A fair amount of this is like Strunk & White in that it's bad advice made to look good by a disingenuous example. For instance: Avoid using nouns as verbs. [..

A fair amount of this is like Strunk & White in that it's bad advice made to look good by a disingenuous example. For instance: Avoid using nouns as verbs. [...] avoid saying "He authored ...", instead say "He wrote ...". avoid using "obsoleted", instead say "made obsolete". You won't often see the verb 'to author' in technical writing, but not because 'author' is also a noun. It's simply the case that technical writing aims at plainness, and 'to author' is a bit hoity-toity. So the example, while accurate, doesn't illustrate the intended rule. Anyway, I wish I could say that tips like 'affect vs. effect' are unnecessary for working writers, but just last week I had to fix several instances of 'insure vs. ensure' in an old document, so. Yeah.