William Strunk Jr. taught English at Cornell University from 1899 to 1937. In 1918 he wrote a 43-page book for his classes, The Elements of Style, and had it privately printed. It sets out eight “elementary rules of usage” and ten “elementary principles of composition.” Among its commands are “Omit needless words!” and “Use the active voice.”
In 1957 E. B. White praised the book in The New Yorker. The publisher Macmillan then asked him to revise it. The new edition came out on April 16, 1959. By 2009, total sales had passed 10 million copies.
The rules have critics. The linguist Geoffrey Pullum wrote: “Several generations of college students learned their grammar from the uninformed bossiness of Strunk and White.”