Compraring Strunk and White with Williams

One of the elements of Strunk and White’s book “The Elements of Style” that I considered to be critical to writing was regarding the use of clear, uncomplicated language. Joseph Williams discusses this in his book “Style – Towards Clarity and Grace,” as well—but does so in a much more in-depth manner.
Both books use examples of how writers can make their writing clearer and stronger, but Williams tends to be far more specific and helpful than Strunk and White. The suggestions and examples they provide are helpful, but tend to be general guidelines instead of specific rules.
What they might address in a few pages, Williams devotes a whole chapter to. The key difference is that Williams’ advice is more critical and helpful, and far more specific. While Strunk and White might make a claim such as “Omit needless words,” they really don’t explain why this should be done. They might provide a few examples to illustrate their point, but never really explain the reasoning behind their ideas.
When discussing the use of specific and concrete language they provide the following example:

A period of unfavorable weather set in.
It rained every day for a week. (21)

This certainly illustrates the point they are trying to make, but go no further in explaining why this rule is important or how we should go about doing it.
Williams, on the other hand, is very specific. Instead of saying, “Omit needless words” and providing an example of a complicated sentence and one that is uncomplicated—he provides a few principles, a number of examples and a lot of additional ideas that add to his principles.
At the beginning of chapter seven he addresses his two principles in a clear and easy-to-find manner:
1. Usually, compress what you mean into the fewest words.
2. Don’t state what your reader can easily infer. (115)

He then backs these up with additional ideas and examples. The combination is far more successful in getting the same basic idea across to the reader than Strunk and White’s approach. He goes into a lot more detail, explaining related ideas such as eliminating redundancy, pompous diction and meaningless modifiers. (118)
This specificity does far more in helping a writer accomplish the goal of making their writing more concise than simply telling them to omit meaningless words.
Not only are his ideas more specific, but the layout of his book in general is more helpful. Strunk and White’s chapter on the principles of composition involves many ideas which Williams expands into specific chapters, where he addresses specific problems that come up.
In general, Williams seems to provide a handbook to improve your writing while Strunk and White offer a guide to understanding what you are doing wrong. By reading “The Elements of Style” you are likely to figure out what is wrong with your writing, but not how you can improve that—reading “Style” will help you address both.