Comparing Strunk and White with Williams

The major difference between Strunk and White and Williams is the emphasis on what is more important. Strunk and White concentrate more on Grammar rules while Williams is mainly concerned with Style.

Strunk and White are much more authoratative in their presentation of rules. They provide you with the rules and occasionally an example and leave it at that. "These are the rules; there is no debating them."

Williams provides much more explanation and many more examples of why certain rules or techniques are important. The rules and examples which Williams provide seem to be for a slightly more advanced crowd. He assumes that the reader is already familiar with basic grammar conventions and concentrates more on how to revise a reasonably well-written piece into an exceptionally clear and concise one.

Overall I'm more impressed and feel that I could get more out of Williams at this stage of my study of writing. Strunk and White provide a useful reference for when a writer is unsure of an exact grammar rule, while Williams provides new and useful lessons for those trying to further improve their writing and revision skills.

Revising With Williams

I feel as if I can’t quite grasp all of the rules that Williams provides. I’m also having a hard time writing sentences without feeling that they can’t possibly be clear. There are too many new rules to take in at one time. The textbook version of this book may have been a better idea.

This example isn’t that bad, but it was rather difficult to find any group of sentences that were horrible, so I’ll just take a look at this one anyways:

(I’ve split the sentences up to make them easier to distinguish.)

“Failure to meet the application deadline will result in the candidate’s graduation being delayed until the following graduation period.

Failure to satisfy degree requirements, including the removal of incompletes in required courses or providing official transcripts for course work taken at other colleges or universities, will necessitate that the student file a new application for graduation for the subsequent graduation period.

However, only one application fee is required.”


Revision:

Those who do not apply by the deadline will not graduate until the next graduation period.

Any student who fails to remove incompletes in required courses or provide official transcripts for course work taken at other colleges must file a new application for graduation.

However, only one application fee is required.

Explanation:

I started by attempting to find an abstract noun in sentence #1. Application deadline seemed abstract… Though deadline is abstract too. Whatever the case it lead me to attempt to use the word you as the character, but I finally decided on “Those who”.


In sentence two I felt that the important information was in the middle (in orange), so I chose to use the EXTRACT AND ISOLATE rule. I also felt that Failure might be an abstract noun (I’m paranoid of them now) so I replaced it. Also, the “old information” was the “new information” of the previous sentence so I switched the order.

Also, failure to satisfy degree requirements and the actual failures (removal of incompletes, providing transcripts) seemed like “redundant categories” so I felt that “degree requirements” could be removed.

The removal seemed like an abstract noun so I changed it, “to remove”.

The third sentence seemed fine.