a book
The Elements of Style
William Strunk, Jr., Maira Kalman and E.B. White · 1999 · 70 pages
recommended by 7 people
sourced from public statements
Andrej Karpathy
“This is a very short book that is skimmable in 1hr, readable in few, but absorbable only on the scale of months/years. It is a dense instruction manual for writing well: it starts with simple grammatical rules of form in part 1, progresses to various tips/tricks for the connective structure in part 2, and ends with a discussion of how one can infuse their writing with a soul, a kick, and rhythm. I found myself disagreeing several times and found some parts to be contradictory, but I think it's still well-worth a skim. You'll almost certainly find a few things you've been doing wrong all along, or not doing enough of. 3/5 - I liked it.”
Bill Nye
“This is my guide. I accept that I’ll never write anything as good as the introductory essay by E.B. White. It’s brilliant. As a guy, who is often asked to read aloud from radio scripts and teleprompter, I am a fan of the serial comma. Red, white, and blue comes out properly. Red, white and blue, seldom does.”↗
Ben Affleck
“I, like many, initially chafed at Strunk and White’s ideas. Once I accepted that you had to learn the rules before you could break them, I set about what would become the oddly comforting task of getting to understand the true and ordered nature of the universe of writing. Perhaps the best thing in the book was what it taught (or tried to teach) me not to do. Their caution against overwriting, overstating, injecting opinions, and going on at length (I’m in serious danger of it here, in fact) was sorely needed.”↗
books like The Elements of Style
other books recommended by the same people who recommend this one
The Elements of Style
William Strunk & E.B. White
5 shared recommenders
A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
William B. Irvine
3 shared recommenders
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Thomas Piketty
2 shared recommenders
Cosmos
Carl Sagan
2 shared recommenders
Cryptonomicon
Neal Stephenson
2 shared recommenders
Debt: The First 5,000 Years
David Graeber
2 shared recommenders
Finite and Infinite Games
James P. Carse
2 shared recommenders
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
Steven Levy
2 shared recommenders
High Output Management
Andrew S. Grove
2 shared recommenders
Hillbilly Elegy
J. D. Vance
2 shared recommenders
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Revised Edition
Robert B. Cialdini, PhD
2 shared recommenders
Permutation City
Greg Egan
2 shared recommenders