I was arguing about a point of grammar with a colleague the other day and pulled down The Elements of Style, the masterpiece by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, to make my case. Once I checked my question, I couldn’t put the book down. Not only do the authors supply guidelines about usage and composition and form, they warn against "overwriting" and "overstating," "fancy words," oft-misused phrases and a "breezy manner." And they do it in a pitch-perfect, drily funny, almost subversive way. (The aside about Thomas Wolfe on page 68 is priceless.) I found myself laughing out loud and nodding constantly and wishing — very hard — that in this age of tweeting and blogging and almost nonstop communication that everyone would stop for an hour and read this gem of a book. Strunk and White may not be linguists exactly, but they know that most nouns used as verbs are "suspect," "prestigious" is "an adjective of last resort" and "personalize" is a "pretentious word, often carrying bad advice." Their own advice: "Do not personalize your prose; simply make it good and keep it clean." If I had the money, I’d take out billboards to post such sentiments as "Vigorous writing is concise" and "Avoid a succession of loose sentences." And with that sentence, I’ll stop!