Comparing Strunk and White's Elements of Style to Joseph William's Style, Toward Clarity and Grace

As part of writing ENG328 second essay, students were asked to compare two style books. The first book was The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. with Revisions, an Introduction, and a Chapter by E.B. White, 4th edition and the second book was Style, Toward Clarity and Grace by Joseph M. Williams. The books are both on writing and style and they are completely different from each other.

Strunk and White’s book was first published in 1918 and has gone through several revisions. This book lists basic rules and makes simple suggestions for formal or composition types of writing. It wasn’t meant as a way to teach writing, it was more like an aid to enable writers to eliminate common writing mistakes in their papers. At times while reading the book, it seems like the grammar police are issuing demands and laying down the law about what is and is not correct grammar. Other sections of the book seem as though the author is trying to be humorous about suggesting what is wrong and how to fix the problem. One of the problems that I find with the books is that it is extremely brief in explaining why and how to fix writing issues. It’s good to be made aware of the writing issues that the book addresses, however without an explanation of why something is supposedly problematic, it makes it difficult to see the importance of doing something about it – at least in my case. The book uses a basic formula of giving four bad writing examples with the corrected examples, and then adds a few comments about why the “good” examples are better than the bad examples - doesn’t really help me with my particular writing issues to be a better writer.


Willams’ book on style had ten chapters that actually explained how to construct sentences and paragraphs and he gives the rational for doing so. His book is about writing clearly and he provides step-by-step ways to go about writing. At the end of each chapter, Williams summarizes the information he has introduced and thoroughly explained. Each chapter builds upon the previous one; “Scaffolding” is the term they use in educational psychology as an effective teaching for learning method and the format of his book provides that for readers. Another feature of the book is that it incorporates diagrams, tables, summaries, labels, etc to break down the information for the reader. This book provides a methodical way of teaching writing and I believe it should be used to teach composition in high school and college writing courses. The information in Williams book is always consistent with the way the information is presented – there is no question that Williams practices what he teaches. This greatly contrasts with Strunk and Whites practice and preaching style.

From reading and comparing the two books, it is easy to see the difference in merely constructing grammatically correct sentences and in conveying information and thoughts in a clear and concise manner. The Strunk and White book has rules and suggestions, while the Williams’ book seems to be based on logic, planning, and real thinking about how to construct and execute good writing form.