The elements of style
(Book)

Includes facsimile original1918 title page.

The Elements of Style, English Writing Style Guide, A Teacher Resource Manual, The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White, is a prescriptive American English writing style guide comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary principles of composition", "a few matters of form", a list of forty-nine "words and expressions commonly misused", and a list of fifty-seven "words often misspelled". In 2011, Time magazine listed The Elements of Style as one of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923. Cornell University English professor William Strunk, Jr., wrote The Elements of Style in 1918, and privately published it in 1919, for in-house use at the university. Later, for publication, he and editor Edward A. Tenney revised it as The Elements and Practice of Composition (1935). In 1957, at The New Yorker, the style guide reached the attention of E.B. White, who had studied writing under Strunk in 1919, but had since forgotten "the little book" that he described as a "forty-three-page summation of the case for cleanliness, accuracy, and brevity in the use of English." Weeks later, White wrote a feature story about Strunk's devotion to lucid English prose.

Reprint. Originally published:,New York : Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1918.