Also, read more and write more. You can only get better by doing more.

Reading that short book has significantly improved the way I write.

Elements of Style: Omit Needless Words

Pragmatic Programmer's Guide: Don't Repeat Yourself

There are many "manuals of style" available as well like: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html.

In English, people believe that "Elements of Style" is full of good advice despite everything good they have ever read violating every rule on every page.

http://ling.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/LandOfTheFree.pdf

http://www.jlakes.org/ch/web/The-elements-of-style.pdf

https://courses.washington.edu/b572/public/StrunkWhite.pdf

If you have a need for guidelines but don't want to develop your own, many major publications publish style books. For example: The Associated Press Stylebook, The Chicago Manual of Style. APA and MLA work too.

Sure, there are all kinds of books about how to write. But they're usually structured like, you know, books. I think a sort of bullet-point list in under 50 pages probably is a better way to get these kinds of points across.

http://www.cambridge.org/uk/linguistics/cgel/

Unfortunately, the author doesn't recommend a good alternative to Strunk & White's Elements of Style.

Highly contentious.

My opinion: read Williams' "Style: Towards Clarity and Grace" and then Gopen's "The Sense of Structure" instead.

  1. Get a book called Elements of Style by Strunk and White. 
  2. Internalize the rules in that book and apply them whenever you write. 
  3. Write as much as you can, and read even more.

And, "Elements of Style" is a manual on how to lose confidence in your writing. Read Geoff Pullum's essay on what he calls "the nasty book": "The land of the free and The Elements of Style", http://ling.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/LandOfTheFree.pdf

If you want to learn copywriting, there's a correspondence course from AWAI that's pretty useful. I learned some things when I took it. (It's sold in a very "yellow highlighter/red underline/internet marketing" way, but it's very valuable.)

http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/LandOfTheFree.html

--William Strunk Jr., Elements of Style

The original article it quotes can be found here: www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/LandOfTheFree.pdf

It's quite heavy criticism of Elements of Style from the Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh.

Omit needless words.

Write in a way that comes easily and naturally to you, using words and phrases that come readily to hand.

It is always a good idea to reread your writing later and ruthlessly delete the excess.

Avoid the elaborate, the pretentious, the coy, and the cute. Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able.

>Vigorous writing is concise. 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. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

By the fourth edition (1999) mother modernity knows best. A crock of editors resort to neutering his rules to skirt around them easier, sacrificing all rhythm and possessive clarity:

>This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

HN in my perspective, is mostly a PR site for technologists trying to push their brand/personality with some bigger agenda.

I've seen a lot of people develop their brand/persona on HN and blogs before trying to push out some tech company. 3 such people come to mind.

To be fair, I'm probably no different, except that I dont post here (yet) -- just consume and opinionate.

So consider the context.

If you really want to be good at writing the best way is to practice. A blog is a great way to get in the habit of writing.

I would also refer you to some well known books like the de facto standard for "good" English composition used by PR's and news organizations: The Elements of Style (http://goo.gl/SPcAOF <== amazon link with my referrer tag)

Like anything they key to becoming "good" is time, focus and dedication -- obviously.

In any case, consider the context of HN and what the motivating factor is for people who do submit posts here -- they write well because they have an agenda and are using language as a tool to advance their agenda -- me too!

(side note: I'm still trying to figure out what the motivating factor is for Redditors though, if anyone knows, please let me know.)

(side note 2: I'm really surprised that in the book mentions, no one mentioned Elements of Style - it really is a big deal. Ask any Literature/English professor. I just re-ordered it myself for nostalgia sake and I'm always catching myself trying to remember the rules from it)

here's a coaching service (which, of course, costs money):

http://www.aliventures.com/coaching/

i found that one by googling for "writer coaching service -resume" (the last piece gets rid of the plethora of people who will only help you write a better resume).

have you studied Strunk's "Elements of Style"? well worth it if you have not. cheaper, too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription

Or even if you won’t:

https://www.chronicle.com/article/50-years-of-stupid-grammar...

Such take downs are often lamenting a lack of rule following in the style guides!

“What’s wrong is that the grammatical advice proffered in Elements is so misplaced and inaccurate that counterexamples often show up in the authors’ own prose on the very same page.”

I guess then I have been a Zen programmer from the beginning. Maybe it was because first I was into writing, and my favorite book is the Elements of Style. I relish deleting code, but you have got to understand I'm not deleting features, security, or anything.

It is really hard to explain how it's possible to someone who has not known it first hand, how you can subtract things yet lose nothing --- or even gain something. The simplest example of how you can delete code and not affect features is deleting code that was commented out by the last hooligan, commented out because he did not use version control and was trying different ways to solve the problem. The next most obvious example is code that is never run: functions that are defined but never called or, trickier, branch conditions that will never be true. But most of all I guess I have just worked with a lot of people who subscribed to the copy-and-paste method of code re-use. It's easy to pull out the repetition into functions.

One of my favorite examples of less-is-more is outside the field of programming, in the field of sports cars. The Lotus Elise weighed 1,600 pounds, so even though its engine had just 118 horsepower, it could go 0 to 60 in 6 seconds. In constrast to heavier sports cars, who solved the speed problem with the more obvious solution of dropping in a bigger engine, the Lotus also had these advantages: more miles per gallon, faster braking, nimbler cornering. As the founder, Colin Chapman, said, "Adding power makes you faster on the straights. Subtracting weight makes you faster everywhere."

How do you shave weight while retaining rigidity? Through another minimalist technique: reducing pieces. The chassis was of one piece, a "monocoque." Since things break at joints, instead of reinforcing the joints, you just do away with them. Steve Jobs, another minimalist, used the same technique in MacBooks. By cutting them out of one piece of aluminum, the frame can be thinner and lighter yet still stronger than competitors.

George Orwell on prose: https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli....

Also, see Elements of Style.

A good story can be "written poorly," that's where prose quality comes into play. When you say written poorly it seems you are referring to narrative and structure--as you deemed it not entertaining--not prose.

Students with strong STEM interests often undervalue good, simple writing. But learning to write is really about learning to communicate. And one of the most important skills for success, especially as a founder, is communication.

I recommend Strunk & White's Elements of Style as a quick guide to most of the things you need to know about writing.

It is similarly full of ignorant proclamations that serve mainly to make people insecure about their communication skills.

Whenever I found one that didn't obviously belong to someone, I recycled it.

Find an author you enjoy, subject their work to an analysis strictly driven by Elements of Style, and you'll find they fail to measure up. Even if the book in question is Charlotte's Web, by the way.

I'm not saying the book has no value, but it's far from authoritative.

Actual usage and more substantive style I'd tend to use a more current and comprehensive style manual like Chicago, even before considering qualitative issues of the Elements relative to its time.

Although do bear in mind that some professional linguists (Geoff Pullum being the ur-example) consider EoS to be an abomination of ignorant claptrap.

Good luck!

For that it is a very good work.

There are all kinds of business-y books out there about copywriting for email marketing etc, but you will never learn the fundamentals from them.

I've given away more copies of that book than any other. Improves all relationships.

"Elements of Style" aka Strunk and White. https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William-Strunk/...

I'd prefer they not only read Elements of Style, but work on it.

I'm pretty ignorant, but I enjoy trying to misinterpret my own text, which is often easy.

It was either Kernighan or Ritchie that mentioned that every few years they read Strunk & White's Elements of Style to increase their ability to be understood and understand others.

"C is not a big language, and it is not well served by a big book."

These words have guided my writing as much as anything in Elements of Style.

http://www.bartleby.com/141/

Btw, I think it's more efficent to first write a "braindump" and then start editing, rather than reiterating a sentence a time. You'll remove and rework a lot of what you write but it's easier to get in the flow and just "get things done" before you start rewriting it.

2) Then use "whom" if you like. I really can't be bothered to care, as the purpose of language is communication, not structural pedantry. Remember your Elements of Style - "Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous" - and note how even presumably well-educated people here find "whom" awkward and stilted in that usage.

Geoff Pullum, at Edinburgh, calls it "The Nasty Book", because it makes people needlessly insecure about their writing, and because its supposed rules are not followed by any great writer.

The most damning fact is that, when he produced the second edition after Strunk died, White made up a bunch more phony rules, and then went through Strunk's original text and doctored it to obey them. Then, he failed to obey them in his own text--frequently on the same page where he was advocating them.

There is a certain amount of correct advice, but it is the same as elsewhere, e.g.: "omit needless words". Did we need a book to tell us that?

But his victims love him.

Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach for its captivating presentation of some very complicated ideas (at least to the 17 year old kid who read this for the first time). This book was published around the time that I was growing from hobby programming to writing software as a career, and it exposed me to non-trivial proofs, LISP, and recursion in general.

Vernor Vinge's The Peace War. It's a bit stupid, but . . . I want to make the tech in this book become reality :-) Bobbles are sheer fantasy, of course, but the Tinker tech stack would be a lot of fun.

But I should clarify I went to school in Canada.

All of my style guides were from small publishers and many were written by my instructors/professors.

We/I did use some international ones from time to time (some profs had preferences). These were:

(1) MLA Style Manual or MLA Handbook

(2) AP Stylebook

(3) New York Times Manual of Style and Usage

(4) Chicago Manual of Style

Now that I'm in the United States, I use (4) at work. They have an online version of their entire book (first 30 days free): http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html

But to get back to The Elements of Style, it would almost be easier to look at what S&W recommend and see how writers write today, as you're most likely to find the answer right there in front of you.

Elements of Style was written in 1918. There have been all sorts of stylistic suggestions since then, depending on your field. The reason why we used more than one style guide at school was because neither can be said to be definitive, exhaustive or the 'best'. Some provided better explanations as to why certain styles were preferred.

I've (tried to) read many bigger books about style, usage, and grammar, of course, but I really would like a book I can plow through just before I sit down to write something large. Like, the day before NaNoWriMo starts, or before I embark on an editing pass of my company's documentation, just read it all in one sitting as a refresher on how to write clearly and effectively. I've always used Strunk and White for this purpose. I don't want to be a grammar scholar, I just want to write better and more clearly, and I think a lot of folks are in that position; which likely explains the enduring popularity of Strunk and White, despite its critics.

If English and writing is not something you've been able to devote yourself to, I would recommend something in addition to frequent commenting: pick up a copy of "The Elements of Style" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style) and as you write comments on HN (or blog posts)...pick a rule in Elements of Style and focus on the technique mentioned. For example, rule 12, Prefer the specific to the general, the definite to the vague, the concrete to the abstract.

e.g. "He showed satisfaction as he took possession of his well-earned reward" versus "He grinned as he pocketed the coin".

Look over your comment and revise it according to the technique. Rinse, repeat, etc.

Elements of Style is an old book, but I still find it to be great advice. I've thought about making such a book for programming in a high level language (I know such a book exists for C/C++)...because good style can really influence good function.

Also, assuming that you're using a throwaway profile for this comment, make a profile with your real name and identity. This has been discussed on HN before, but being accountable to your identity is a nice push to make you even more attentive to your quality of writing.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37134

Geoff Pullum, a revered linguist, calls it "the Nasty Book". He explained, in an essay that is easy to find online, how its chief effect is to make people insecure about their writing. The book's message is, "Here are the rules. You will have to break them to write well. But you aren't good enough to know when." In fact the rules are not rules anywhere but in the imagination of White and his acolytes. No admired writer of English knows them, never mind obeys them.

When White put out the second edition after Strunk died, he made up a bunch more rules, the went back and doctored Strunk's original text to follow his new rules.

But he didn't check his own text. Typically he breaks his own rules on the same page where he is promoting them.

The book presents a profoundly ignorant picture ofthe English language. You cannot become a good writer shackled to Strunk and White.

I think the Blaise Pascal quote about not having the time is relevant; making things concise takes more effort, particularly if you are not already in the habit of doing so already. Start with your communication, remove redundant or unnecessary words, then think about ways to compact things down even further by removing or rephrasing sentences.

Going through "Elements of Style" by Strunk & White wouldn't hurt too.

So, I said all this, in a rambling way, to say that you can do this without paying others. Just be disciplined about it. Maybe take the 100 day challenge to blogging. Post it anon, if you're worried about criticism.

Good luck. I also second nondeveloper's two book recommends (Elements of Style and On Writing Well), if you need a lot of helpful advice.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37134

Quite a few practical tips in there in terms of sentence structure and style.

Just as a reference point, from the wikipedia page, "Time named in 2011 as one of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923"

Also as an aside, this book also inspired the name of the programming tome 'Elements of Programming Style' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Programming_St...

As inklesspen mentioned, Elements of Style is a must.

Code Complete and the Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks. Timeless coding wisdom.

For a laugh, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, or Hitchhiker's Guide.

Body Language, Julius Fast. Kitschy but fascinating insights into body language.

Fabric of the Cosmos, Brian Greene. Brian is a fluke of nature--a physicist who can explain things realy well!

Anything by Phillip K. Dick. Sci-fi stories that make you think.

Interesting: Virginia Tufte is the mother of data visualization guru Edward Tufte.

(Other good books for writers and writers-in-training: "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamont, Stephen King's "On Writing" and a collection of letters on writing by F. Scott Fitzgerald, also called "On Writing". Oh, and please don't hate on White's "Elements of Style" --- it may be old, but it's foundational.)

----

Where do I begin…

'spelling of conscientious'

This would be covered in the first editing pass when I turn the spell checker on. I don't see what this is meant to demonstrate. Even good writers have trouble remembering how some words are spelled.

'explain oxford comma'

What's the point of this?

'repeating a tongue twister; I like the “Betty Botter bought a bit of butter” one.'

What's the point of this?

'Questions about rules in ‘Elements of Style‘'

Elements of Style is not a rulebook. It's a stylebook.

'A few puzzles to test their creativity.'

A good writer is like a good designer. You either like their style or you don't. If you don't, you'd never ask them in for the interview. A quick writing sample is the only test of creativity you need.

'More spellings and grammar questions.'

A writing sample is all you need to assess grammar and spelling competence. My grammers is fine, but I couldn't recite rules and practices in a test.

'Some domain related question, for e.g. ask sports writer, the dates when the last football world cup was played.'

A good writer knows how to research. If you need an x writer for some cultural reason then you'd ask for that in the ad. This is a poor filter since it doesn't tell you how well a writer can write on the subject.

'Question on lexical roots of some words.'

Is this an English class or an interview?

I would show myself the door pretty quickly and advise all my writer friends not to consider your company. Your interview questions display a serious ignorance of the craft of writing. Save yourself some headaches and ask the best writer in your office to hire other writers. The sort questions you ask are easily rehearsed by a bad writer with good memory.

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William-Strunk/d...

bloggergirl 21 hours ago | link [dead]

I'll add to this list my all-time favorite writing companion: Virginia Tufte's "Grammar As Style". It's been out of print forever, which is tragic, and, when you can find it, it usually sells for over $100 - even in rough shape. "Artful Sentences" is meant to replace "Grammar As Style", but I prefer the original. If you want to tie all the rules together so you can understand why we even have grammar in the first place and how truly magical grammar can be to shaping a sentence or paragraph, track down this book.

Interesting: Virginia Tufte is the mother of data visualization guru Edward Tufte.

(Other good books for writers and writers-in-training: "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamont, Stephen King's "On Writing" and a collection of letters on writing by F. Scott Fitzgerald, also called "On Writing". Oh, and please don't hate on White's "Elements of Style" --- it may be old, but it's foundational.)

A pattern language is an organized and coherent set of patterns. They are developed holistically to work in relation with each other. They're designed to be combined together - as sequences, in parallel, as contrasts - and also to be as "platform-agnostic" as possible.

For example, Alexander's book helpfully includes a ton of points on how to combine the various patterns in the book, and a healthy "see also:" section to get alternative ideas or just areas of overlap between them all.

And the patterns in the book are about the physical, environmental, and social needs of humans (the problems) and how they can be met trough architecture and infrastructure.

It's very distinct from just "a list of patterns." They're always described in service to the whole, in relation to the others.

For the English language, I would say Aristotle's Rhetoric is closest in spirit; whereas Elements of Style is clearly more a "list of patterns"

Other "pattern language"-style books I can think of are The Prince by Machiavelli; Capital by Marx; 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Ries and Trout; Diffusion of Innovations by Rogers; and High Output Management by Andrew Grove.

I would also say the original C2 Wiki comes closest to creating a "bottoms-up" pattern language. Here's the entry on A Pattern Language - https://wiki.c2.com/?PatternLanguage

But these books aren't explicitly set up as pattern language books - nor are many others. Very few books (not even the GoF) are put together so well and as comprehensively as A Pattern Language. It's truly a masterpiece.

Serious and professional writers generally write for two things: clarity and insight. Stylistic preferences shouldn't stamp out a writer's ability to make a good point. They should help him express that point more clearly. That's usually to the writer's (and readers') advantage.

Writers who break the rules, and who know what they're doing, are fine. Most rule-breakers don't know what they're doing, however. For every David Foster Wallace, there are a thousand writers who aren't aware they're hard for most people to read.

* "mandatory requirement" is redundant. If something's not mandatory, then it's not a requirement! :)

* "Many admit that as much as Java is not much fun to write code with, the JVM is a different story.": This sentence is awkward. Perhaps something like: "Many admit Java code is not much fun to write, but the JVM doesn't limit your choice of language."

* "Scala shares the Java Technology Stack, and knowing Java is a big plus when learning Scala, especially due to the common library ecosystem, and the insights into the JVM workings.": This sentence is awkward. It could be simplified into something like: "Knowing Java is a big plus when learning Scala because the languages share a common library ecosystem."

If you are interested in more resources about English writing, I recommend Joseph M. Williams' Style: Toward Clarity and Grace. Strunk & White's Elements of Style is a classic (and short), but some people dislike it.

One thing really irked me...the author states that initially "...death was a failure state because it required little explanation and was easy to quantify from a programming and visual standpoint."

Bullshit. Death is a failure state because it's a natural mode of failure for a hero on an adventure trying to fight off a horde of koopas/moblins/thugs/zombies/aliens/etc. Developers used death not as an easy way to signify failure, but as a sensible way to signify failure.

Sure, he can bring up games like Super Dodge Ball to illustrate his point that the mechanism of death was sometimes forced into the game to convey failure scenarios, but then what about games like Duck Hunt, Sim City, and Super Tecmo Bowl? In not one of those games did your avatar 'die' in any failure scenario. Failure was denoted in a multitude of other ways in those games.

That's my experience for the kind of essays they expect in college, but I when I want to write something for public consumption it's going to take more effort. The coherent essay that you learned to write and high school and served well in college may be informative, but it's still going to be boring. Capturing interest is still hard even once you have the mechanics of essay structure down.

Or at least it is for me. I'm less than fond of Strunk & White. These days I'd recommend Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace over Elements of Style.

As for the "hi", that actually does serve a purpose in one-way mediums. It takes time for our brains to adapt to the speech of a new speaker, so it's common to miss the first thing that someone says. But if everyone says "hi" first, then your brain has a split-second to adapt to new voices before hearing something new and interesting.

Edit: I found this blog post that lists some alternatives http://thewritingresource.net/2011/09/22/forget-everything-s...

About half of the titles are punny or plays on words, which I'm somewhat suspicious of (even though I like puns). And, all are at least twice the size of Strunk and White. I understand that some subjects are bigger than a ~100 page book can cover, but despite having spent a lot of my life writing (and having published a book), I've never been able to plod through a big grammar book. I can read Elements of Style in an afternoon without feeling like it's a chore. As noted in some of the reviews, if it's wrong it's not worth even that much effort. But, I never thought it was predominantly wrong or predominantly misleading. And, it usually reminds me about one or more of my negative writing habits, and I correct it for a while until I forget again.

I chose it over White's book because of this passage from Clear and Simple as the Truth:

> The best-known teachers of practical style are Strunk and White, in their ubiquitous Elements of Style. The best teachers of practical style are Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb, in Williams’s Style: Toward Clarity and Grace and a series of academic articles and technical reports.
Williams and Colomb present an incomparably deeper and more orderly treatment of practical style. The style they present is consistent and mature; it makes decisions about all the major questions that define a style, and is fully developed.

I almost can’t overstate how much it’s changed how I read and write. Before that book, some writing just felt “clear” and other writing didn’t, but I couldn’t explain why. Now it’s much easier to see how that sense of clarity is created. Even though I don't write for a living and mainly do technical write ups, it was easily worth the time investment.

This video is also good. It has a ton of interesting points, but the part about creating instability in your writing I found particularly useful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM&ab_channel=UChic...

Exactly. And you need an apostrophe to indicate that if you want your readers to parse the sentence properly.

"I saw an EE student's C Code once" (student is singular) or " I saw some EE students' C code once" (students are plural). I've seen some grammar books recommend an extra s anyway for the latter case as in "I saw some students's C code once" though I suspect that is unused these days. [1]

"why are we attacking people's grammar. It's irrelevant to the discussion!"

This.

Speaking or writing 100% grammatically correct English (assuming such a beast exists, which is a separate discussion) or making a typo here and there is irrelevant to someone's competence as a programmer.

Using minor grammatical errors to judge people as incompetent is, at the least, foolish.

I don't think strcredzero is incompetent because he missed an apostrophe or wrote an ill formed sentence. But by the same token I don't think Aditya is incompetent as a programmer (which was the topic under discussion btw - EE students being good programmers or not) just because he said "lot competent". Give the guy a break.

[1] From Strunk's "Elements of Style"

"Form the possessive singular of nouns with 's.

Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write,

Charles's friend
Burns's poems
the witch's malice

This is the usage of the United States Government Printing Office and of the Oxford University Press."

There are a few treasured texts I keep (Elements of Style, a really good programming book written by a professor) that I kept, but I ditched 95% of them and never missed a beat.

It has changed my life. For the last two years I have endeavoured to simplify my thoughts/ideas, so they can be communicated precisely. It's hard, painful work.

That aim has recoloured my being: music; literature; art. Philip Glass. Hemingway. Mondrian.

I am not the same person.

A tool based on rules that bear some closer resemblance to actual English grammar would be interesting to me. Maybe something that checked against the recommendations in a recent edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. The technical aspects of this tool don't seem hugely tied to the specific constructs it currently flags, so perhaps that could be done (though the source is not available, so perhaps not).

English doesn't really have an entity that dictates "rules". The guidelines vary between dialects, so I can only speak about American English...

You can read the Oxford Style Manual or The Chicago Manual of Style for reference, but sometimes people disagree. Previously people looked at Strunk & White's Elements of Style, etc.

---

On this particular issue, "they" is fine as singular, and is being used like that very frequently these days.

Since you are connected to teaching home schooling can you tell me why we don't teach like the above now? I read George Orwells Politics and the English Language and really enjoyed it. I don't see why I wasn't given that essay and a copy of Elements of Style then told to write. With enough practice I expect anyone would write well.

So, is there a reason school is not taught in the old way? [edit: That is, is there any reason to believe that any of the people who influence state curriculum just want "to produce docile factory workers"?]

Elements of Style is the first book everyone suggests, although I didn't find it all that useful when I got around to buying it. I'd suggest checking it out and then later getting more prescriptive books.

While I'm not sure I'd recommend it as a second or even a fourth book, I'm rather fond of the rather old fashioned (OK, it's a century old...) and most certainly not American The King's English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King%27s_English

There's an on-line copy of the 2nd edition linked in the above that should give you an idea of if and when you want to try it; at the very least you should try this bit right now: http://www.bartleby.com/116/101.html (well, I love it...).

My copy is this recent printing of the 3rd edition: http://www.amazon.com/Kings-English-3rd-H-Fowler/dp/B0015NYN...