My first copy of Strunk and White was a small blue paperback that I bought at Kreiman's Bookstore in Duluth when I was in high school. I was mad about E.B. White -- his dry wit, his clear, beautiful sentences, his dying pigs -- and I figured his book on language would be wonderful. Of course it was, and is, and now, 50 years after it was first published, it's wonderful and leather-bound, with gilt trim.
Over time, I acquired other editions: a beige paperback from the '90s. A largish blue hardcover, copyright 1972, inherited from a long-since retired editor. This 50th anniversary edition is mostly unchanged ("modestly updated," according to Roger Angell's foreword), but for the nice packaging and the pages of enthusiastic quotes from everyone from Charles Osgood to Dorothy Parker.
Skip over all that. Page to the back. You know what you're looking for: Clear rules for misused words (such as lay and lie). Twenty-one rules for an approach to style. ("Avoid foreign languages." "Write with nouns and verbs.")
And sensible advice on writing by ear -- his hilarious rewrite of "These are the times that try men's souls." ("Soulwise, these are trying times.") Who could ever forget that?
LAURIE HERTZEL
