📖 The Elements of Style

Willliam Strunk Jr. 1918.

Another recommendation from Spotify CEO Tobi Lütke’s interview with Tim Ferris. Amazon famously uses written memos instead of powerpoint presentations, a practice Shopify has also adopted. Although it’s much harder to put together a slide deck full of bullet points than it is to write 6 pages of narrative. And so inevitably people’s poor writing ability gets exposed quickly.

“[My] most frequently gifted book is ‘The Elements of Style’ because I just like good writing. [Laughs]. People hate getting that book, I think I might have 50 copies in my office.”

If you are reading this, then you have probably noticed that I have been trying to write more over the last few months. Part of my motivation is that I think it will help me to better understand and retain the material I am reading. But a secondary goal is that I also want to write better. So rather than just hope I improve by doubling down on frequency, I also plan on reading books on writing, of which this is the first.

This hundred year old book is short and punchy. Right from the start the author starts dishing out his rules — 33 in total — each with a brief explanation followed by some examples contrasting the right and wrong approach.

I will briefly include some of the one’s I found most helpful.

Paragraphs

Make the paragraph the unit of composition.

Write one paragraph for each topic. A paragraph should express a complete thought.

“A subject should be subdivided into topics, and each topic should be made the subject of a paragraph.”

Begin each paragraph with a topic sentence.

Use the first sentence in a paragraph to introduce the topic. And use the last sentence in a paragraph to confirm the opening.

“Enable readers to discover the purpose of each paragraph as they begin to read it, and to retain this purpose in mind as they end it.”

Active voice

Use of the active voice is what Tobi highlighted for his Shopify example:

Ferris: Is [gifting this book] a passive aggressive thing to employees? “John, by the way, great use of the semi colon, however…here’s a gift”

Tobi: [Laughs] Ye, it’s more like “Hey I like the content of the memo, but I don’t think you have written a non passive sentence in here so I think we need to talk”.

The active/passive voice was new to me. The active voice is to be more direct, bold, concise, and even “vigorous”, than the the passive.

GOOD: I shall always remember my visit to Boston.
BAD: My visit to Boston will always be remembered by me.

False subjects

The term “false subjects” refers to phrases such as: it is, it was, it will be, there is, there are, there was, there were, there will be. They are usually used at the start of a sentence and “often displace the real subject.” And in nearly every case the sentence is improved by getting rid of them.

BAD: It is revealed in the video
GOOD: The video reveals

There are so many other good ones too: Put statements in positive form. Keep summaries in the present tense. As well as more obvious but still powerful rules like Rule 13: Omit needless words.

There’s a lot of good stuff in here. Keeping it top of mind when I am writing will be a challenge. But the book is short enough that you can probably skim through it after you have written a long piece, and keep that practice up until you are doing it by second nature.