The Elements of Style Is Ruining Your Writing (Do This Instead)

The Elements of Style won’t just mess up your prose—it can wreck your confidence, cost you readers, and muffle your voice before it ever finds the page.

I’ve seen it happen again and again: smart writers shackled by Strunk and White’s stale rules, parroting advice that sounds useful–until you actually try to apply it.

In this article, I'll prove to you that The Elements of Style isn’t the sacred writing bible you’ve been told it is. And more importantly, I'll show you better ways to improve your writing.

What Strunk & White Get (Mostly) Right

To be fair, some of their style advice is harmless.

“Be clear”? Sure.

“Don’t explain too much”? Alright, makes sense—assuming you already know what “too much” means.

Then there’s the famous “Omit needless words.” Good idea, in theory. Useless in practice—because if you knew which words were needless, you’d already be cutting them.

Even the sillier rules like “Do not inject opinion” don’t do much damage. But have you ever tried to get writers to withhold their opinions about, well, anything? Good luck with that.

But the real issue isn’t their toothless style suggestions. It’s the grammar advice. That’s where things go from mostly harmless to downright wrong.

Why Bad Grammar Advice Hurts Good Writers

Here’s the problem: The Elements of Style poses as a style guide, but it’s actually a grammar book. It's full of advice about the mechanics of writing–clauses, phrases, split infinitives.

Unfortunately, the authors had no idea what they were talking about.

For many writers, especially in the English-speaking world, Elements is the only grammar advice they’ve ever gotten.

Let’s break down four big problems with their approach, and how you can write better by ignoring them.

1. The Truth About Passive Voice

Strunk and White say: always use the active voice.

Sounds reasonable—until you realize their examples are rigged.

They compare:

Sure, the passive version sounds weird. But not because it’s passive—because it ends on “by me.” 

That Stress Position (the end of the sentence) puts awkward emphasis on something that doesn’t deserve it.

Let me show you what I mean. Imagine you're at a restaurant, and you turn to your friends and say:

The bill was paid by me.

That's weird–not because it's passive, but because, by placing 'me' at the end of the sentence, you're calling special attention to yourself.

But then, what if another one of the customers did one of those 'pay it forward' things and paid your bill. So the cashier turns to you and says:

The bill was paid for by the last customer.

That's the passive voice, and it works perfectly here.

When Passive Voice Actually Works

Strunk & White tried to make blanket statements about the active and passive voice.

But here's the truth: if the language form didn't have some special purpose, it wouldn't exist.

The passive voice exists for a reason. Here are some good opportunities to use it:

1. You want to highlight the object, not the actor.
2. The actor is irrelevant (e.g., “The couple was married on a sunny day”).
3. The actor is unknown (“My wallet was stolen”).
4. You want to emphasize a word at the end of a sentence.
5. It just sounds better (“Rules are meant to be broken”).

The passive voice is a tool, not a mistake.

2. They Don’t Understand Passive Voice Themselves

When it comes to their prohibition against the passive voice, Strunk & White clearly had no idea what they were talking about.

Out of four examples of passive sentences in the book, only one is actually passive.

1. “At dawn the crowing of a rooster could be heard.” ✔️ Passive
2. “There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground.” ❌ Not passive
3. “It was not long before she was very sorry that she had said what she had.” ❌ Not passive
4. “The reason that he left college was that his health became impaired.” ❌ Not passive

They don’t know how to identify passive voice—so how are they supposed to teach it?

How to Spot Passive Voice

There are basically two ways to identify the passive voice: at the level of syntax (grammar) and at the level of semantics (meaning).

• Syntax: The passive voice is the verb to be + past participle (e.g., “was eaten”)
• Semantics: The thing in the subject position receives the action of the verb (e.g., “The email was forwarded by you”)

3. They Don’t Even Follow Their Own Rules

Here’s the kicker: even when Strunk & White give clear advice, they don’t follow it.

They advise writers to...

• “Write with nouns and verbs, not adjectives and adverbs.”
• “Put statements in positive form.”
• “Use the active voice.”
• “Keep related words together.”

And then, a few pages later, they write:

That sentence breaks four of their own rules—negative form, passive voice, stacked adjectives, and split elements.

It happens again:

Negative. Passive. Wordy. Clunky.

They knew the grammar lingo, but they didn’t have the command to consistently apply it.

So What Should You Do?

Stop following their rules. Start studying examples of the kind of writing you hope to produce.

In copywriting, there’s a practice called copywork—you copy great writing by hand to absorb its rhythm and structure.

Do this with writing you admire. Copy it. Memorize it. Practice rewriting it from memory.

That’s how you build style—not by memorizing someone else’s list of don’ts.

4. The Truth About Split Infinitives

“Don’t split infinitives,” they say.

So instead of “to boldly go,” you’re supposed to write “to go boldly.”

Except “to go boldly” is awkward, and “to boldly go” has rhythm and emphasis.

Even worse? White contradicts himself in the same chapter.

For the model sentence...

...the authors claim that the split infinitive lends emphasis to the adverb completely.

But that's not true. If your goal is to emphasize the adverb, you would not place it within the infinitive; you would place it at the end of the sentence, in the Stress Position.

Why?

Because the end of a sentence is where emphasis naturally goes.

So yes, you can split the infinitive; but doing so doesn't give special emphasis to the adverb, as Strunk & White claim.

If you want to emphasize the adverb, don’t stuff it in the middle. Put it at the end. Or, if clarity depends on tying the adverb to the verb—split away.

Writing Rules Aren’t the Problem—Bad Rules Are

Writing isn’t about memorizing commandments. It’s about understanding the tools, practicing with them, and learning what works for your audience.

The Elements of Style might be fine as a nostalgia piece or historical curiosity. But if you’re serious about improving your writing, you’re better off putting it down and picking up your pen instead.