Americans of a certain age know The Elements of Style, by William Strunk and E.B. White, abbreviated to “Strunk & White,” as the classic guide to writing.

While The Elements of Style is no bad book—if you take its advice, your writing will likely improve—it is something akin to a blunt instrument. The famous dictum “Omit needless words!” is punchy, memorable, and self-demonstrating; but it also lacks nuance, and in practice pushes an inexperienced writer past crisp and concise to brusque and laconic.

My preferred guide is Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace, by Joseph Williams and Joseph Bizup. It has the same form factor as Strunk & White (pocket-sized, about 100 pages) and the same clarity, but with added nuance and explanation. In the spirit of debating between the good and the better, here are three reasons why I prefer Williams & Bizup over Strunk & White.

Rehabilitating the passive voice

I have a troubled history with the active and passive voices. I prefer active voice too much for academics—who often argue that the passive voice presents a more object viewpoint—and passive voice too much for professional writing. One particularly bad memory stands out: in a job training course, I had an essay returned to me with every use of the passive voice marked, accompanied with a note directing me to change all uses of the passive to the active. My irritation at such a mechanical piece of editing motivated me to object to the instructor, to no avail—the writing rubric said to use the active voice, no exceptions permitted.

This is textbook misuse of Strunk & White, whose 14th “elementary rule” is “Use the active voice.” No matter that the explanation allows that the passive voice is sometimes necessary; there is no further elaboration, so the bold edict is all that is remembered.

Williams & Bizup, too, usually prefer the active to the passive, but provide a more general framework to choose between the two:

1. If readers care about who did something, use the active voice. If not, use the passive. Sometimes, the context has already made clear who the actor is, sometimes it doesn’t matter, sometimes the writer doesn’t know.

   I have heard a writing instructor seriously argue that any use of the passive voice was a breach of ethics because it hid information from the reader. While the passive voice has been used this way (see various pieces of legalese for examples), this instructor drastically overreacted.

2. Use the voice that will help readers transition from one sentence to the next. If one sentence introduces a new idea at the end, the next sentence will flow smoothly if it addresses the idea at its beginning. The active and passive allow for moving different ideas to different parts of the sentence to aid flow.
3. Use the voice that maintains a consistent perspective. If you are telling a story or describing events from the point of view of one character, switch between active and passive voices as necessary to keep the focus on that character.

Providing a theory of style

Strunk & White (indeed, most writing advice) provide their advice with no further explanation that a few examples: a rule, justified by bad and good prose samples. Williams & Bizup provide a little more—a theory behind what we mean when judge a piece of writing to be “clear,” “direct,” “dense,” or “complex.” They assert that these descriptors are not inherent properties of the writing itself—they are descriptions of what we the reader feel when we read a piece of writing. A passage is unclear when we don’t understand; dense when we struggle through the reading; sprawling when we get tired of a sentence midway through it; clumsy when our eyes stumble across misplaced words or punctuation. Writing advice is meant to explain what structures cause the reader to judge writing in certain ways.

An abstract definition? Yes, but one that is true for all types of communication—the meaning depends on the reader just as much as the writer. It is the writer’s responsibility to write for the reader they have, not the reader they wish to have.

Describing what makes for elegant writing

Strunk & White do not concern themselves overmuch with beauty—to be fair, clarity is as much as most writers can manage (myself included). Williams & Bizup, once again, provide a little more explanation, this time for the writer who has aspirations towards not just clear, but elegant, writing. Strunk & White notes that balancing coordinated clauses is a pleasing effect, but Williams & Bizup go a step further and comment on balancing uncoordinated clauses as well (done sparingly, they create an even more striking effect on the reader).

Similarly, Strunk & White comment that a sentence is better ended with emphasis, but Williams & Bizup provide several different methods to achieve such a thing:

1. End with a strong word (in agreement with Strunk & White).
2. End with a prepositional phrase starting with “of.” The light “of” phrase encourages the reader to read faster before landing with a proverbial thump on the last word of the sentence. (Note how this is an exception to “Omit needless words!”—here, the writer adds extra words to ensure the stress lands at the right spot.)
3. Echo a stressed word or phrase from the earlier in the sentence or paragraph.
4. Instead of using standard coordination of ideas, reverse the order of the elements (this is called chiasmus).
5. Keep the reader “in suspense” by delaying the main point of the sentence until the very end (to be used sparingly).

To summarize, where The Elements of Style lists memorable but scattered pieces of advice with a minimum of justification, The Basics of Clarity and Grace arms its reader with a mutually supporting principles and a coherent theory of good style.

I hope you will forgive my lack of detail and examples—after all, I intended to only compare writing advice, not offer any myself. If you want better writing advice than I can offer, I suggest you pick up a copy of Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace.