Writing rules are made to be broken ... even Will Strunk's.

"It's a wise dog that scratches its own fleas."--William Strunk Jr., on page one of The Elements of Style

"It's a wise editor who reads Strunk and White's Elements of Style beyond its first page.--Doug MacEachern

I have owned a copy of Strunk and Whites immortal set of writing commandments since 1980, the first year I entered this business. Occasionally over the years, I have flipped through its pages, usually seeking affirmation for my chosen phrases. I've often been disappointed. But until late last year, I never read its brief contents end to end. What a sin. What a place to confess it!

One portion of Elements that I have read over and again, however, is E.B. Whites glorious introduction. In it, White describes his classic master/student relationship with his demanding professor at Cornell, Will Strunk.

In this issue of The Masthead, we both celebrate the tenets enshrined in Strunk and White, and honor one great writer who heroically abused them.

The editorial board of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, as fine an assembly of writing talent as you'll find, offers us some highly personalized writing-coach recommendations. Professor Paul Greenberg offers big-picture advice on editorial perspective. Find the wheat. Lose the chaff. His "students," Kane Webb and David Barham, meanwhile, give a good impression for us of E.B. White himself. They include a lot of appreciation of their teacher.

In a selected feature, the now-retired Frank Partsch tells us of a Pulitzer Prizewinning editorialist who didn't exactly attend the Will Strunk School of Writing, but who clearly proved the better for it. As editor of the Omaha World-Herald in the early years of the twentieth century, Harvey Newbranch was never one to trim the floral branches of his prose. As Frank describes, Newbranch used his gilded voice to maximum effect:

"Ornate writing can be ponderous but, executed skillfully, can reach noble heights of texture, nuance, and power." As you'll see, Newbranch used it skillfully to display his outrage at two of the darkest moments in Nebraska history.

Readers also will find in these pages a goodly close of something editorialists often lack: humility. Look for plenty of it in the feature on saying--meaningfully--the word "sorry" by Ricardo Pimentel, editorial page editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

We have much news to report in this Masthead, including an important statement from NCEW's open-government watchdog, Chris Trejbal. Also please note that the Minority Writers Seminar is just around the corner. And we also have a report from our 2006 convention host, Tom Waseleski, that paints a great portrait of Pittsburgh.

So ... how many of Will Strunk's writing dictums did I violate here? Far too many, alas.