
The Land of the Free and “The Elements of Style” (2010) [pdf] - pepys
http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/LandOfTheFree.pdf
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dang
Previous discussions of Pullum's critique of Strunk and White:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=557618](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=557618)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=566335](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=566335)

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billybilly1920
the second link is the bestester of the too.

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mcnamaratw
Looks like a bunch of good points held together by diatribe. S&W is a good
book. The list of errata would be more helpful without the ranting.

Example: Prescriptive grammar didn't rely so much on evidence. That's a truism
that (a) doesn't tell us much about E.B. White's personal character flaws
("arrogance"), and (b) leaves us awfully starry-eyed and idealistic about the
downsides of descriptive grammar. Who knows what they'll say about us in fifty
years?

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cbd1984
Pullum, the author, is a regular contributor to Language Log, which is highly
recommended.

[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/)

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jjgreen
Finally, it is fixed
[https://hg.python.org/peps/rev/b93d501ba313](https://hg.python.org/peps/rev/b93d501ba313)

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cbd1984
Wasn't broken to begin with.

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jjgreen
Depends on whether you think one should follow Mr Strunk and Mr White (plural)
or their book (singular). It always irked me that PEP8 insisted that you
become a stalker.

