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Comment by ender7 | Hacker News Reader

Moreover, while White's style of writing is simple and straightforward, it is not representative of how people talked then (or talk today). That's part of the magic -- his words are so carefully crafted that we mistake elegance for simplicity and structure for straightforwardness. There is none of the common unevenness of natural speech to trip up our reading ears; the words flow so easily into our minds that it feels like we're talking to ourselves.

White was also the co-author of a famous prescriptive book on writing and grammar [1]. He knew what he was doing :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style

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Very true!

But to be honest, I'm thankful most of my English professors did not care for The Elements of Style, never recommended it, and instead recommended other style guides which were better suited to me and our times. :)

I loved Charlotte's Web, though. I first read it when I was 8, I believe, and it had quite an impact on me.

Thematically, quite different, but Dylan Thomas had the same, I like to call it deceptive 'straightforwardness' and 'simplicity'. Plus, his sincerity was refreshing. He stripped away all the pretentiousness that many symbolists/surrealists can be interpreted as having. When I read him I don't sense that same frivolous nature some academics have, including some stuff by EB White.

Could you perhaps recommend some of these alternatives to The Elements of Style? I'm rather curious to read them and see how they compare.

I'll dig through my boxes to find the one I referred to the most. I have the image of the front cover in my head, but not the name. It was something pretty generic, though.

But I should clarify I went to school in Canada.

All of my style guides were from small publishers and many were written by my instructors/professors.

We/I did use some international ones from time to time (some profs had preferences). These were:

(1) MLA Style Manual or MLA Handbook

(2) AP Stylebook

(3) New York Times Manual of Style and Usage

(4) Chicago Manual of Style

Now that I'm in the United States, I use (4) at work. They have an online version of their entire book (first 30 days free): http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html

But to get back to The Elements of Style, it would almost be easier to look at what S&W recommend and see how writers write today, as you're most likely to find the answer right there in front of you.

Elements of Style was written in 1918. There have been all sorts of stylistic suggestions since then, depending on your field. The reason why we used more than one style guide at school was because neither can be said to be definitive, exhaustive or the 'best'. Some provided better explanations as to why certain styles were preferred.

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