The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century

by Steven Pinker

Humans are cursed with attributing too much of their own knowledge to others (chapter 3), which means that overall there is a greater danger of prose being confusing because it has too few connectives than pedantic because it has too many. When in doubt, connect.

many prescriptive rules originated for screwball reasons, impede clear and graceful prose, and have been flouted by the best writers for centuries.

Phony rules, which proliferate like urban legends and are just as hard to eradicate, are responsible for vast amounts of ham-fisted copyediting and smarty-pants one-upmanship.

When enough careful writers and speakers fail to do something that a theory of syntax says they should, it could mean that it’s the theory that’s wrong, not the writers.

If you really want to improve the quality of your writing, or if you want to thunder about sins in the writing of others, the principles you should worry about the most are not the ones that govern fused participles and possessive antecedents but the ones that govern critical thinking and factual diligence.