According to Fowler

Earlier today, I bought an Oxford reprint of the original edition of a dictionary of sorts on English usage by Henry Fowler. Both the introduction and an appendix note how many of Fowler's pronouncements (circa 1925) have been supplanted. Reading it, it's clear that yesterday's low-class howlers are often today's standard English. Pronunciation is also a moving target, with Fowler's preferences frequently giving way to the alternates he deplored. It must be a useful book, though, for those who coach actors on period speech. For the publications that I edit, I use a copy editor, Judith Dunham, who channels the Chicago Manual of Style. I've always found CMS baffling and hard to use, but I've absorbed a great deal of it by reading through Dunham's corrections. (Then I read the London Review of Books and absorb quite the opposite!)