Strunk and White
The best thing about Strunk/White fanfiction is that it's virtually guaranteed to be well written.
The best thing about Strunk/White fanfiction is that it's virtually guaranteed to be well written.
The 1918 writing style guide The Elements of Style, by Cornell University professor William Strunk Jr. and New Yorker writer E.B. White (perhaps better known as the author of Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little), is commonly referred to as "Strunk & White". In this comic, the current editors of Strunk & White are clarifying a matter of style pertaining to the style guide, an instance of meta humor, a recurring theme in xkcd.
Erotic fan fiction is a genre of writing in which fans make up erotic stories involving characters from non-erotic stories. "Slash fiction" is a subgenre that pairs characters of the same sex: These pairings are denoted by using the "/" to separate the paired characters, hence the name "slash fiction". This convention is generally thought to originate with the Kirk/Spock pairing in Star Trek fan fiction, wherein "K/S" was used for such romantic or erotic works of fan fiction, while "K&S" was used for non-romantic works. This comic imagines a similar distinction being necessary for "Strunk & White" vs. "Strunk/White".
The title text comments that authors of Strunk/White fan fiction will most likely have read The Elements of Style, which makes them better writers.