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'As Good or Better Than'…?
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| Very
few people I know know who Dianna Booher is. Fewer still, even in the
wide field of English majors at a contemporary university, know who William
Strunk is. While these names ring no internal bells for many people,
it remains that both have made contributions to the field, and to the people
within it. Both figures agree that people, in general, commonly misuse
words, and that they both possess the know-how to correct these linguistic
maladies, and they present their cases in their books, E-Writing, and The
Elements of Style, respectively. |
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| That introductory
paragraph already goes completely against Strunk's direct order of "Omit
needless words"(17). William Strunk, long-dead Cornell University English
professor, wrote his 'little' book, The Elements of Style, in 1918, for his
English 8 class. At this time, its use was primarily for the college
students in that course. Also, at this time, Woodrow Wilson was president,
and the armistice of World War I had been signed in November. World
Peace is a simple 14-point plan away. Women cannot vote (at least not
in all states), and African Americans are commonly referred to as 'Negroes'
(and they have few rights, as well). Strunk and his world of needless
words, grammatical conventions, and revising with scissors seems completely
removed form all of this world history. However, his 'little' book,
still in publication nearly one hundred years later, is a useful tool, even
if his target audience is no longer the one using the text. The appeal
of Elements, then, is that it goes by most, if not all of the rules given
within, including 'Omit needless words', a convention of style that many
college students completely ignore in hopes of hitting their required number
of pages. Already, in a page and a half of text, I've used 299 words.
Strunk, given his trusty scissors, could probably halve that. |
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| Dianna Booher,
on the other hand, is a woman of today, one like you'd expect to see in a
Tex Avery cartoon, "The Woman of Tomorrow!". She is a woman, white,
a Texan, and a consultant, head of her own company. She has written 23 books,
all more or less on the same topic - good communication skills in the business
world - facilitated several software programs to help with this, made videos,
and spoken at various conventions and for high-powered C.E.O.'s all over
the United States. In February of 2001, when this book was published,
all American women had the right to vote, and, for the most part, people
are seen as equals. Her books, usually, are directed toward businessmen and
women, but some are focused only on women, encouraging them to not see themselves
as women in a man's profession, but as executives in an executive profession.
E-Writing: 21st Century Tools for Effective Communication is her manifesto
on e-mail communication in the working world. Whereas William Strunk
gives orders about grammar, spelling, and word use, Booher details her commands
with cute little quotes from Alice in Wonderland, and gives plenty of examples,
charts, and explanations. |
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| Strunk's
book focuses mostly on 'the commonplaces of careless writing' (34).
It is not so much that these words are completely incorrect and thus should
be stricken from everyone's vocabulary; instead, Strunk says, "Many of the
words and expressions here listed are not so much bad English writing as
bad style…the proper correction is likely to be not the replacement of one
word or set of words, but the replacement of vague generality by definite
statement." (34) He also almost contradicts his entire book of Army-styled
commands in this section of the 'little' book: "The shape of our language
is not rigid; in questions of usage we have no lawgiver whose word is final."
(34) Also included in Part IV of Elements are misspellings and misplaced
words. Examples include allude versus elude - a reference versus an
escape. Also, can versus may, the difference between the ability to
do something, and the permission to do that same thing. A personal
favorite in Strunk's taxing list of corrections and revisions is nice, which
Strunk despises for its ambiguity and vagueness. It is 'shaggy and
all-purpose' and 'to be used sparingly'. (47) Of course, at his time of writing,
the word meant 'accurate' and 'precise'. One of the later admonitions
Strunk makes is of the phrase the foreseeable future. This is "A cliché
and a fuzzy one. How much of the future is foreseeable? Ten minutes?
Ten years? Any of it? By whom is it foreseeable? Seers?
Experts? Everybody?" (53) This may be an attempt at comedy for the
resolute Strunk, but he does have a point, even if he results in a succession
of loose fragments to make it. |
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| By
comparison, Booher's various lists of misused words are about actual misuse
(as in Strunk's case of allude versus elude), verb add-ons, and redundancies.
Rather than saying that these are 'bad style', Booher only states that these
errors should be edited from your work. The best part of Booher's exhaustive
list is that she explains, in depth, the problems and differences.
The very first item on her list is accept versus except, an abuse I see far
too often for my own taste. Booher illustrates the discrepancy as such:
"accept [is a] verb - 'to receive'…except [is a] preposition - 'not including'"(190)
The confusion of these two words make for utterly confusing wordplay.
Other sets of words that Booher corrects include common pet peeves of my
own their, they're, and there; as well as to, too, and two. Booher
also mentions, as did Strunk, the gaping difference between can and may:
a discrepancy quickly taught to (and forgotten by) any high school student
who had need of the restrooms in the middle of English class. Other
repeats between the two tomes are irregardless versus regardless (Strunk,
44; Booher, 201), leave and let (Strunk, 44; Booher, 198), and infer compared
to imply (Strunk, 43; Booher, 197). |
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| The purpose
of these many words and phrases is not to marshal (a misuse for Strunk: using
a noun as a verb) the style of writing, but to improve upon it. Anyone
(as opposed to anybody, for Strunk) who uses they're in place of their can
be easily thought to be illiterate; such is also the case when saying should
of instead of should have. However, the motivation behind other misfeasances,
such as Strunk's preference of expect over anticipate, or Booher's idol versus
idle, is a mystery. It's hard to believe that anyone who has made it
so far as Cornell University (then or now) or to the higher ranks of the
business world, could mistake an obscure noun for an adjective meaning ‘laziness’.
Finally, it must be said that the major distinction between Strunk and Booher
is that Strunk's 'traditional' style concedes that his chapter of misused
words is only a guideline, a preference, and there is no one to say whether
he is right or wrong. Booher, in a complete reverse of her normal manner
of writing, simply expects that her word is law, and all who read her words
of wisdom will follow them, into the electronic world and beyond. |
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* you are here *
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::Traditional and Electronic Style Essay::
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* destinations *
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