The book pays explicit homage, in title and tone, to The Elements of Style, by Strunk & White and is considered a practical template promoting Edsger Dijkstra's structured programming discussions.

The style is diplomatic and generally sympathetic in its criticism, and unabashedly honest as well— some of the examples with which it finds fault are from the authors' own work (one example in the second edition is from the first edition).

Its lessons are summarized at the end of each section in pithy maxims, such as "Let the machine do the dirty work": Modern readers may find it a shortcoming that its examples use older procedural programming languages (Fortran and PL/I) that are quite different from those popular today.

However, many of the book's points that generally concern stylistic and structural issues transcend the details of particular languages.

Kilobaud Microcomputing stated that "If you intend to write programs to be used by other people, then you should read this book.