The Elements of Style Illustrated
Dear God, they’ve illustrated “The Elements of Style” with watercolors! Watercolors, I tell you! Watercolors are not my style; furthermore, watercolors aren’t what I would have chosen to illustrate the book with, either. In fact, I would not have chosen to illustrate the book at all.
I prefer my grandmothers old copy of the book, because it was my grandmother’s, and even my grandmother preferred to paint with oils.
Failing that, I’d prefer to get the book via internet freeloading, since it is old enough to be in the public domain. The full text of the updated E.B. White version of The Elements of Style is readily available on the internet.
My source, about.com, tells me:
In E.B. White’s introduction to the book’s third edition, he remarks that it “is encouraging to see how perfectly a book, even a dusty rule book, perpetuates and extends the spirit of a man. Will Strunk loved the clear, the brief, the bold, and his book is clear, brief, bold.”
I think that there are clearer, bolder visual elements than the watercolor, but to their credit, my source also tells me:
In The Elements of Style Illustrated, Kalman has mined subtle humor for her imaginative paintings from the textual examples of Strunk and White’s rules. The resulting images appear every three or four pages throughout the book and draw the browsing reader’s attention to the rules themselves. Wonderfully vivid and playful, these pictures add another dimension to the rule book, … Maira Kalman’s paintings are the very essence of boldness, and their inclusion in these pages does a great deal to enliven the rules of language beside them. A new generation of English students will soon walk the hallowed halls of education, quite oblivious to their good fortune in having The Elements of Style Illustrated, in all its synergistic glory, bouncing around in their backpacks.
Now, it could be that those aren’t watercolors. Shoot me if they’re not.
Tags: Elements of Style, Ephemera, illustration