The Elements of Style

"Omit needless words." That's the whole philosophy of this book in three words, and the other few thousand words just show you how to actually do it — when to use the active voice, why the passive voice buries your point, how to punctuate a sentence so it means what you intended, and why the shortest way to say something is usually the best one. No theory, no jargon, just rules a working writer can apply the same afternoon.First written by William Strunk Jr. for his own students, this is the book that generations of journalists, novelists, and students have kept on the desk — not to read once, but to check against, sentence by sentence, for as long as they write.