Strunk & White vs. Williams

My first post on Strunk & White I said the two most helpful rules were to talk in the positive and to omit needless words. Strunk & White has to be brief with his explanations because it is a pocket book, Williams is more descriptive with why you should or shouldn’t do something because that is his goal.

In Strunk & White with rule 15 about using the positive, he doesn’t even use two pages to describe why it is a writer should do this and how to do it. This could be difficult for some to understand what to do and get the hang of changing things to the positive. One thing Williams does that Strunk & White does not, is gives a few phrases in the negative, and how to say them in the positive, like “not many” would be “few”, and “did not accept” would be “rejected”. This table is something that helped me because it directed my thinking rather than trying to change the whole sentence as I thought would have to be done from Strunk & White, I see it’s a small phrase that needs to be changed, and rewording a phrase is easier to do than a sentence.

Strunk & White says to omit needless words, Williams however, describes something called metadiscourse which is our thoughts like saying I believe, and says that these things are unnecessary and should be omitted. The other thing is all throughout Williams book, he talks about metadiscourse and what to omit, where Strunk & White takes less than two pages to talk about what should be omitted, and never touches on the I believe stuff. Plus Strunk & White only touches on redundancies and wordiness using “the reason why is that” should be “because” as an example of wordiness.

Another thing I mentioned in my first post was Strunk & White’s section on headings, and that I thought it most unhelpful. For one it talks mostly of margins, and a general format for sending a manuscript. The section doesn’t really talk about headings, and the section is only about a paragraph. When Williams talks about headings he talks about actual headings not margins for a manuscript. Williams talks about what a writer needs to know about headings. He talks about where to place a heading, what should be in a heading, says they help a writer when trying to organize their paper as well as helps the reader pick out the areas they would like to read.

Overall, Williams is better. Williams goes into more details on what is expected and clarifies what he is trying to say. But then Strunk & White is a good travel size, something you can take anywhere, that’s what Strunk & White wanted, he wanted something you could carry on the plane, or take with you in the park, and still be able to revise your writing. Williams wanted to be clear about what he was talking about and what he meant for a writer to revise, and why it is important for a writer to revise those things. I need things almost spelled out completely for me, so I prefer Williams over Strunk & White, but others may feel Strunk & White is all they need.