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The Elements of Style

Strunk's short rules for clear English: omit needless words, use the active voice, put statements in positive form.
  • William Strunk (1869–1946)
  • First published 1918
  • Guide or reference
  • Available online · Awaiting physical preservation
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4 volumes

The whole text, cut into books a Minecraft shelf can hold, at chapter breaks where possible. A volume counts as held once copies are printed and it is on a central library shelf.

  1. The Elements of Style 1/4Not printed

    100 pages · no copies printed yet

  2. The Elements of Style 2/4Not printed

    100 pages · no copies printed yet

  3. The Elements of Style 3/4Not printed

    100 pages · no copies printed yet

  4. The Elements of Style 4/4Not printed

    56 pages · no copies printed yet

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The Elements of Style 1/4

THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE BY WILLIAM STRUNK, Jr. PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN CORNELL UNIVERSITY NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
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Provenance

Where this text came from, and why it is free to share

Source

Privately printed for Strunk's students at Cornell, Ithaca (1918). The source transcribes the 1920 Harcourt, Brace and Howe printing. The transcriber's corrections are kept in the text and their notes removed; bold text is marked with equals signs as the source marks it.

Transcribed text: ebook 37134 at www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37134, released there 2011-08-18 (that is the transcription's date, not the book's). Copied 2026-10-30. Its own record says: “Public domain in the USA.”

Checksums (SHA-256): source file 2671f06f33ff4d44b66f87744f926dd9178df89595dd3dcaef08efdaee499bc0; prepared text 791d5d4a2edb84d4cdae06f6f8431011cded0ff821050eeab3f884a9d008b42e.

Changes to the text

  • The source's header, licence, footer and production credits were removed.
  • Line breaks inside paragraphs were joined; paragraphs and short-line blocks such as contents lists were kept.
  • Underscores marking italics were removed.
  • Extra spaces were collapsed.
  • No illustrations were imported; captions stay as text.
  • The e-text's transcriber's notes were removed (its corrections are already in the text).

Rights

  • First published before 1931: public domain in the United States.
  • The author died before 1956: out of copyright where protection lasts the author's life plus 70 years.

Public domain in the United States (first published 1918); the author died in 1946, so also out of copyright where protection lasts the author's life plus 70 years. Not reviewed country by country beyond that.

Text only. The source's licence, trademark and boilerplate are removed, so the archive does not use the source's name as a mark; the source is cited as provenance.

Reviewed 2026-10-30, batch seed-2026-10. Archive editions credit the original author; Aurelune printed them and claims no rights in the text.