The Elements of Style: Chapter 2

Chapter two of The Elements of Style  covers eleven rules on the structure of written work: choosing a structural suitable design, making paragraphs the units of composition, using an active voice instead of passive, putting statements in positive form, excluding needless words, avoiding a multiple loose sentences within a paragraph, expressing coordinate ideas in similar forms, keeping related words together, maintaining one tense in summaries, placing the emphatic words of a sentence at the end, and using definite, specific, concrete language. Just like chapter one, this chapter also provides correct and incorrect examples that pertain to the rules.

I found the rule on keeping related words together interesting and beneficial. Sometimes I sometimes find myself wording sentences in strange ways and I know that it can lead to confusion and ambiguity. In order for a writer to fix this problem, they must "bring together the words and groups of words that are related in thought and keep apart those that are not so related" (Strunk & White 28), and this is something I will try to keep in mind in the future.

Works Cited

Strunk, William and  E.B. White. The Elements of Style. 4th ed. Needham Heights: Allyn & Bacon, 2000. Print.

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