‘So I won't be spending the month of April toasting 50 years of the overopinionated and underinformed little book that put so many people in this unhappy state of grammatical angst. I've spent too much of my scholarly life studying English grammar in a serious way. English syntax is a deep and interesting subject. It is much too important to be reduced to a bunch of trivial don't-do-this prescriptions by a pair of idiosyncratic bumblers who can't even tell when they've broken their own misbegotten rules.’
Might be a decent guide for the utter beginner, but if you're trying to learn to write with style, rather than simply to write comprehensibly, it's more important to know all of the many, many times you can and probably should break the rules in The Elements of Style.
Unrelated, but in general I think the advice of Nassim Taleb is good: most people looking to improve their writing style are really lacking something to say.
Especially in the workplace, you have plenty to say. It may not progress humankind, but you definitely need to say it. You may be discussing a design decision, announcing a promotion, negotiating a contract, etc. In these cases, one might get better at writing and say the same thing more effectively.
This is where a person would need practical advice to improve his writing style. I've run into plenty of people in professional settings who would be more effective in their jobs if they could write better. They often don't realize it themselves until a colleague suggests revisions.
I read Strunk & White at some point. It has its contradictions, sure, but much of its advice is good if you treat it as advice, and not a rulebook. For example, you might occasionally need the use the passive voice, but it's very good advice to strongly prefer the active voice and to use the passive only when you really need to. Some people really do have a problem using way too many passive verbs, but few realize it until they try writing with active verbs.
Are you sure that wasn't a joke? I recall that the writers often would cleverly break their 'rules' to make them examples of what to avoid.
For that it is a very good work.
That's a bold statement. Care to back it up?