Strunk and White and Kalman

At Nashville’s Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Maira Kalman: The Elements of Style, an exhibit of Kalman’s paintings for the 2005 illustrated edition of The Elements of Style. These paintings, which illustrate everything from sample sentences (“It was a unique eggbeater.”) to points of usage (“Illusion . See allusion .”) to glossary terms (“sentence fragment”) to index entries (“Lincoln, Abraham”), work well to celebrate the cheerful eccentricity of The Elements.

As I wrote in this 2012 post, I would like to see what Maira Kalman might do with the Elements sentence “Is it worth while to telegraph?” That sentence first appeared in the 1918 Elements. It has never left — which helps to explain both the book’s charm and its awkward position as a guide to writing in the twenty-first-century.

Related reading
All OCA Strunk and White posts (Pinboard)