Advice from an unexpected source

I got some great advice the other day. I was struggling with a work problem and I wasn’t sure how to deal with it. I picked up a small book that I keep on top of my desk and immediately came to some great advice and knew exactly how to fix the problem.

I’m not sure about you, but I wish all of life was that easy.

Best Selling Actor Brené Brown’s book The Gifts of Imperfection, has been sitting on my desk for months but the advice didn’t come from her. It wasn’t from any media sensations, TedTalk presenters, or business management gurus. The advice came from a simple American English writing style guide, The Elements of Style, by William Struck and E.B. White, first published more than 100 years ago. The original was published in 1918 by Strunk and then revised in 1959 by White.

The book offers writing advice such as putting statements in positive form, using active voice, and placing emphatic words of a sentence at the end. The book is common among writer types, it’s one of the go-to books for grammatical and punctuation issues, but tends to be less known by everyone else. The fourth edition paperback which sits in a prime spot on my desk has less than 106 pages.

I picked up the book the other day really as an after-thought, I was waiting for an online meeting to start and started to skim through the book. I wasn’t really focused at first, but the more I read the book, the more I found it helpful to the meeting that was about the start.

Here’s what I’m talking about:

When talking with others, talk with them, not at them:

• “When a sentence is made stronger, it usually becomes shorter. Thus, brevity is a by-product of vigor.”

• “Use the smallest word that does the job.”

When it comes to problems, get to the point:

• “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.”

• “If those who have studied the art of writing are in accord on any one point, it is this: the surest way to arouse and hold the reader’s attention is by being specific, definite, and concrete.”

• “Instead of announcing what you are about to tell is interesting, make it so.”

Be truthful in your dealings:

• “A single overstatement, wherever or however it occurs, diminishes the whole, and a carefree superlative has the power to destroy, for the reader, the object of the writer’s enthusiasm.”

Be humble and modest:

• “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.” 

Measure twice, cut once:

• “The writer who has a definite meaning to express will not take refuge in such vagueness.” 

• “Prefer the specific to the general, the definite to the vague, the concrete to the abstract.”

Forget about your problems, look for opportunities:

• “Consciously or unconsciously, the reader is dissatisfied with being told only what is not; he wishes to be told what is.” 

English and Journalism teachers often refer to The Elements of Style as the Writer’s Bible. I’m not ready to start quoting from it chapter and verse quite like the Bible, but I have to admit that it’s got a ton of wisdom on both the written word and life.