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!

My answer, clear and simple, is our own Judith Martin. She always knows what is the right thing to say, do and write.