The Elements of Style is an American English writing style guide in numerous editions. The original was composed by William Strunk Jr. in 1918, published by Harcourt in 1920, comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary principles of composition", "a few matters of form", a list of 49 "words and expressions misused", a list of 57 "words misspelled". E. B. White enlarged and revised the book for publication by Macmillan in 1959; that was the first edition of the so-called Strunk & White, which Time named in 2011 as one of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923. Cornell University English professor William Strunk Jr. wrote The Elements of Style in 1918 and published it in 1919, for use at the university. He and editor Edward A. Tenney revised it for publication as The Elements and Practice of Composition. In 1957 the style guide reached the attention of E. B. White at The New Yorker. White had studied writing under Strunk in 1919 but had since forgotten "the little book" that he described as a "forty-three-page summation of the case for cleanliness and brevity in the use of English".

Weeks White wrote a feature story about Strunk's devotion to lucid English prose. Macmillan and Company subsequently commissioned White to revise The Elements for a 1959 edition. White's expansion and modernization of Strunk and Tenney's 1935 revised edition yielded the writing style manual informally known as "Strunk & White", the first edition of which sold about two million copies in 1959. More than ten million copies of three editions were sold. Mark Garvey relates the history of the book in Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style. Maira Kalman, who provided the illustrations for The Elements of Style Illustrated, asked Nico Muhly to compose a cantata based on the book, it was performed at the New York Public Library in October 2005. In The Elements of Style, William Strunk concentrated on specific questions of usage—and the cultivation of good writing—with the recommendation "Make every word tell"; the book frames this within a triplet credited to an influential lecturer: Omit needless words Use active voice Use parallel construction on concepts that are parallelThe 1959 edition features White's expansions of preliminary sections, the "Introduction" essay, the concluding chapter, "An Approach to Style", a broader, prescriptive guide to writing in English.

He produced the second and third editions of The Elements of Style, by which time the book's length had extended to 85 pages. The third edition of The Elements of Style features 54 points: a list of common word-usage errors; the final reminder, the 21st, "Prefer the standard to the offbeat", is thematically integral to the subject of The Elements of Style, yet does stand as a discrete essay about writing lucid prose. To write well, White advises writers to have the proper mind-set, that they write to please themselves, that they aim for "one moment of felicity", a phrase by Robert Louis Stevenson, thus Strunk's 1918 recommendation: Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts; this requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that he make every word tell.

Strunk Jr. no longer has a comma in his name in the 1979 and editions, due to the modernized style recommendation about punctuating such names. The fourth edition of The Elements of Style, published 54 years after Strunk's death, omits his stylistic advice about masculine pronouns: "unless the antecedent is or must be feminine". In its place, the following sentence has been added: "many writers find the use of the generic he or his to rename indefinite antecedents limiting or offensive." Further, the re-titled entry "They. He or She", in Chapter IV: Misused Words and Expressions, advises the writer to avoid an "unintentional emphasis on the masculine". Components new to the fourth edition include a foreword by Roger Angell, stepson of E. B. White, an afterword by the American cultural commentator Charles Osgood, a glossary, an index. Five years the fourth edition text was re-published as The Elements of Style Illustrated, with illustrations by the designer Maira Kalman; this edition excludes the afterword by Charles Osgood and restores the first edition chapter on spelling.

The Elements of Style was listed as one of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923 by Time in its 2011 list. Upon its release, Charles Poor, writing for The New York Times, called it "a splendid trophy for all who are interested in reading and writing." American poet Dorothy Parker has, regarding the book, said:If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now. Criticism of Strunk & White has focused on claims that it has a prescriptivist nature, or that it has become a general anachronism in the face of modern English usage. In criticizing The Elements of Style, Geoffrey Pullum, professor of linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, co-author

Rags Parkland Sings the Songs of the Future is a science fiction concert folk musical with lyrics and book by Andrew R. Butler; the show premiered Off-Broadway in 2018 at Ars Nova. Set in 2268 in a world where constructed and constructed humans face government persecution, the show begins with the title character performing solo before being joined onstage in flashback by his former band, the Future. Butler spent nearly a decade developing a show about a folk singer performing several centuries in the future, pulling inspiration from a variety of folk, country and blues rock artists. Rags Parkland was well-received by critics and garnered nine Drama Desk and six Lucille Lortel award nominations winning the Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical. An original cast recording is scheduled for release on March 27, 2020. In 2268, a lone folk singer named Rags Parkland, home on Earth after a stint in a penal colony on Mars, performs at his friend Gill's subterranean Virginia club. Between songs, Parkland reminisces about his time in prison and his romance with his former bandmate, Beaux Weathers.

Parkland's songs are covers of songs by his old band, The Future, during one song, the scene shifts to some years in the past when the full band is performing that same song at the same club. Parkland and The Future reveal a world through their performance in which constructed and constructed humans are illegal. All members of The Future except for Parkland are, to varying degrees, yet continue to play music underground as a way to pass along their shared history and hope. A perimeter warning light alerts the club. In defiance of the ban on constructed humans and The Future play on against the raid giving themselves up, while Parkland shrinks back; the scene shifts forward in time to Gill in the Virginia club. They reveal that Weathers and the rest of the band have not been seen since that day and Parkland indicates that he intends to keep sharing their songs and spreading their story. In 2009, Andrew R. Butler was reading science fiction classics when he encountered the Philip K. Dick short story "What'll We Do with Ragland Park?", whose title character was a folk singer.

While Butler was not drawn to the story itself, the idea of an American folk singer performing several centuries in the future appealed to him, suggesting "a show that had the shape of a concert, but that told a much wider story." Developing this concept, he described an interest in characters in the future "thinking about history, some of, our present and some of, our past, that character can be thinking about the future, which changes our temporal framework in a way, exciting."The combination of science fiction and folk music, known as filk, had existed as a genre for decades although Butler noted that while he was unaware of it while writing Rags Parkland, he "never imagined that nobody had done this before". When he was working on the musical he "started poking around, just trying to do some research and get bearings and discovered" filk. Rags Parkland was one of several Off-Broadway shows produced in late 2018 to combine science fiction and folk music, others including 1969: The Second Man at New York Theatre Workshop and The Outer Space at Joe's Pub.

At first, Butler wrote songs for the Rags Parkland character, whose name alludes to the titular character of Dick's short story. He conceived the show as a solo musical based on what he was able to do as a performer, namely singing and playing guitar. Butler pulled musical influence from Odetta, Skip James, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan for Parkland's character reverse-engineering the musical's story from the songs he had written; when Butler began writing songs for the character Beaux Weathers and the band The Future, his musical influences expanded to include the more complex arrangements of Alabama Shakes, Jason Isbell, Fleetwood Mac. Butler's collaborators composed their own instrumentations from the starting point of Butler's vocal and guitar arrangements. Butler developed Rags Parkland at the Off-Broadway theater Ars Nova in Hell's Kitchen, New York, where the show had its world premiere. Staged as a cabaret with seating on three sides, the production was directed by Jordan Fein with set design by Laura Jellinek, lighting design by Barbara Samuels, costume design by Andy Jean, sound design by Mikaal Sulaiman.

Butler wrote the show's book and lyrics, with the other castmembers credited for additional music and arrangements. Previews were scheduled to begin on September 25, 2018; the production was postponed by a week. Rags Parkland opened on October 8 and was scheduled to close on November 3 but was extended until November 10. Rags Parkland was well-received by critics. In The New York Times, Soloski described the show's concert musical structure and science fiction–folk music combination as unique and praised the economy and flow of Butler's writing for the way it advanced the narrative. Zachary Stewart of TheaterMania said of the cast that the "six immensely talented musicians come together to form a spectacular band, performing Butler's catchy original songs with love and a sense of ownership" and Raven Snook in Time Out New York praised Stacey Sargeant in particular as "the show's heart and soul". Both Sarah Fitts of BroadwayWorld and Dan O'Neil of Culturebot wrote that the show left much of its worldbuilding unspoken, which both critics responded to favorably.

However, O'Neil wrote that the show's simple flashback structure did not leave much r

General Staff Corps was an administrative corps within the Swedish Armed Forces between 1937 and 1990 and consisted of Swedish Army officers chosen for duty in the Defence Staff and Army Staff. It replaced the earlier General Staff; the General Staff Corps was established on 1 July 1937. Besides adjutants and staff adjutants, it consisted of: 1 colonel, 1 colonel, 5 lieutenant colonels, 12 majors and 34 captains. In order to gain entry into the General Staff Corps, first priority was to be top of the class at the Royal Swedish Army Staff College and after that, 2.5 years of employment as a general staff officer candidate in positions at different departments within the staff. Only after successful officer candidate service with approved credentials, the person concerned was able to assume the prestigious general staff insignia, which consisted of a pair of crossed batons; the officers in the Swedish Army, which were considered to be exceptionally good, were placed in the General Staff Corps.

The administrative corps' of the Swedish Armed Forces were abolished by the end of January 1990, also the General Staff Corps. The commanding officer of the General Staff Corps was Chief of Staff of the Army Staff