Some of you, aspiring writers or parents and relatives of aspiring writers, will be purchasing copies of Strunk and White's Elements of Style as the new academic year cranks into action, even though the distinguished linguist Geoffrey Pullum would be pleased were every extant copy of S&W to be sealed in lead containers and dropped in the Marianas Trench.
I suggest a different little book: The Old Editor Says, a compendium of a career's worth of reliable maxims for every ink-stained wretch.
Favorable notices from, among other worthies, Jan Freeman at Throw Grammar From the Train, Stan Carey at Sentence First, and Steve Buttry at The Buttry Diary, have not been rescinded.
You can also listen to The Old Editor himself read selections at a Grammar Girl podcast.
The Old Editor himself is available to harangue students, writers, editors, and interested civilians, at very reasonable rates. Write to him at jno_mcintyre@yahoo.com
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