What are others saying?

Because I tend to be a defender of Williams, I looked for a blog that disagreed with him. I found Allison’s blog very interesting because she prefers Strunk & White and gives good reason for why she dislikes Williams.

“I know, its true, 'write clearly' is not a clear rule. Williams, on the other hand, has an entire chapter devoted to how one can achieve clarity in writing. This is, clearly, more clear. But personally, Williams was just too prescriptive. He's overwhelming. There are too many too specific rules that in the end make me grind my teeth, tap my foot and grow a headache.”

I do agree that Williams is overwhelming, but I personally think it’s an entirely different book from Strunk & White. It’s meant to be more in depth and prescriptive because it’s essentially a direct guide to writing, a textbook that’s meant to be referred to when you are sitting down and writing.

Strunk & White on the other hand seemed far more introductory, and doesn’t seem so much as something you’d keep nearby when writing an essay. Everything that they discuss I essentially already knew—had I been given this earlier on in my writing career I think it would have been a lot more helpful.

I saw Susan’s blog and was surprised because I thought most people agreed that Williams was more interesting and more useful than Strunk & White. Her opinion that she felt she could use Strunk and White while writing was the opposite of how I felt. I thought that as a guidebook for writing Strunk and White really couldn’t help me as much as Williams could.

“The books are helpful in their own ways, where I will keep my Strunk and White book, and probably use it to help me write papers when I am unclear as to where to use a comma, or a semi-colon or something, I can go look it up, but Williams is more like, I read it, but I will not be able to go back and look up specific rules, it is meant to help your writing overall to make it better. Strunk and White is all about rules and that is not what Williams is exactly about at all.”

I figured most people would agree with me on Williams because his book is structured a lot more like a text book. Though I agree that Williams is a lot more longwinded and harder to read, I think that is par the course for textbooks.

Ashley agrees with me in terms of how useful S&W are compared with Williams. She goes a bit further and offers the following as an example of how Williams can help writers. “A spell checker will often pick up on simple grammatical errors or when you use the wrong punctuation. The Williams book allows you to be able to scan your work of writing and understand what needs improvement or rewording.”

I like that she mentions the use of spell check because I think it’s something a lot of people these days might take for granted and might not necessarily know the reason for many of William’s rules. I’ll admit, that’s how I am. Williams didn’t help me so much as give me an idea of the reasons behind what I already do.