As on Fox News, for every opinion one can find a counterpoint.
This particular counterpoint does more damage than good in the age of TL;DR.
I'd rather read the writings of 'an educated person who knows they feel vaguely anxious and insecure whenever they write "however" or "than me" or "was" or "which,"' than the incoherence of someone who thinks grammar is pointless.
I often see this counterpoint cited, but never its conclusion about "the overopinionated and underinformed little book that put so many people in this unhappy state of grammatical angst. I've spent too much of my scholarly life studying English grammar in a serious way. English syntax is a deep and interesting subject. It is much too important to be reduced to a bunch of trivial don't-do-this prescriptions."
There's Drivers' Ed, and then there's Skip Barber Racing School. That experts learn more doesn't mean novices should learn less.
This issue is deeply divisive, and I think the real problem often goes unstated. Here's my take on it.
Traditional grammar - the kind you learn in American grammar schools for example - is kind of a mess. It's jumble of very different things: (reasonable and unreasonable) tips about usage, spelling mnemonics, advice about grammar that has more to do with Latin than English, personal pet peeves and (no doubt) some very good grammatical rules.
This kind of grammar - traditional grammar - has nearly nothing to do with grammar as studied in linguistics departments at the university level. In fact, the scholars of linguistics are quite sure that much of traditional grammar is false, unhelpful and confused. (I'm on their side, but that's not really my point here. I'm just trying to sketch out why people keep fighting about 'grammar'.)
The two groups spend most arguments talking completely past each other and (unfortunately for the rest of us) very very loudly.
(A good test question, by the way, is the split infinitive in English. If you think it's a grammatical mistake, you're following traditional grammar. If you think it's entirely correct usage, you're probably someone with some linguistics training or background.)
Anyhow, the Strunk & White book and Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves are the kind of rulebook that makes linguists spitting angry. See Louis Menand's review of Truss, for another example of this: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/06/28/040628crbo_books...
You've completely avoided reading Pullum's article, it seems. No one said grammar is pointless. No one said novices shouldn't learn grammar basics. Only that they shouldn't be taught falsehoods.
The problem to me is the mismatch between Pullum's actual criticisms (which are mostly entirely fair nitpicks about passive voice etc) and his "burn Strunk & White" rhetoric.
But if he's got a better recommendation, or wants to write his own book, then I'm all for it.
Maybe he's "right" in some sense, but I can't stand this guy. That level of anger and hate against Strunk and White seems strange and unwarranted. I think people shouldn't preach about style until they can write something that's not unpleasant to read.
Contrast this to White himself, who is quite enjoyable.
To me the important part of "Strunk and White" is the White part -- that is, the part that deals with style. Of course you should use good grammar or something close. The important thing isn't following grammar rules, but in expressing yourself well. There are a lot of bad grammatically correct sentences.
If it were less deliberately controversial it would be more digestible. As is, some of his points seems inconsistent, but that may be due to presentation.
