[kitkat]

***Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.***

The bottom of page 23 in my old copy of "The Elements of Style." Priceless book.

[Tenniel]

Strunk and White rule, now and forever! -- Except in the fourth edition, which came out in hardcover in 1999. This abomination, which introduced PC notions and an appalling slew of typos, should be burned at the stake, and the original 1964 MacMillan paperback should be reprinted ver-effing-batim and airdropped into every high-school classroom and MSM newsroom in the country.

The next stake over should be reserved for something called Adios, Strunk and White: A Handbook for the New Academic Essay by Hoffman and Hoffman. It was already in its third edition in 2003, with rave reviews at Amazon.com from various Professors of English -- which may help explain why, as one English friend commented recently, America appears to be a nation of people who don't know what to do with an apostrophe.