or online

If you still insist on knowing all the rules, this is the book you need:

Style evolves after you have mastered the basic tools of the language.  Eventually, a good writer disregards the rules and forges a personal style.

You must first know the rules to break them

 Mark Twain

Mark Twain blazed the trail by offering a few small rules on the craft of writing.  Briefly, these rules state that a writer shall:

• Eschew surplusage
• Employ a simple and straightforward style
• Use good grammar
• Say what you are proposing to say and not merely come near it
• Use the right word, not its second cousin
• Not to omit necessary details
• Avoid slovenliness of form

Mark Twain: How to Tell a Story and other Essays

And he wasn't kidding.

 The Elements of Style

William Strunk, Jr. wrote the book on writing simply;  The Elements of Style (known affectionately as the little book)  summed up in a brief essay that the venerable humorist, essayist and his collaborator E. B. White called sixty-three words that could change the world.'

Vigorous writing is concise.  A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.    ...     William Strunk, Jr.

 Elementary Rules of Usage

The Elements of Style  offers the following Elementary Rules of Usage:

1. Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding 's.

2. In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last (serial comma).

3. Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas.

4. Place a comma before and or but introducing an independent clause.

5. Do not join independent clauses by a comma.

6. Do not break sentences in two.

7. A participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject.

8. Divide words at line-ends, in accordance with their formation and pronunciation.

Consider them the 8 Commandments of Usage.

 Principles of Composition

Strunk & White provide us with the following ten Principles of Composition:  See Composition

1. Make the paragraph the unit of composition: one paragraph to each topic.
2. Begin each paragraph with a topic sentence; end it in conformity with the beginning.
3. Use the active voice.
4. Put statements in positive form.
5. Omit needless words.
6. Avoid a succession of loose sentences.
7. Express co-ordinate ideas in similar form.
8. Keep related words together.
9. In summaries, keep to one tense.
10. Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end.

Consider them the 10 Commandments of Composition.

E. B. White added An Approach to Style in later editions of the Elements of Style and should be read by serious writers and would be authors.

 On Writing Well

William Zinsser, journalist and educator, champion of brevity and clarity, picked up the torch and expanded on The Elements of Style in his equally important book; On Writing Well.

The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.  Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that is already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what -- these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the sentence 

Its principles; clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity apply to everything you write.

Keep it clear, concise, brief and human

It does not get any simpler than that.  If you can achieve that, you can write anything.

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