Having run low on books to read, this weekend I spent some time reading Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, and two other English grammar references Mr. Troutbend saved from high school and college.

I think most good writers develop their skills from reading a lot, not from remembering arcane rules of grammar. I certainly don't think I could diagram my sentences.

I'm wondering if schools teach sentence diagramming any more. I alternate between thinking it might be a waste of time to the opinion that assigning labels like "participle," "independent clause" and "gerund" to the parts of speech provides a common language that can be used to explain what is wrong with a sentence or paragraph that needs fixing, assuming a person wants to be told what to fix.

At the end of a novel I finished last week, the author congratulated himself on remembering what he learned from Strunk and White: avoid adverbs, although I didn't get far enough in their instructions to come across that rule.

This struck a chord with me, because I remember Steven King saying the same thing in his book about how to write.

Here is what Strunk and White has to say:
"Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place. This is not to disparage adjectives and adverbs; they are indispensable parts of speech. Occasionally they surprise us with their power,
Up, the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men...

The nouns mountain and glen are accurate enough, but had the mountains not become airy, the glen rushy, William Allingham might never have got off the ground with his poem. In general, however, it is nouns and verbs, not their assistants, that give to good writing its toughness and color."

I'm headed back to study some more, but I'll probably continue to just write the way that sounds good to my inner ear.