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From: lowell@fluke.UUCP (Lowell Skoog)
Newsgroups: net.books,net.nlang
Subject: E.B. White (1899-1985)
Message-ID: <1197@vax1.fluke.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 3-Oct-85 13:52:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: vax1.1197
Posted: Thu Oct  3 13:52:35 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 4-Oct-85 06:28:50 EDT
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Xref: watmath net.books:2370 net.nlang:3614


E.B. White died this week at the age of eighty-six.  Here is an excerpt from
his book, THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE.

    Style takes its final shape more from attitudes of mind than from
    principles of composition, for, as an elderly practitioner once 
    remarked, "Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar."  
    This moral observation would have no place in a rule book were it 
    not that style IS the writer, and therefore what a man is, rather 
    than what he knows, will at last determine his style.  If one is 
    to write, one must believe--in the truth and worth of the scrawl 
    in the ability of the reader to receive and decode the message.  
    No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's 
    intelligence, or whose attitude is patronizing...

    ...Full of his beliefs, sustained and elevated by the power of his 
    purpose, armed with the rules of grammar, the writer is ready for 
    exposure.  At this point, he may well pattern himself on the fully 
    exposed cow of Robert Louis Stevenson's rhyme.  This friendly and 
    commendable animal, you may recall, was "blown by all the winds that 
    pass/And wet with all the showers."  And so must the young writer be.
    In our modern idiom, we would say that he must get wet all over.  
    Mr. Stevenson, working in a plainer style, said it with felicity, 
    and suddenly one cow, out of so many, received the gift of imortality.
    Like the steadfast writer, she is at home in the wind and the rain; 
    and, thanks to one moment of felicity, she will live on and on and on.


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