For people who care deeply about language, it’s akin to a religious text.

Nauseous. Nauseated. The first means “sickening to contemplate”; the second means “sick at the stomach.” Do not, therefore, say “I feel nauseous,” unless you are sure you have that effect on others.

It is often recommended that one revisit the “little book” ritually over the course of a lifetime.

If you doubt that style is something of a mystery, try rewriting a familiar sentence and see what happens. Suppose we take "These are the times that try men's souls." Here we have eight short, easy words, forming a simple declarative sentence … Yet in that arrangement, they have shown great durability; the sentence is into its third century. Now compare a few variations:

Times like these try men's souls.
How trying it is to live in these times!
These are trying times for men's souls.
Soulwise, these are trying times.

It is brief book -- my version is 85 pages -- so it is not unreasonable to suggest reading it annually.

In formal writing, the future tense requires shall for the first person, will for the second and third. The formula to express the speaker's belief regarding a future action or state is I shall; I will expresses determination or consent. A swimmer in distress cries, "I shall drown; no one will save me!" A suicide puts it the other way: "I will drown; no one shall save me!" In relaxed speech, however, the words shall and will are seldom used precisely; our ear guides us or fails to guide us, as the case may be, and we are quite likely to drown when we want to survive and survive when we want to drown.

I’ve not been so punctual, but I just read it for the third or fourth time, and was not disappointed. Because we didn’t diagram sentences in the Maryland public school system in the 1980s, I have to pick my way slowly and sometimes blindly through the grammar lessons. But when the rules or their explanations lose me, Strunk’s examples are crystal clear.

There’s only one matter on which I disagree strongly. He forbids the use of “they” when a singular pronoun is the antecedent -- e.g., “a friend of mine told me that they …” is incorrect. He goes on to say that “The use of pronoun he as pronoun for nouns embracing both genders is a simple, practical convention rooted in the beginnings of the English language.” Fair enough. But the pronoun “he” has not, as Strunk asserts, “lost all suggestion of maleness in these circumstances.” Yes, we all know intellectually that “he” can refer to all people, men and women. But “he,” no matter the writer’s and the reader’s best intentions, can only call to mind the image of a man. And -- speaking of clarity -- in some cases “he” refers only to men. How is the reader to distinguish those specific cases from the general humanity-embracing ones? The plural pronoun “they” is right out of the questions, and “he or she” is -- I agree with Strunk -- ridiculous. What I choose to do, as often as possible, is take him up on his challenge to substitute “she” for “he.”

There are smaller points where I differ with him, but not strongly so; it seems sweet and hopeless to resist “customize” and “prioritize,” or to revive “shall” when it is the correct choice over “will.” But god bless Strunk, who tried to save us all from drowning in our own vagueness.

And god bless the public domain: The Elements of Style can be found in its entirety (almost) on Bartleby.com. Elsewhere there is a version more like mine (Third Edition, 1979).