Whenever I find a copy of Elements of Style, I throw it away. I have deep-sixed at least four copies in the past five years.
Geoff Pullum, at Edinburgh, calls it "The Nasty Book", because it makes people needlessly insecure about their writing, and because its supposed rules are not followed by any great writer.
The most damning fact is that, when he produced the second edition after Strunk died, White made up a bunch more phony rules, and then went through Strunk's original text and doctored it to obey them. Then, he failed to obey them in his own text--frequently on the same page where he was advocating them.
There is a certain amount of correct advice, but it is the same as elsewhere, e.g.: "omit needless words". Did we need a book to tell us that?
I disagree with what you're doing and disapprove of it on principle that destroying a book which may have some useful knowledge in it is to be avoided.
I recommend you cease this activity for karmic reasons.
When the net effect is harmful, destroying the book preserves what would have been damaged. The uncritical popularity of the book demonstrates that its readers cannot distinguish the useful knowledge from the poisonous trash.
You might equally argue that spoiled food still contains potentially usable calories, so should not be discarded.
Geoff Pullum, at Edinburgh, calls it "The Nasty Book", because it makes people needlessly insecure about their writing, and because its supposed rules are not followed by any great writer.
The most damning fact is that, when he produced the second edition after Strunk died, White made up a bunch more phony rules, and then went through Strunk's original text and doctored it to obey them. Then, he failed to obey them in his own text--frequently on the same page where he was advocating them.
There is a certain amount of correct advice, but it is the same as elsewhere, e.g.: "omit needless words". Did we need a book to tell us that?
But his victims love him.