I had a dream the other night. I was visiting a friend—I don’t recall who, but it might have been one of the Craigs I know—and, left alone in a room, I was looking over the friend’s bookcase.
I found on there a copy of The Elements of Style, colloquially known as “Strunk + White” after the authors. In the real world it’s a thin book, not much more imposing than a pamphlet; I’ve read novellas that are longer. But in the dream it was a trade paperback, probably 400 pages long, and I pulled it off the shelf. I used to have a copy, in the dream, and I thought maybe I’d lent it to this friend.
But if it was my copy, I hadn’t put my name in the front, which I usually do when I lend out a book. So I hesitated, contemplated taking it anyway, then decided not to risk it. I put it back on the shelf.
I don’t remember the rest of the dream.
When I searched the Internet for “Strunk and White”, I found this article from Mignon Fogarty, aka Grammar Girl, in which she lays out one reason why she doesn’t much care for The Elements of Style. (TL;DR: it’s a style guide that everyone treats like it’s a grammar book. In other words, it’s a set of suggestions that people instead treat like laws.)