Strunk and White: First Impressions

The whole first chapter of this book was helpful. I had often wondered about certain rules and exceptions but I have never come across a book that explains them so easily as this one does. It was nice finally having some of those questions answered. The use of the semicolon compared to the use of the colon also cleared up some questions, and it turns out that I may have been wrong on some of the ways I have been using it for the past 10 years. I also found it interesting that you can use a comma before the word and in certain cases. When I was a wee boy in school, I remember teachers scolding me about using comma's before and, no matter what the case was, so for many years I have never used it like that. I also learned a new rule about the use of quotations, which finally made me understand what one of my professors was talking about last semester when she took a point off my test for quoting a Shakespeare paragraph. Chapter four was also very fun to read, some of the words I was unsure about, or just never had the real differences in them explained to me, so that was an interesting read. Page 73 explains the use of qualifiers, which I had also never heard of that rule before.
There were a few things in the book that I thought were personally wrong or unhelpful. The use of has or have in a sentence on page 10 was outdated in my mind. I guess I just don't understand the difference in that sentence besides tense. I also think that the word prioritize is a perfectly o.k. word to use. It is used so much in today's language that it's hard to think of another word that would replace that while still using priority as its context. This goes hand in hand with the use of numbers to state where you are in a topic, for example, secondly and thirdly. Those are used just as often in today's language, so I don't really see why they shouldn't be used. Pretty much anyone who reads those words in a paper will understand what it means and not have any problem with it being used.
I would like to make a few brief comments on three of the things in the book. Revise and rewrite is said way too much, everyone that writes seriously knows they should do it, it's just a matter of whether or not they actually do it. There is no reason for anyone to ever say that again, it's annoying to hear it as much as I have to, being an English major and all. Another is the topic of Avoid fancy words. Sometimes fancy words are use way too much, most people like to read out of enjoyment and I find that too many authors feel that they have something to prove and it really just dulls the reading and makes it uninteresting when you have to think about what that word means instead of just enjoying the story or paper. The last of the topics was Avoid foreign languages. Using a foreign language in an English speaking country is extremely annoying. I'm reading a book for another class right now and he uses way too many french words or expressions and NEVER explains them. It's probably the most annoying book I have ever had to read and it is my personal belief that the author should have to buy my book back from me, add in the translations, and then give it to me for free. It takes away from the story when I don't know what half of the characters in the book are even talking about. I'm done ranting.
P.S. - I think I went over 500 words. My bad.
P.S.S. - I also broke all of the rules that I just read in this book, it's going to be hard to break this habit after so long.