Williams vs. Strunk & White

I'm almost bitter about having read so many awful, cruelly long and self-indulgent sentences.
The adult in me says, "Great, now you can stop the cycle of abuse.", but the petulant youth in me says, "Make them all pay, you had to read it, so you should have the freedom to do it yourself if you like." Then the rational, scrupulous voice in my head says, "What would be the point?, sure you could write annoying sentences which fulfill that occasional impulse, but why?"

I was about to say that it's more fun to write sentences with rigid structural rules, but....it isn't.
If you must first write a "no holds barred" draft in order to keep your ideas coming, do it! But don't be afraid to spend a great deal of time restructuring and re-writing afterwards in on order to bring the readability of your end result up to the level of your ideas.

I suppose the advice in The Elements of Style are much, much easier to follow whereas Williams' in depth look at readability can be overwhelming and even annoying. I would never recommend sitting down and reading the entire book. What I think works better is the format we've been using to get through this book. Reading a few chapters and then discussing them. I would actually prefer to have stopped and discussed each chapter or section, but I recognize that this is impossible and impractical in our class.

Strunk and White ma have been grumpier, older men, but that actually helped make the book more entertaining. I would say that Williams' book is far better, more useful and more in-depth, but also harder to use.