Friday, May 18, 2007

The Humor of E. B. White

I was reading my copy of Strunk & White today. I came across an entry that made me chuckle:

Try. Takes the infinitive: "try to fix it", not "try and fix it." Students of the language will argue that try and has won through and become idiom. Indeed it has, and it is relaxed and acceptable. But try to is precise, and when you are writing formal prose, try and write try to.

I note that the original Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. is available online at no cost.

And I was a bit dismayed to see that Strunk's preference for omitting the comma before Jr. in a name is not followed by Wikipedia. The Wikipedia article about Strunk is entitled "William Strunk, Jr." Strunk thought the comma illogical; in this case it is also ironical. "See rule 3," he would have said.