In student papers, year after year, I’ve seen the same mechanical errors repeated and, year after year, I’ve felt compelled to correct them and to explain why they’re wrong. I’ve devoted entire class periods to subject-verb agreement, the use of apostrophes, consistency in verb tenses and lists, and fundamental logical fallacies. Unfortunately, having to address such simple but important mistakes steals valuable time from the actual topics of my classes on Islam and the Middle East.
So I was delighted, several years ago, to reread William Strunk and E.B. White’s little classic, “The Elements of Style,” and to realize that it covered virtually every recurrent student writing error. I immediately began to recommend it to my classes and, sometimes, even to require it. If they’ll pay close attention to it, I tell them, they’ll avoid most, if not all, of the mistakes that many of them regularly and predictably commit.
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