Style: Strunk & White vs. Williams :: Comapre Contrast Comparison Essays

Style: Strunk & White vs. Williams Writing correctly is something that many people find hard to do! I know this, because I use to feel the same way. I have had many English classes in my time, where teachers would sit next to me, and correct my errors sentence by sentence as I went along. All the while asking me if I understood what why what I did was wrong. I remember saying that I understood, but I really didn't. That was something that I didn't like at the time, but I am now very appreciative of the fact that someone was there. With today's kids, most teachers don't take that needed time and help them to get on track with their writing. Because of this, I find that both Strunk and White, The Elements of Style, and Williams, Style: Toward Clarity and Grace to be very helpful. After reading them, I know that they can both be used as "handy" reference tools for today's writers. The one thing that stuck out in my mind about both of these books is that they both agree that there are rules. The difference between them is that Williams explains in his version of the rules in a much more through manner; he provides detailed examples. Whereas Strunk and White, their book is much shorter. The examples that they use are pretty straight forward, and the book in general is easy to follow. After I was done reading both of these books, I was immediately ready to argue that the better of the two was The Elements of Style by Strunk and white. My feeling now is that Williams is the better of the two. A factor that I took into consideration was the tone and layout of both books. Strunk and white has a better layout, but the tone is directed to a certain type of reader. The profile of the reader that would fit The Elements of Style is an upper class, educated, Caucasian man. In Williams, the layout is something that can be tweaked, but the tone is for everyone. At first, I was not looking forward to reading either of these books; in the end I am glad that I did. I know that I have problems, when it comes to my own writing and I liked that both of these books wrote about things that I was able to relate to.