The Elements Of Style

This book aims to give in brief space the principal requ­i-rements of plain English style. It aims to lighten the task of instructor and student by concentrating attention (in Chap-ters II and III) on a few essentials, the rules of usage and prin­ciples of composition most commonly violated. In ac-cor­dance with this plan it lays down three rules for the use of the comma, instead of a score or more, and one for the use of the semicolon, in the belief that these four rules provide for all the internal punctuation that is required by ninete­en sen-tences out of twenty. Similarly, it gives in Chapter III only those principles of the paragraph and the sentence whi­ch are of the widest application. The book thus covers only a small portion of the field of English style. The experience of its writer has been that once past the essentials, students pro­fit most by individual instruction based on the problems of their own work, and that each instructor has his own body of the-ory, which he may prefer to that offered by any textbook