months.
M**H
Kindle edition IS very much the 4th Edition as stated!
We all know this is the go-to book for writing. I'll skip that then and get right down to the issue at hand. I have seen others stating that this is either the original edition such as that at Project Gutenberg, but either they have updated it here or it never was. This is definitely the 4th edition and I have proof.Around location 765 you'll find an example of 'keeping related words together'. It reads as follows:New York’s first commercial human-sperm bank opened Friday with semen samples from eighteen men frozen in a stainless steel tank. »»»»» New York’s first commercial human- sperm bank opened Friday when semen samples were taken from eighteen men. The samples were then frozen and stored in a stainless steel tank.Strunk JR., William. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition . Pandora's Box. Kindle Edition.The edition at Gutenberg was published in either 1918 or 1919. I am fairly certain that any sperm bank was not even thought of at that time.Don't be fooled and you can always check for yourself. You can always return Kindle e-books if you find that it is not what you thought it was, within 7 days (at the time of this writing), for a full refund.I just wanted to clarify this information for prospective buyers.
H**O
Good content and excellent method
In my opinion, As an ESL student, it's one of the best books I have ever read! It presents clear and concise concepts, adding helpful examples!
A**G
Bad listing of a good book
The book itself is great. It succinctly discusses ways to make your sentences better in any kind of writing. It's useful enough that after I lost my last copy, I purchased this one. If you are wondering whether to buy it, too, yes, you should.However, you should not buy it from this listing. I ordered a new book, and when it arrived, the cover was bent and one corner was messed up. Also, this particular printing/edition was not proofread properly. (Seriously, you'd think a well-known book on grammar and writing could manage to get proofread.) The copy I had previously had no issues. This one discusses putting examples in dual columns for wrong/right and does so for most of the book, but there are a few times when wrong and right are listed one after the other instead. There are some other minor formating issues as well. It's nothing that makes it unreadable, though I feel a little like I got a knockoff copy.Buy this book from somewhere else.
F**A
Writer's Guide
An indispensable instruction manual for beginning writers. It seeks excellence in language, guiding the user in the elaboration of qualitative text. Written yesterday, but it seems like today.
U**N
English writing
ein must have für jeden der English schreibt
S**5
If you are confused about grammar, this is a good book
I see why this is a classic. Simple rules that will make your writing better. I wish I had know about the book, and read it (it's not long) thirty years ago. The book is advertised as USA rules, but they are very applicable to UK English writing too.
J**M
Kindle version is of bad quality
I returned the Kindle version of this book as is badly formatted. The examples are supposed to be listed in columns with the wrong examples on the left and the correct ones on the right, but in this version they're listed underneath each other which makes it very hard to tell which is which. There are also multiple instances of sentences being cut off and breaks in weird places.You can get the original version of this book for free on Project Gutenberg, with correct formatting.
L**N
Stile e punteggiatura.
Un piccolo libro, semplice, essenziale e chiaro, per imparare a scrivere partendo dalle virgole. Fondamentale per non commettere errori banali. Consigliato.
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