How To Find Your Writing Style

Summary of "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk Jr.

C.S.M.

Apr 24, 2024

📚 The Elements of Style is a classic book on writing.

🕒 Save time by reading my summary.

✍️ You’ll learn how to streamline your prose.

My summary is broken into four posts:

Part 1: What is “good” writing?
Part 2: How to write clearly
Part 3: The 9 words you might be using incorrectly
Part 4: How to find your writing style

Here is Part 4:

The Elements of Style is mostly a rule book, but the final chapter changes things up and goes deeper into style.

This final chapter can be found in newer editions of the book and was written by E.B. White, author of Charlotte’s Web.

White addresses an important point: Style is something of a mystery.

When we speak of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s style, we don’t mean his command of the relative pronoun, but the sounds his words make on paper.

If you doubt that style is something of a mystery, try rewriting a familiar sentence and see what happens:

These are times that try men’s souls.
→ Times like these try men’s souls.
→ These are trying times for men’s souls.
→ Soulwise, these are trying times.

All of the alternatives are grammatically correct, but they don’t reach the level of Thomas Paine’s original sentence.

Take a look at how two classic authors write about similar subject matter:

He did not still feel weak, he was merely luxuriating in that supremely gutful lassitude of convalescence in which time, hurry, doing, did not exist, the accumulating seconds and minutes and hours to which in its well state the body is slave both waking and sleeping, now reversed and time now the lip-server and mendicant to the body’s pleasure instead of the body thrall to time’s headlong course.
- William Faulkner

Manuel drank his brandy. He felt sleepy himself. It was too hot to go out into the town. Besides there was nothing to do. He wanted to see Zurito. He would go to sleep while he waited.
- Ernest Hemingway

E.B. White warns that the beginner should approach style warily. Realize that style is an expression of self, and turn away from all tricks and adornments that are popularly believed to indicate stye.

The best approach to style is by way of simplicity and sincerity.

Here are 15 suggestions and cautionary hints to find your writing style:

1. Write in a way that comes naturally.

Use words and phrases that come readily to hand.

But don’t assume that because you have acted naturally your product is without flaw.

2. Work from a suitable design

Before beginning to compose something, gauge the nature and extent of the enterprise and work from a suitable design.

This doesn’t mean that you must sit with a blueprint always in front of you, but that you best anticipate what you are getting into.

Sometimes, of course, impulse and emotion are more compelling than design.

But even the kind of writing that is essentially adventurous and impetuous will on examination be found to have a secret plan: Columbus didn’t just sail, he sailed west.

3. Write with nouns and verbs

Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs.

The adjective hasn’t been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place.

It is nouns and verbs, not their assistants, that give good writing its toughness and color.

4. Revise and rewrite

Revising is part of writing.

Few writers are so expert that they can produce what they are after on the first try.

It’s no sign of weakness or defeat that your manuscript ends up in need of major surgery. This is a common occurrence in all writing, and among the best writers.

5. Do not overwrite

Rich, ornate prose is hard to digest and sometimes nauseating.

When writing with a computer, you must guard against wordiness.

6. Avoid the use of qualifiers

Rather, very, little, pretty— these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose.

7. Do not affect a breezy manner

“Spontaneous me,” sang Whitman, and, in his innocence, let loose the hordes of uninspired scribbles who would one day confuse spontaneity with genius.

The breezy style is often the work of an egocentric, the person who imagines that everything that comes to mind is of general interest.

8. Do not explain too much

Be sparing, for instance, in the use of adverbs after “he said,” “she replied,” and the like. Let the conversation itself disclose the speaker’s manner of condition.

Inexperienced writers not only overwork their adverbs but load their attributives with explanatory verbs: “he consoled,” “she congratulated.” They do this, apparently, in the belief that the word said is always in need of support.

9. Do not construct awkward adverbs

Adverbs are easy to build. Take an adjective or a participle, add -ly, and behold! you have an adverb. But you’d probably be better off without it.

Words that are not used orally are seldom the ones to put on paper.

~~He climbed tiredly to bed.~~
He climbed wearily to bed.
~~The lamp cord lay tangedly beneath her chair.~~
The lamp cord lay in tangles beneath her chair.

Do not dress words up by adding -ly to them.

~~overly~~
over
~~muchly~~
much
~~thusly~~
thus

10. Make sure the reader knows who’s speaking

Dialogue is a total loss unless you indicate who the speaker is.

Make sure that your attributives do not awkwardly interrupt a spoken sentence. Place them where the break would come naturally in speech— that is, where the speaker would pause for emphasis, or take a breath. The best test for locating an attributive is to speak the sentence aloud.

~~“Now, my boy, we shall see,” he said, “how well you have learned your lesson".”~~
“Now, my boy,” he said, “we shall see how well you have learned your lesson.”
~~“What’s more, they would never,” she added, “consent to the plan.”~~
“What’s more,” she added, “they would never consent to the plan.”

11. Avoid fancy words

Avoid the elaborate, the pretentious, the coy, and the cute.

Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able.

Only the writer whose ear is reliable is in a position to use bad grammar deliberately; this writer knows for sure when a colloquialism is better than formal phrasing and is able to sustain the work at a level of good taste.

12. Do not use dialect unless your ear is good

Do not attempt to use dialect unless you are a devoted student of the tongue you hope to reproduce. If you use dialect, be consistent.

13. Be clear

Clarity, clarity, clarity. When you become hopelessly mired in a sentence, it is best to start fresh.

When you say something, make sure you have said is.

14. Use figures of speech sparingly

Similes and metaphors can be more distracting than illuminating.

Readers need time to catch their breath; they can’t be expected to compare everything with something else, and no relief in sight.

15. Do not take shortcuts at the cost of clarity

Write things out.

Do not use initials for the names of organizations unless you are certain the initials will be readily understood. Not everyone knows that MADD means Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

The one truly reliable shortcut in writing is to choose words that are strong and surefooted to carry readers on their way.

Continue reading the other parts of The Elements of Style summary: