If there’s one thing an early blogging entrepreneur can use in their library, a writing book is an obvious choice. I suspect, however, that few bloggers take the time to dig into writing books.

Part of blogging’s charm is the fact that you’re in complete control of how and what you write. There’s no Ms. Muhilly or Mr. Munro to watch over your writing. You can use all the comma splices, run on sentences, and awkward phrases that you choose.

But, do you really want to? Or better yet, do your readers really want to read your comma splices, run on sentences, and awkward phrases? Do you want them reading your blog posts and scratching their heads trying to figure out what the hell you’re trying to say? I didn’t think so.

Bloggers, you are writers. Improve your writing.

I don’t consider myself a strong or even good writer. I hated English class in high school and grudgingly attended my required writing and literature classes as an engineer at Columbia. Before beginning this blog, though, I made sure to brush up on the fundamentals. (Ms. Muhilly can attest to my lackluster performance in English class. I still remember the look on her face when she found out I got into Columbia.)

The Elements of Style by Strunk and White is the perfect writing book for the blogger / entrepreneur who wants to improve their writing. It’s short. It’s concise (which is something this blog strives, sometimes unsuccessfully, to be), and it’s relatively cheap.

For those of you who are familiar with this useful little book, yes, I know. It’s more of a reference guide than a book. For early entrepreneurs though, ignore that fact and read it like a book. It’s barely 100 pages and there are all kinds of useful tidbits that you might miss if you simply treat it as a reference. Once you’ve spent an hour or two reading Elements of Style, then you can save it on your bookshelf as the reference guide it was meant to be.

The Elements of Style as we know it today took decades to be written. Prof. William Strunk Jr. wrote the original Elements of Style as a gift to his students struggling with the English language’s vast set of rules and principles. One of those students, E. B. White, author of Charlotte’s Web and various other titles, later revisited his professor’s gift to the language and was so enamored with it that he added and updated his professor’s little book. Unfortunately, Strunk never lived to see the current version, but his lessons in writing clarity have since reached millions.

I’m glad White helped make this book what it is today and only wish I had found it sooner. In a previous life where I worked for an Indian financial and software firm, one of my duties was editing research reports written by the firm’s financial analyst group. As a native English speaker, it was easy for me to spot and revise awkward phrases, but I struggled to give feedback to the authors.

How exactly does one describe the difference between which and that? Well, “That is the defining, or restrictive, pronoun, which the nondefining, or nonrestrictive… That tells which one… Which adds a fact about the [object] in question.” The Elements of Style is filled with these 3-4 sentence rules of thumb that will help make your writing clearer and more succinct.

There are numerous lessons like the which versus that section that are perfectly suited for quick reference. Early entrepreneurs should always be improving their writing and useful reference guides like this are just one of the many tools that can help. This sort of book isn’t about changing your writing, it’s about streamlining it. Why say “he is a man who…” when you can say “he is…”?

Ultimately you have to “write in a way that comes easily and naturally to you, using words and phrases that come readily to hand. But do not assume that because you have acted naturally your product is without flaw.”

Note: I ‘ate my own dog food’ on this one.  The Elements of Style helped me with a few awkward phrases in this post, and had I taken the time, I’m sure I could have used it further.

Posted in Books | No Comments »