"Whatever happened to Strunk & White?"

Brevity is the soul of wit.  Take Tiny's tail, caught on her way jumping up off the floor onto the kitchen counter.  The part stands for the whole -- synecdoche -- and says it all: The cat is quicker than the camera's eye.

"Whatever happened to Strunk & White?," asks Roger L. Simon in response to reports that the SAT essays are now being graded according not to brevity or wit but long windedness.  The longer and wordier, the higher the score. Ann Althouse's toes must be curling, as are ours.

Tiny contemplates the ball.

Simon continues in horror and disbelief:

Also, our friends at the College Board seem hellbent on breeding another generation of Jayson Blairs.

Dr. Perelman contacted the College Board and was surprised to learn that on the new SAT essay, students are not penalized for incorrect facts. The official guide for scorers explains: "Writers may make errors in facts or information that do not affect the quality of their essays. For example, a writer may state 'The American Revolution began in 1842' or ' "Anna Karenina," a play by the French author Joseph Conrad, was a very upbeat literary work.' " (Actually, that's 1775; a novel by the Russian Leo Tolstoy; and poor Anna hurls herself under a train.) No matter. "You are scoring the writing, and not the correctness of facts."

Forget about the "correctness of facts" . . . Where's that ball?

Bartleby.com re The Elements of Style:

Asserting that one must first know the rules to break them, this classic reference book is a must-have for any student and conscientious writer. Intended for use in which the practice of composition is combined with the study of literature, it gives in brief space the principal requirements of plain English style and concentrates attention on the rules of usage and principles of composition most commonly violated.

EOS was our bible throughout high school English and took us through college and grad school all the way to the blogosphere. If only our fellow Americans would take it to heart, we could talk.

Comments

[goomp]

As a member of the so-called "Geatest Generation," I have to consider the current academic leadership members of the "Intellectual Moron Generation." Allowing public employees to unionize is a prizewinning form of this stupidity. A union that represents employees who work for a corporation are presenting their views and wants before a group who may point out some failings in the employees' reasoning, and usually a sensible compromise is reached to improve things for both the employees and the company. No such exchange of views exists with public employees. The administation depends on employee votes for their jobs. They need show no profits or even solvency to hold their jobs. Moronic.

[TigerHawk]

Let's face it -- you're not going to get great writers to score the SAT essay questions. I will say, however, that my SAT score would have been higher had I been graded on the quantity of words written.

[Sunidesus]

That first shot of Tiny is wonderful. I love how it's all blurry and sharp at the same time.

[oldwhitelady]

Tiny's certainly a bright eyed cat. Beautiful pictures! of course, beautiful cats cause beautiful pictures.