Effective Writing: Stunning Sentences, Powerful Paragraphs, Riveting Reports (The Effective Writing Series) [Hardcover]

Bruce Ross-Larson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0393046397 | ISBN-13: 978-0393046397 | Publication Date: August 1999 | Edition: 1st

A source book of proven tips and techniques to make your writing clearer, simpler, and more memorable.

Whether it's a Web page on the Internet or a chapter in an annual budget report, readers today have less time to spend wading through text-they want the writing they read to be articulate and to the point. Effective Writing will help writers at any level of proficiency produce clear, concise writing structured around the messages they want to convey to their audience, and supported with strong, well-developed paragraphs and sentences. Written in plain language and a relaxed style, this book is easily adaptable to a wide variety of writing styles and tasks, and will be helpful at any stage of the process: conceptualization, writing, or editing.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Bruce Ross-Larson's Effective Writing wraps three of his little books about writing--Stunning Sentences, Powerful Paragraphs, and Riveting Reports--into one volume. With these three little jewels, the author aims to eradicate sloppy writing from Web pages, office memos, budget reports, and the like. For Stunning Sentences, Ross-Larson inspects and categorizes well-wrought sentences of all shapes and sizes by the likes of Vladimir Nabokov, Henry Luce, and Mary Lee Settle. He isolates every type of sentence imaginable, from imperatives and fragments to "cascades" (sentences that, well, cascade), in an attempt to identify just what effect choice of sentence structure has on the reader. What does adding an extra conjunction to a series do to a sentence? What does dropping a conjunction do? A terrific tool for making a writer conscious of the impact of his or her writing at the sentence level.

Once you've got sentences down, it's time to move on to paragraphs. Surprise: A paragraph is more than "a collection of sentences framed by an indent and a carriage return." It also has to be "unified, coherent, and well developed." Ross-Larson starts with the opening paragraph, which needs to "grab your readers' attention, rivet them to your message, and propel them through your argument." From there, he elucidates the many ways to organize a paragraph, and then the many ways to link each of your well-toned paragraphs to one another. He provides many fantastic examples from The Economist and other sources.

Finally, it's time to put it all together. The significant word in the "Riveting Reports" section of the book is plan. Define your message, define your audience, define your purpose. Then figure out, paragraph by paragraph, how to present your message to your audience to achieve your purpose. Use examples, Ross-Larson insists; "an ounce of example," he says, "is worth a ton of abstract generalization." And try taping your completed draft up on the wall. It's an ideal way to see it all at once, and excellent for slash-and-burn editing. --Jane Steinberg

From Library Journal

Ross-Larson, founder of the American Writing Institute, here offers a three-part course in "effective writing." He starts with the basics in Stunning Sentences, which uses model sentences to illustrate different approaches, including Dramatic Flourishes, Credible Quotations, and Stark Attachments. He moves up to the next level with Powerful Paragraphs, which tells writers how to make strong points and to link their paragraphs together to make smooth and highly readable transitions. Many model paragraphs show readers how to use the techniques described. Finally, the reader is ready to write Riveting Reports. This book tells how to develop a theme, put together an outline, gather material, write drafts, and do a final edit. Instead of the time- honored note cards, Ross-Larson has writers taping sheets of paper to the walls to get a full view, very likely the best way to write and edit reports with word processors. These three books have good solid information for writers and would be especially useful for high school students. [These three titles are also available from Norton in a single hardcover called Effective Writing, ISBN 0-393-04639-7. $29.95.]ALisa J. Cihlar, Monroe P.L., W.
-ALisa J. Cihlar, Monroe P.L., WI
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (August 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393046397
• ISBN-13: 978-0393046397
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #174,735 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For Troglodytes or Bob Woodward, August 13, 2000

By 

Melvin E Baker (St. Petersburg, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Effective Writing: Stunning Sentences, Powerful Paragraphs, Riveting Reports (The Effective Writing Series) (Hardcover)

If you're a verb-challenged troglodyte, you should read this book. If you're a budding Bob Woodward, you should own this book. Effective Writing is the book for anyone who wants to learn to write, focus their writing, or sharpen their editing. Using numerous examples, Bruce Ross-Larson demonstrates how to write sentences with variety, construct paragraphs that hang together and assemble all of that into the finished product. Ross-Larson's breezy, non-instructional style makes this 269-page book as easy a read as a romance novel.

This book is a compilation of three of Ross-Larson's more subject-specific books: Stunning Sentences, Powerful Paragraphs, and Riveting Reports. Not surprisingly, those are also the titles of the three sections into which Effective Writing is divided. The table of contents for each section identifies every tip so a deadline-pressured scribe can quickly zero in the advice sought, whether it's for "Interruptive Dashes" or "Make Your Points in Compelling Ways."

Ross-Larson's occupation as a writing coach is a primary reason for the success of this book. President of the American Writing Institute, he has helped improve the writing of executives at the World Bank, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Census Bureau, among others. His experience in dealing with non-writers shows. No grammar guides here; there's no spelling secrets. Only practical, easy-to-understand advice on how to polish that rough stone of an idea into a sparkling gem.

He takes it for granted that his readers recognize good writing, even if they can't (yet) do it themselves: "So, to move from the common to the stunning," he advises, "begin to look for patterns in good writing that you can emulate." He also assumes some basic knowledge of parts of speech such as prepositional phrases and clauses. Some of his observations seem boringly obvious: "Most sentences should convey one idea - or two closely related ideas." Yet there are plenty of mental prods here for even the veteran pen-dragger, such as his advice on repetition: "Repetition - far too often avoided - can be a powerful rhetorical device. It can bring order and balance to a sentence's parts. And it can rivet a word to the reader's frontal lobe with more impact than elegant variation ever could." Each suggestion is supported by several examples culled from published articles and reports, with the point he's trying to make italicized.

But this isn't a mere primer. Ross-Larson doesn't hesitate to tempt readers to attempt more advanced forms of paragraph structure. For instance, he devotes 4 1/2 pages to "undermining," which he refers to as "a clever way to make your point stand out while taking the claws out of an opposing view." He describes how to "undermine a premise at the end of a paragraph" as well as how to "undermine a premise immediately." Or even to "undermine a premise in the middle of a paragraph." Of course, examples abound.

It is this hefty use of examples that contributes to readability of this book. For experienced writers, the examples can serve to blow away the syntactical cobwebs and refresh prose that may have grown stale. For beginners, the examples are mini case studies on which to linger.

For journalists, the section on report writing may have less relevance. Reporters facing daily deadlines rarely have time to take advantage of Ross-Larson's detailed approach to planning and drafting lengthy reports. However, for the college student writing a term paper or a junior executive trying to impress her boss with that seamless sales analysis, the time spent on these pages will be a great investment.

This book is written in a style light enough to engage even those who hated English in high school. Still, there's enough meat inside that every serious student of language ought to consider adding Effective Writing to that select group of books which occupy a corner of every writer or editor's desk.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An essential writer's reference, February 3, 2004

By 

Jeffrey Leeper "kem2070" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Effective Writing: Stunning Sentences, Powerful Paragraphs, Riveting Reports (The Effective Writing Series) (Hardcover)

This is a collection of books from the Effective Writing series and is a great deal. All the books here, Stunning Sentences, Powerful Paragraphs, and Riveting Reports, are essential for any writer's or student's desk.

The first part, Stunning Sentences, turns from the memorization of sentence forms and gives the readers many examples of ways to model their own sentences. In the examples, Ross-Larson deftly shows the readers how the different sentence styles work and when they could best be used. He also gives the readers an example with exemplary sentences so that readers can see how the sentences work in a larger context.

The second part, Powerful Paragraphs, shows the readers how paragraphs can be formed and used by the writer. Different examples show how the topic sentence of the paragraph can be moved within the paragraph for effect. As with the previous section of this book, the author gives us plenty of examples.

The third part, Riveting Reports, walks the readers through the writing process and shows the readers how they can slowly and steadily build a solid paper. By showing these steps, the readers can eliminate a lot of stress by planning when these steps will be accomplished. There is also a full example of a paper from start to finish.

In all, this is a very handy resource to have available to you. Using this, and not just reading it, will provide you with great ideas in planning and writing. This is a must-have.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An essential handbook for writing, May 25, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Effective Writing: Stunning Sentences, Powerful Paragraphs, Riveting Reports (The Effective Writing Series) (Hardcover)

I read Ross-Larson's How To Edit Yourself, an invaluable resource, before reading Effective Writing. As a compilation of three useful writing guides, Effective Writing was and is an essential handbook for writing. The system detailed in Effective Writing and How To Edit Yourself is the best that I have used.