The Elements of Style

I love this book

I found it from reading about writing, and more specifically people blogging about Stephen King's On Writing, and later reading the book myself.

It's a great handbook on what to and not to do when writing. To start, it's short. It is around 100 pages and is significantly longer than it was when William Strunk originally wrote it. EB White (yes that EB White) was a student of Strunk who wrote a very terse text for his class. Years later White added to it, and with a little bit of modernization, the book exists today in it's fourth edition. It's to the point, and perhaps could be considered a bit rude, but most good English teachers are. The first part, which is what Strunk wrote, is pretty much a drill sargent issuing orders. These are simple points like

"2. Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas."
"6. Do not break sentences in two."

The later parts, mostly written by White, highlight issues related to overall form, like using paragraphs, using the active voice, be clear, and one of the most important, omit needless words. Good writing is simple.

I'm still not sure why none of my English instructors have ever told me about this before.