First You Write a Sentence: The Elements of Reading, Writing . . . and Life

by Joe Moran

“Writing is not an exercise in excision, it’s a journey into sound,” wrote E. B. White to a reader who was too slavishly following that famous advice from Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style: “Omit needless words.”

“Writing is not an exercise in excision, it’s a journey into sound,” wrote E. B. White to a reader who was too slavishly following that famous advice from Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style: “Omit needless words.”