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Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Strunk and White, Spunk and Bite: Part Uno

The introduction of any new technology changes not only the process but the process’s product. Change the means to an end, and you reshape the character of the end as well.

It happened after poor Gutenberg, to take a weighty historical example. But it happened, too, even with the introduction of the lowly pencil.

So, predictably, the addition of the modifier “online” to “journalism” described not just a new means to deliver an old product but opened new questions about the nature of the product, even as that product is willy-nilly being reshaped in daily practice.

Of the many issues with which we contend, the matter of the style and even content of news reporting has taken center stage.

A blogger aspiring to journalism, to me, recently: “What’s the biggest issue you address as you write?” Me: “Voice, tone, perspective – all questions of style.”

So in that regard, a proposition: that it’s time to put away the venerable old style manual known fondly for decades by its ten million (yes, that’s 10,000,000) copy owners simply as “Strunk and White” (The Elements of Style , by Will Strunk and E.B. White, with editions spanning 1918-2000) and open the fresh, engaging pages of Alexander Plotkin’s Spunk and Bite (2005 and 2007).

Strunk and White: “Place yourself in the background. Do not affect a breezy manner. Do not inject opinion. Use figures of speech sparingly. Avoid foreign languages. Prefer the standard to the offbeat.”

Spunk and Bite : “What have we here? A gulag for deviant writers? I have often been on the lam from Composition 101 and its constables, Strunk and White. After all, I want my opinion heard. I want to be offbeat. I want to be so offbeat that crazed readers chase me down alleys.”

More on this to follow, in a Thursday post.

Posted by

G.E. “Skip” Lawrence

posted by The Phoenix Files at 8:39 AM

1 Comments:

 Arthur Plotnik said...

I like the name Alexander Plotkin---sounds so Russian. But my name is Arthur Plotnik (author of Spunk & Bite: A Writer's Guide to Bold, Contemporary Style). Look forward to your take on it!

Best, AP

August 6, 2008 7:11 PM  

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