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Title: Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace (7th Edition) by Joseph M. Williams ISBN: 0-321-09517-0 Publisher: Pearson Longman Pub. Date: 07 August, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $38.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.58 (24 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: It's like a favorite teacher
Comment: I am an independent corporate trainer who teaches people to write better at work. When my students ask me for good books to learn even more, this is the first book I mention. I tell them, "If you are a good writer and you want to be a very good writer, get this book."
I also tell them several other things about the book. First, it is not a book of lists like the excellent resource, The Elements of Style. Instead, it's a challenging textbook that is informative and compelling from beginning to end. Second, it teaches a novel way to keep readers interested in what you are writing. Basically it's narrative, or story telling, within each sentence. Third, it provides guidance on advanced topics such as emphasis, elegance, and ethics. Topics like these might seem esoteric or irrelevant, but the author makes them easy to understand and shows why they are useful, and he does it in a way that is fun to read.
This book is one of those few textbooks that you will remember the same way you remember that favorite teacher. Like that teacher, it brought you to a new level of knowledge, and it did it with humor and style.
I rated this book 5 stars because I think it is superior in all categories for a textbook: useful content, insightful author, clear exposition, skillful publishing, and reasonable price.
Rating: 5
Summary: If you read only one book on writing, make it this one!
Comment: Oftentimes I've admired writers whose succint style and laser-beam like precision gave their writings an impressive and expressive edge. I only wish some wise soul had exposed me to a book such as this 30 years earlier. Please plant the intellectual seeds of sequoias in any young writers you know, and buy a copy of this book as a gift. Professor Williams extraordinary lessons in style, cohesion and use of the English language make this book an absolute joy to read
Rating: 4
Summary: Creating Meaning
Comment: It all comes down to what our purpose is when we write. Are we entertainers? Teachers? Guides? Writing is first and foremost the use of words on a page to engage a reader so that the reader may experience something he or she would not otherwise experience.
Engage is the important word here. The reader must become engaged, for if not, there is no hope of her fully accompanying the characters on their journey. This journey is how I believe readers come to a new understanding of universal motivations, paradoxes, concepts. The journey, by the way, does not have an end, even though the book ends. The journey's end, so to speak, is simply the beginning of the reader's journey. This is why books are so lovely. They go on forever.
If engagement is the key, then these ten concepts are crucial. There must be no ambiguity in writing, unless it is purposeful ambiguity. To me, "write clearly" means just that. Write with purpose. Write concretely, because we will give the reader just what we intend if we're specific. No chance of misinterpretation. Write actively, because it is more engaging than the passive tense.
We think in a straightforward way. John jumped over the creek. Not, over the creek John jumped. The subject naturally comes first in our minds, and the reader will have fewer pieces to rearrange if we write that way. This holds true for keeping the verb in the main clause of the sentence. It helps the reader process in a logical forward way. Rhetoric needs thoughtful processing, and is best left to the ends of sentences, when the reader can peruse them more leisurely, having already digested the active portion of the sentence.
Editing is nice; we can rearrange things all we like. But cutting is another story. It hurts, but it is the most valuable part of the writing process, because it allows the writer to leave out anything that is not ultimately crucial to the overall meaning of the story. Anything extra is not only extra, and a waste of the reader's time, no matter how beautifully written, but it is also a distraction from the clear and continuous meaning we, as writers, are trying to create. As a new "re-writer", I have a WordPerfect file just to hold all the lovely bits I take out of my pieces. I can't quite part with them (yet), but I can set them aside to make my meaning clearer.
Structure helps our readers the way signposts help the hiker. It is perhaps an unnatural addition to the landscape of our writing, but a useful one to help our reader stay on track.
Writers have enormous power. We can take another human being on any journey we choose (assuming they choose to read the story). It is up to us, as the ones with the power, to be absolutely certain that we are true to the essence of the story, to the forces moving our characters, to the interactions between characters, their dialogue, their actions, their inactions. This does not mean we must measure our truth-telling against an objective arm. Yet we must measure it against itself. The story must be true unto itself.
The process of creation is incredibly powerful. Yet it is just that: creation. In fiction-writing, we must engage the reader in a reality that is simply false. It is contrived. That's the nature of fiction. In nonfiction, or creative nonfiction, we have the added responsibility to remain true to the facts, or to signpost areas where we stray from the truth. Writing ethically means to be fully aware of where you are taking the reader, and to be responsible for that journey. And all of this means that the creation is just the first step in the process; we really ought to call ourselves rewrite artists.
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Title: Style: Toward Clarity and Grace (CHICAGO GUIDES TO WRITING, EDITING, AND PUBLISHING) by Joseph M. Williams ISBN: 0226899152 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: April, 1995 List Price(USD): $9.48 |
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Title: Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace by Joseph M. Williams ISBN: 0321112520 Publisher: Longman Pub. Date: 12 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.75 |
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Title: The Craft of Research (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) by Wayne C. Booth, Joseph M. Williams, Gregory G. Colomb ISBN: 0226065685 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Handbook of Technical Writing, Seventh Edition by Gerald J. Alred, Charles T. Brusaw, Walter E. Oliu ISBN: 0312309236 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 14 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $38.95 |
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Title: The Craft of Argument with Readings by Joseph M. Williams, Gregory Colomb, Karen Tracey, Jon D'Errico ISBN: 0321026918 Publisher: Pearson Longman Pub. Date: 17 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $57.00 |
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