The Elements of Style is a prescriptive American English writing style guide comprising eight "elementary
rules of usage", ten "elementary principles of composition", "a few matters of form",
a list of forty-nine "words and expressions commonly misused", and a list of fifty-seven "words
often misspelled". In 2011, Time magazine listed the writing style-guide as one of the 100 best and most influential
books written in English since 1923. Cornell University professor of English William Strunk, Jr., wrote The Elements
of Style in 1918, and privately published it in 1919, for in-house use at the university. In The Elements of Style
(1918), as a professor of English, William Strunk concentrated on specific questions of usage and the cultivation
of good writing with the recommendation "Make every word tell"; hence, the 17th principle of composition
is the simple instruction: "Omit needless words."