lowell@fluke.UUCP (Lowell Skoog) (10/03/85)
E.B. White died this week at the age of eighty-six. Here is an excerpt from
his book, THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE.
Style takes its final shape more from attitudes of mind than from
principles of composition, for, as an elderly practitioner once
remarked, "Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar."
This moral observation would have no place in a rule book were it
not that style IS the writer, and therefore what a man is, rather
than what he knows, will at last determine his style. If one is
to write, one must believe--in the truth and worth of the scrawl
in the ability of the reader to receive and decode the message.
No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's
intelligence, or whose attitude is patronizing...
...Full of his beliefs, sustained and elevated by the power of his
purpose, armed with the rules of grammar, the writer is ready for
exposure. At this point, he may well pattern himself on the fully
exposed cow of Robert Louis Stevenson's rhyme. This friendly and
commendable animal, you may recall, was "blown by all the winds that
pass/And wet with all the showers." And so must the young writer be.
In our modern idiom, we would say that he must get wet all over.
Mr. Stevenson, working in a plainer style, said it with felicity,
and suddenly one cow, out of so many, received the gift of imortality.
Like the steadfast writer, she is at home in the wind and the rain;
and, thanks to one moment of felicity, she will live on and on and on.