In the summer of 1957, I wrote a piece for The New
Yorker about a textbook I had used when I was a student
at Cornell. The book dealt with usage and style; the author
was William Strunk Jr., who had been my friend and
teacher. When this piece of mine appeared in print, the
editors of The Macmillan Company got hold of the textbook
and arranged to reissue it, using my article as an introduc-
tion. They asked me to make revisions in the text and write
a chapter on style, and I have done both things.

Professor Strunk was a positive man. His book contained
rules of grammar phrased as direct orders. In the main I
have not attempted to soften his commands, or modify his
pronouncements, or delete the special objects of his scorn.
I have tried, instead, to preserve the flavor of his discontent,
while slightly enlarging the scope of the discussion. I did
omit one intricate rule of composition-one that I suspected
the author might have cut had he been alive today. In its
place appears Rule 8, a substitution I thought proper and
for which the reader must not hold Professor Strunk re-
sponsible. Here and there in the book, minor alterations
have been made; a few outdated references have been
dropped, a few fresh examples added. Mr. Strunk had once
done some revising of his text, for subsequent editions; some
of his revisions are retained here, others are not.

The Elements of Style, as originally conceived, was not
an attempt to survey the whole field. In an introduction to
his first edition, the author stated that he intended merely
to give in brief space the principal requirements of plain

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