The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition

This is an excellent guide to writing, provides great explanations, and is a tremendous help.

You will find this book to be very informative and helpful in your studies whether in school or not; get it today.

This certainly ranks up there. My other choices for 2007, hands down:

1) How To Ace Your Way Through College & Still Have a Life
2) The MLA Handbook
3) Fiske Guide to Colleges

Dr. Vernon M
Cambridge, MA

This book is an excellent "pocket" guide to write from just letters to scientific research papers; specially if your native language is not English.

William Strunk's book is entertaining for the sheer audacity and confidence of his voice. But the true gems in this book surface when you begin to apply his suggestions to the text of the suggestions themselves. He follows his own rules to the point that his text is often self-illustrating. Reading this way requires a high level of concentration but provides a level of entertainment rare in literature and unique among textbooks.

My poor knowledge of sentence construction prevented me from making it through the first chapter for 14 years. I finally sat down with a grammar book and looked up the terms I didn't know, such as "independent clause." After that it was such a joy that I read it through several times in succession. Excluding the influence of my wife and years of practice, nothing has had a greater positive effect on my writing than this book.

I read the "Third Edition" several times. It includes a chapter by E.B. White on style which is well worth reading. All editions prior to the fourth have been criticized as stereotyping women in traditional roles, which they do, but in 1935, that was simply part of the culture. The fourth edition has been cleaned up so that women and men bear equal weight. I did not notice any other changes in the text, but my Third Edition is 85 pages and the Fourth is 95. Maybe they use a larger type face.