Your Writing Style

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Your Writing Style

How can one person know what good style is when writing a paper? Where is it written that we as students should have to follow specific guidelines while writing? Anyone wanting to make their writing clear, precise, and simply correct will usually try following some type of guideline, or book in order to perfect their own writing style. After reading both The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, and also Williams’s Style toward Clarity and Grace I can see why teachers discuss these books as tools for correcting and perfecting their students writing, and style. While at the same time understand someone out of the classroom setting, brushes up on their skills in writing with these books before they have to complete some type of report that needs to be concrete and readable.

Students and other writers should understand that while these books can be effective tools they simply are that a tool and not a style that should be studied, and copied word for word. In these two different forms of writing and style that are addressed by both authors I feel they are targeting different audiences that have two dissimilar styles. These books are great tools for perfecting our style as writers, but they should not be relied on too heavily by the writer. Everyone has a different angle of style they go for in their writing; these books simply either enhance that style, or with books like Strunk and White’s curtail that style into one of the authors.

Making a style one’s own is something most writers’ struggle with in the classroom and through out their careers because there are various types of books all claiming to be the “Bible” of style. These books are all geared toward...

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... broad audience develop their own style, rather than copying his. Each book can benefit a student or person struggling to find the correct writing style for them, but they should understand these are simply guidance books to be used as tools, and not only way to write and use style correctly. Their style will develop over time when they implement some of these elements/rules with their own words.

Works Cited

Jamison, Larry. “Assignment 3 STRUNK-A-SAURUS VS TERRA-X-WILLIAMS.” February 16, 2004. Larry Jamison’s Blog. ljamison.blogspot.com

(March 7, 2004)

Newsom, Paula. “No Title.” February 10, 2004. Paula Newsom’s Blog. paulanewsom.blogspot.com (March 7, 2004)

Strunk, William and White, E.B. The Elements of Style. New York: Longman, 2000.

Williams, Joseph. Style toward Clarity and Grace. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1990.

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