We all make mistakes. Even those of us who work heavily with the English language every day, even those of us who have an ongoing love affair with our mother tongue. These days, our errors are detected by the high-tech devices that come standard in our word-processing gadgetry. But back in the pre-Microsoft days of typewriters, style guides saved more butts than a broke smoker.

For the better part of a century, writers of all sorts have relied on their copy of the trusty "Elements of Style," originally penned in 1918 by Cornell professor William Strunk Jr. and revised by his student, E. B. White (yes, the author of "Charlotte's Web"). In 2005, a new edition was published with illustrations by children's book author and illustrator Maira Kalman ("Max in Love," The New Yorker). You can view the 50-plus original gouache paintings now through the summer at the MAG's Lockhart Gallery.

Kalman's art is delightfully irreverent, and playfully perks up a stuffy rule book. Strunk and White were dutiful in their dedication to clarity, brevity, and confidence in writing, carefully guiding writers-in-need while knocking out all of the unnecessary frivolity of language found in more lyrical writing. (I protest: where would we be without the wonderful, intricate, searching convolution of poetry?) Kalman's creative additions to the text are witty, fresh visuals that illustrate the rules with a wink at the mischievous side of our brains.

A thread of a story is created for the handbook's Rule No. 1: the section regarding possessive indefinite pronouns (yawn) is illustrated with a woman staring up at the apparently mysterious presence of "Somebody else's umbrella" in her home. Proper punctuation usage is demonstrated with the sentence, "Well, Susan, this is a fine mess you are in," paired with the humorous non-sequitur painting of a basset hound with a characteristically dopey look on its face.

"Here today" and "gone tomorrow" make up a diptych that resembles one of those puzzles where you locate the differences between the pictures. In a very pun-ny touch, Kalman included a hare in the first image. Oh, she went there.

In a lesson on hyphen usage, Kalman illustrates the sentence, "His first thought on getting out of bed - if he had any thought at all - was to get back in again," with a young man who stands listlessly in his pajamas, expression blank, surrounded by the funny touches of a space heater in the fireplace, and a poster that simply says "WHAT." I feel you.

Kalman's paintings are childlike in every way (her skewed perspective and exaggerated anatomy add to the charm), save for the hilarious and subtle expressions of her characters, and the wit she injects into every interpretation of the grammar rules. "Polly loves cake more than she loves me" is accompanied by a painting of a couple in old-fashioned attire, seated outdoors in a seemingly romantic setting. But alas, the lady's full attention is set longingly on a nearby pastry, while the man attempts, in vain, to attract her attention.

The artist's illustration of grammatical error can be as subtle as the error itself. In "Wondering irresolutely what to do next, the clock struck twelve," we see a cheerful interior setting, with nothing amiss except the nonsensically numbered clock, which might rightly be confused about impending action.

In the section on cleaning up awkward phrasings, absurdity reigns: "He noticed a large stain right in the center of the rug" is accompanied by a man lying in a pool of blood in a proper parlor, surrounded by the nonchalant expressions of well-dressed onlookers. "I'm crazy about English murder mysteries," states Kalman's title card, "so when I read this sentence...the image that came to mind was a very formal dining room in a British Country Manor, with people standing around having cocktails."

A boldly colored and pristinely organized bathroom scene embodies Strunk and White's direct commands that, "The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity." Kalman's illustration is one that imagines the extension of the men's rules from writing to living space.

An elderly gallery-goer asked me if I "got the point" of the paintings, which struck an interesting cord of truth: much of the show is boggling if you don't already have a personal history with the handbook, or at least have it handy to help decode the humor in the illustrations. Kalman's portrait of the apparent grammar rebel "Lincoln, Abraham" was created merely because of the listing in the index of the book, which refers us to the page where the grammar of the Gettysburg Address is criticized.

Kalman's statement expresses her hope that readers of the new edition gain "a sense of fun and humor, optimism, a sense of experimenting - that you can always find what the right way to do something is, and now try to do it the wrong way." Professor Strunk himself understood this: in his introduction to the first edition, he allowed that "...the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation." Works for me. (Error: sentence fragment.)

The Elements of Style

By Maira Kalman

Through August 2

Lockhart Gallery, Memorial Art Gallery, 500 University Ave.

$4-$10 | 276-8900, mag.rochester.edu

Wed-Sun 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Thu until 9 p.m.