NOW READING: The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition (2000)

This will be the last reference book covering words and writing skills I read for some time. My next few reads will still have a reference component to them but they will serve as a supplementary material. Stay tuned for that announcement; this current book is short.

I purchased The Elements of Style at the recommendation of Stephen King. It is listed chief among the horror master’s recommended materials for improving your wordsmithing. King’s On Writing is a terrific read in it own right and I look forward to getting to it before I tackle some fiction. I don’t remember when I got this book but I believe that I requested it either for Christmas or for my birthday one year and this reading journey was taking shape in my head.

This book’s goal is to clear up weaknesses that plague writers. Coming off the heels of The Bedford Handbook and its dose of Toolbox Level 1 content, I hope to use this book to strengthen my ability to assess Toolbox Level 2 content in future reads. In the end, I hope that enhancing my ability to recognize good style will lead to exhibiting good style in my own writing.

I don’t believe that I will post any reading updates for this book. It is a slim thing, not even 150 pages. If it is as enlightening and essential as Stephen King claims, I suspect that I will make short work of it.

Thank God I Don’t Have to Write Research Papers Anymore: A Review of The Bedford Handbook

It should come as no surprise to hear that this was the most useful book I have read so far along this journey. Words for the sake of words was an interesting way to start my reading quest but it wasn’t very useful. I will admit that the dictionary’s usage notes provided some worthwhile commentary and highlighted the importance of selecting the right word to convey what you wish to express. The thesaurus and my word roots dictionary contained few, if any, insights. Assessing The Bedford Handbook required the most thought to date, both while reading it and while sitting down to write this review.

Toolbox Level 1: A
Much of The Bedford Handbook’s focus is on honing and perfecting the structural elements of writing that fall under Toolbox Level 1. For that reason alone, it should come as no surprise that this book scores as high as possible. I didn’t note any spelling errors or any odd grammatical turns. This has me thinking that I may want to reevaluate how this category is weighted compared to the others. Perhaps not every book will score so high. If they do, however, then I may have to do a little fine-tuning.

Toolbox Level 2: B
I wasn’t able to dock my previous reads for their style and structural elements. Form and function are very basic for dictionaries and thesauri. While a B may not seem like taking a book to task, I feel it is a harsh but deserved score. The author’s style isn’t suspect but I feel that the organization of this book leaves something to be desired. It’s filled with great content but the chapters are not arranged in a manner that benefits the readers in the greatest need of assistance. Parts I and II are fine where they are but I am still baffled by the decision to stick the grammar section in Part XI. I think a more natural and logical progression was missed, resulting in far too much page turning.

Fulfillment of Purpose: B+
If I wanted to be nasty, I could punish this book for how dated some of its research guidelines now seem. I suspect that more research is done online now than in physical books. I could also rail against the fact that the website supplements this book points readers to no longer exist. In fact, Ms. Hacker’s website, the backbone of The Bedford Handbook’s online presence, is no longer in operation- not even by the publisher. This is almost to be expected, however, for a reference book that’s old enough to drive. For this section, I chose to focus on the strengths this book has to offer.

While the organization of the book could be better, the content is excellent. The MLA, APA, and Chicago reference and works cited sections will come up big for you if you are writing a research paper. The only way it could fail you is if MLA, APA, or Chicago style rules have changed, so it would be best to pick up something more current. It is 2019 after all.

The value of this book extends well beyond research papers. Even if you think you are a good writer, there at least two or three chapters in this book that will make you realize that you still struggle with something. I plan on coming back to this well of information as I start to write more. Heck, I’ve already used it to assess and correct some of my reading posts.

Reading Experience: B-
Given that I am neither writing research papers anymore nor struggling with ESL issues, this book was hit-or-miss as a cover-to-cover read. The chapters that I could relate to or gain help from kept my attention. Chapters focusing on areas I don’t think I struggle with were easy to read less intently. Those chapters that I had no interest or stake in were chores to read.

This is probably how most reference books covering a broad range of topics feel though. I’ve been sheltered by my first three books because they have very narrow foci. This is the first book I’ve read with more than just a few pages containing paragraphs, making it hard to compare to the dictionary, thesaurus, and word roots guide. It reads like a true book and yet it reads quite differently from non-reference material.

Overall Score: 3.25 out of 4 (solid B)
The Fulfillment of Purpose section is easily more important for a reference book than Reading Experience. The purpose of this book helped me get a better sense of the kinds of things I should look for when evaluating a book’s Toolbox Level 1 ingredients. This is precisely why I read this book when I did. It will help me evaluate both my own writing and the writing of others. It’s foundational stuff that may be easy to ignore as a reading-worthy subject, but it is also the kind of foundational stuff that separates the wheat from the chaff if we only choose to focus on it.

While I wouldn’t call this an enjoyable book, I have no regret calling it a worthwhile book. That may lose me points with the anti-prescriptivism crowd, but I believe that a fair amount of prescriptivism is necessary in written works. In face-to-face conversation, you can ask for clarification. Written communication is an all-or-nothing pursuit. You are either understood or you are not. If you follow the rules for grammar, usage, and mechanics laid out in this book, then you will have a better chance of having your written words understood. On some level, we all just want to be understood, don’t we?

READING UPDATE: The Bedford Handbook- Part XI – Index

Excited as I was to move past the MLA, APA, and Chicago drudgery, I made a point to slow down while reading the four grammar chapters. The Bedford Handbook loses points for relegating these chapters to the tail end of the book. Some of the terminology presented in these chapters is necessary to understand the guidance offered in earlier chapters. These four chapters aren’t even that dense, so I think it is more logical to put the grammar refresher chapters right before the chapters advising how to punctuate clauses and sentences described in the grammar refresher. Doing so would have spared me a lot of awkward back-and-forth page flipping.

Because I just can’t get away from dictionary-esque things it seems, this book also contains a glossary of usage. It was a nice way to wrap up the useful content of the book. After that was the answers section for all the mid- and end-chapter exercises that readers can partake in. Since I used the exercises to test myself while reading, I had already read over the answers section once, allowing me to skip it.

I admit that I skimmed over the index rather than read it in earnest. I kept an eye out for any terms or topics that I either didn’t remember or wanted to take a second peak at. They were few and far between.

It is a relief to be done with another book. I finished this one in 100 days. Blasting out a reference book in that short a span of time feels good but my page-per-day count is still on the low end. Perhaps my next book or two will lift that up some more. I’ll post a review in a few days.


Page Count: 928/928 (100.00%)
Countdown to my next update: 0 pages

READING UPDATE: The Bedford Handbook- Part IX – Part X

This latest section I finished off was the most useful to me as a college student. As an adult who no longer writes research papers with works cited pages, this section was about as riveting as watching paint dry. There was one snippet, however, that provided much needed advice for all communication, not just the written word:

“People believe that intelligence and decency support their side of an argument. To change sides, they must continue to feel intelligent and decent. Otherwise they will persist in their opposition.”

Aside from this gem of a quote, there wasn’t a lot to see. This portion of the book contains a few chapters about how to approach researching for a paper, avoiding plagiarism, and structuring an effective argument. The research chapters show their age, with broad warnings against using the internet pretty much at all. It also provides a small, clunky list of search engines trusted by the author. About half of those listed no longer exist.

One of the biggest affronts to all that is good and decent (at least in my silly mind) came in the form of a list of over 21 different reference and documentation styles that the book suggests are common. It seems as if every other academic or scientific discipline has come up with its own style guide for research documentation. It all just seemed a little too much. I’m not opposed to different disciplines being unique in certain ways, but this overabundance of style guides seems like it has to be intentional out of misplaced pride or arrogance- having your own system just to have your own system if you will. Perhaps some of the style guides listed have vanished over the last 17 years. I hope so, because it was hard enough in college to bounce back and forth between MLA and APA style depending on the professor.

The rest (and majority) of this section was split into three documentation guides for MLA, APA, and Chicago formats. This is where The Bedford Handbook was worth its weight in gold when I was in college. In the end, it probably only saved me a few percentage points per paper, but those extra points helped me graduate cum laude.

The final stretch of this book is upon us. After a few chapters on grammar, a usage glossary, and the index, I will be done and on to one last reference book. I admit that I got fidgety several times during this last section, so it seems my tolerance for reference material is waning fast. It’s a good thing my next book is a short one.

Page Count: 811/928 (87.39%)
Countdown to my next update: 117 pages