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The Elements of Style: 60 Minutes to Better Writing & Grammar cover art

The Elements of Style: 60 Minutes to Better Writing & Grammar

By: Professor William Strunk Jr.
Narrated by: uncredited
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Publisher's Summary

What you need to know about grammar and writing as taught widely in colleges, high schools, and grammar schools wherever American English is spoken!

William Strunk, Professor at Cornell, wrote his famous Little Book on good grammar and writing to simplify the subject for students far and wide. His famous motto was, "Omit needless words." This unabridged version follows this motto and can be listened to in just 60 minutes!

This is the original "Little Book," without add ons by later writers. This is a treasure to writers because it "omit(s)" needless words" and subject matter Professor Strunk did not believe was core to better writing. The brevity encourages relistening to deepen one's knowledge of the subject, the point made by Professor Strunk to his students: "the knowledge comes from rereading" or in our case, relistening. This unabridged version has 25 tracks: 1. Preface. 2. Introduction.. 3. Elementary Rules of Usage. 4. Form the Possessive Singular of Nouns with 's. 5. Three or More Terms with a Single Conjunction. 6. Enclose Parenthetic Expressions Between Commas. 7. Place a Comma before and or but. 8. Do Not Join Independent Clauses by a Comma. 9. Do Not Break Sentences in Two. 10. A Participial Phrase at the Beginning of a Sentence. 11. Divide Words at Line-ends. 12. Elementary Principles of Composition. 13. Make the Paragraph the Unit of Composition. 14. Begin a Paragraph with a Topic Sentence. 15. Use the Active Voice. 16. Put Statements in Positive Form. 17. Omit Needless Words. 18. Avoid a Succession of Loose Sentences. 19. Express Co-ordinate Ideas in a Similar Form. 20. Keep Related Words Together. 21. In Summaries Keep to One Tense. 22. Keep the Emphatic Word of a Sentence at the End. 23. A Few Matters of Form. 24. Words and Expressions Commonly Misused. 25. 56 Words Commonly Misspelled.

©2008 William Strunk (P)2008 Simply Magazine Inc.

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Excellent book but perhaps better suited to text

Great to have the opportunity to digest this classic book's lessons in audio format. Well delivered but what's missing is the ability to index the lessons. Not possible in the audiobook format.

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Narration kills this - take a sip of water, my God

Audio format unsuitable for this content; artistic licence taken to "modernise" language, e.g. gender, is unwarranted and - for me, at least - unwanted. Aforementioned aside, here is a quote representative of the content more generally: "Young and inexperienced, comma, I found the take easy, period."

The content is interesting, I'm sure. After some time, it is possible to acclimatise to the odd narration style and repetitive verbalisation of punctuation. Habituation comes at a cost, however. Ready yourself to be mocked by hindsight.

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For an advanced listener.

Difficult to discern the examples from the advice.
Would be best spoken by two narrators.

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