Doing it in style

Sometimes it's hard to know what to write about because I have SOOoooooooo many interests:

people
nature
metaphors
animals
dreams
science
ideas
global warming
word origins
books, etc.

But I doubt if many of you would suspect I'm also interested in style. Style? Me? Yep, but let me explain. My kind of style includes:

Chicago Manual of Style
MLA Style Manual
Elements of Style
Turabian's many books on style

And now you are REALLY confused, aren't you? Unless you are a writer, professional or otherwise. Wikipedia defines it this way:

"Style guides (or style manuals) are prevalent for general and specialized usage, for the general reading and writing audience and for students and scholars of the various academic disciplines, medicine, journalism, the law, government, business, and industry. Publishing house style guides outline standards for design and writing for a specific publication or organization."

Defining it succinctly, however, I'd say a style manual is a book telling writers how to use the right punctuation and grammar. I haven't had occasion to pick up a style book in over a decade. So why, I wonder, did I have a dream like this?

I was there when one woman showed another a homemade booklet of folded pages stapled together and seemingly well-thumbed and often used. She said, "This is what he uses." And she pointed in the direction of a young man a few yards away working on a car or truck motor. Why I thought it was any of my business, I don't know, but I walked toward him thinking I'd tell him about style manuals. And ... IN MY DREAM ... I was deciding which to recommend to him, thinking to myself: White's Elements of Style and Turabian's book. I woke up to the phone ringing ... while I was telling the fellow the names of those two books.

When I went blog hopping, I started with Colleen's Loose Leaf Notes. It was Thursday, so she had written her usual Thursday Thirteen post with 13 points. I was reading along, enjoying it as usual, learning a lot and having fun ... and then I read #12: "I want to keep track of THIS writer’s resource that I found at ... so I’m posting it here." The resource? The Chicago Manual of Style Online! Now THAT is just freaky! I woke up today from a dream where I had just dreamed of telling a young man he needed to get White's Elements of Style (my dream self totally forgot Strunk) and that, even better was Turabian's style book. Turabian, in case you didn't know, was the person who basically WROTE the Chicago Manual on Style that Colleen was saving as part of her T13. It gets even crazier: In the post following the one where Colleen found information about the online style stuff, the other blogger had written this sentence:

Rounding a corner, the ground was suddenly white.

What is wrong with this picture? "Rounding a corner, the ground was suddenly white"? The writer needed a style manual ... or a book about grammar. "Rounding a corner" is a phrase modifying the subject of the sentence, which is "the ground." If we are to believe what she wrote, the ground came around a corner and suddenly turned white. Hmm, makes me wonder if something frightened the ground, who blanched. No, the writer meant: When WE rounded a corner, the ground was suddenly white ... (and reading on) ... because it was covered with white chicken feathers. Whew! And THAT is why writers need style books.