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Perhaps one of the biggest blights on English writing instruction that that book isn't just ignored. http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/50years.pdf

I've read it before. It's a bit of a rant and is also probably a bit unfair--but I'm not sure it's wrong either.

Yeah I'm always shocked at how frequently it's used by my colleagues. I will say it is used in a lot of non-writing disciplines, but I remember my first English class putting that thing in my hands and ugh.

It's part of a broader issue in writing instruction that mistakes etiquette for style.

Ironically, it was ignored by the authors in much of their writing, both in "Elements" and other works.

Yes, if they'd followed their own suggestions their writing would not be as well loved as it is.

Amusingly, the original PEP-8 had "When writing English, Strunk and White apply" rather than "applies" (so treating "Strunk & White" as a plural). That subsequently corrected to "When writing English, follow Strunk and White".

Linguists universally make fun of S&W.

S&W is a series of misinformed and inconsistent stylistic preferences that mediocre English majors use to status signal to other mediocre English majors.

The point is that around you and Strunk, the language keeps evolving.

It’s not that good.