Wikipedia has a good collection of style guidelines. Be warned that some are specialized, and others are quirky. But the guidelines on weasel words are well-written, widely-applicable, and sound. As with any style guide, bear in mind that their purpose is to establish a consistent style across the documents in a series (in this case, the series of wikipedia entries). They are not absolute rules to be obeyed in all situations for all documents. But they do reflect the careful consensus of a group of writers and editors, and can serve as suggestions or inspiration for choices you make outside the wikipedia context.
From time to time, I will ask you to use WebCT for an activity. This may include an on-line discussion, submitting an assignment over the Web, and other activities. I also plan to distribute grades using the WebCT gradebook rather than the Computing Science Gradebook. You can reach all your WebCT courses at the link http://webct.sfu.ca.
Here's a list of books that did much more than that. Different books, distinct in goals and styles, but every one rocked my world.
You owe it to yourself to dip into this at least a few times this course. There's other dictionaries and then there's the OED. Nothing like it is available, for English or any other language. The 700-year history of English is here, traced through the history of each word in the language's phenomenal vocabulary. An awkward and inconsistent language, yes, but affording an odd beauty as well. I always keep an OED window open in my browser, and look up at least one word a day.
You'll get a chance to form your own opinion of this book, as Style is the textbook for this course. I love this book because it shows the way out of a trap that had caught me for a long time. As a teacher of writing, I was forever asking students to be more "clear". But I was bothered because I could never formulate that recommendation in a prescriptive way, a way that showed the writer what specific changes would make the piece clearer. Williams's book connects "clarity" to the layout of words in the sentence. Incorporating his principles into your writing takes work but it's time well-spent, because his principles are likely to produce the biggest possible improvement in your writing.
Where Style focuses on the individual sentences and paragraphs, Writing With Power focuses on everything else, the long messy slog of pushing a vague sentiment or half-hunch through to publication. Every writer is different, and every article is different, and Elbow's wisdom lies in recognizing this truth. Rather than offering a sanctified single approach to writing, he provides a compendium of approaches to inventing and revising. Glance through the book, spot a method that intrigues you, try it out. If the new method helps you get your material onto the screen, fine. If the method doesn't help, try another. Whatever approaches to writing you already use, this book will suggest several others you'd never thought of.
If nothing else, this book earns a place on the list for sheer gutsiness. Skip Part 1, "The Reader Over Your Shoulder". Oh, not quite---take time to read the first essay, "The Peculiar Qualities of English", one of the best discussions of the distinctive qualities of English. Then skip ahead to Part 2. Don't be fooled by its odd name, "Examinations and Fair Copies". This is where the fireworks take off. Graves and Hodges take passages from 17 writers, each renowned at the time of writing (1943), and exhaustively note the flaws in their writing. The next step is the genius part: Graves and Hodges then rewrite the passage, demonstrating how much clearer it might be phrased. The effrontery of this move may not strike us the way it did an audience in the 1940s, as many of the names aren't well-known any more (I only recognize 8 of the 17), but we can still enjoy Graves and Hodge's glee as they tear into these canonical writers. Here they take their knives to I. A. Richards, a famous literary critic, well-regarded to this day:
This book influenced me more subtly than the others on the list. It didn't force me to reconsider major assumptions I held about writing. It is, however, the best single source I've found about writing for computer science. Zobel himself writes in a clean, thoughtful style, so I learned as much from his example as from his recommendations. There's material here that I haven't seen anywhere else, such as how to format algorithms and code. When he covers material available in other books, such as how to write an experimental report, he presents it in a way specifically useful to computer science. An excellent reference.
More specifically, I just don't recommend starting with this book. Above all, avoid reading the hyperbole surrounding it, whether on any number of Web sites or encrusted on the covers of the book. It's the hyperbole that throws me off, more than anything in the book itself.
The book has much to offer, read the right way. But the structure of the book and the framing by the publisher encourage misreading, and the result is likely to damage your writing more than help. The book takes a rule-based approach to writing. Most teachers of writing disagree with this approach. (In fairness, I should note a minority who agree with it.) Rule-based writing tends at best to be bland, lacking voice and power, and at worst can have more problems than before the rules were introduced. Rules damage writing because they remove the author's choice, yet beginning writers most need to learn that they have choice, that in fact they have a duty to choose. Williams starts with choice, which is why I much prefer his book to this one as a text for this course. In fact, Williams's first chapter is an argument against rule-based approaches in general, and The Elements of Style in particular.
There's great lessons to be learned from this book, just not in the rules. Rather, the lessons live in the prose between the rules, where you get to see two distinct, influential stylists go to work. Admire Strunk's tight phrasing and enjoy White's chattier, more andecdotal remarks that bookend the work. They both have much to teach. Just don't get caught up in all those rules.