DeFrees has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Virginia and a law degree from the University of Texas and is a published writer and an editor. In the following essay, DeFrees discusses the practicality of using a timeworn guide to grammar and style in today's literary environment.

William Strunk, a professor at Cornell in the first part of the twentieth century, wrote and self-published a slim volume titled The Elements of Style, which was required reading for his students, and no one else. Four decades later, E. B. White, one of Professor Strunk's former students, edited the volume for Macmillan Publishing Company for the general public. Since then, "the little book," as Strunk referred to it, has sold millions of copies, and teachers everywhere rely on it to imbue their students with confidence and precision in writing. The rules of grammar and usage and...