SOURCE: "Bewhiskered Examples in 'The Elements of Style'," in Western Humanities Review, Vol. XLV, No. 4, Winter, 1991, pp. 304-11.

In the following essay, Fried analyzes Strunk and White's handbook from a feminist perspective.

The debate that feminist criticism must hold with Strunk and White's standard composition handbook, The Elements of Style, is a version of a polite spat about diction which takes place in the eleventh chapter of Middlemarch:

—All choice of words is slang. It marks a class.

—There is correct English. That is not slang.

—I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.

Feminist criticism has been quick to note that correct English is slang, not only of prigs but of all of us; what I wish to examine is the slang of composition handbooks. To point out...