Strunk & Whiteisms For The Day

In idle moments, I'm rereading Strunk & White's Elements of Style, and a couple of excerpts caught my eye this evening.

In their suggestion to prefer the standard to the offbeat when choosing words, they write: "By the time this paragraph sees print, psyched, nerd, ripoff, dude, geek, and funky will be the words of yesteryear." Oops.

And of the language of advertising, and its pervasive influence on culture: "You will also, in all probability, want to try writing that way, using that language. You do at your peril, for it is the language of mutilation." That's my new favorite phrase: "the language of mutilation."