elements of style

I found William Strunk and E.B. White's The Element of Style both helpful and dated. The first two parts of the books I did not find helpful. A lot of it was either common sense or wrong in my opinion. The first rule is a good example of this. This explains how to add possesive form to words. I believe they were wrong or dated to write that a person is supposed to add the 's at the end regardless of the last letter. I was always taught not to do this if the word ended with an "s." Rather I should just put an apostrophe. Also I thought the rule about not using periods to replace commas was common sense.
But there were some helpful things in the book. My favorite section was the misuse of words. This section taught me how to correctly use the words I use. I never realized how wrong I was in substituting some words for another. Another thing that I feel will help my writing is the section that wrote how a person adds to many words to their sentences. When I read the examples I realized how often I had used those wrong sentences. While this book had its bad points I believe it will help my writing.