How to Be Your Own Best Editor: The Toolkit for Everyone Who Writes [Paperback]

Barry Tarshis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 6, 1998

A hip, unpretentious, and easy-to-follow guide to editing your own work--or the work of others--more objectively, more efficiently, and with greater precision.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press; 1st edition (October 6, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 051788366X
• ISBN-13: 978-0517883662
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #225,333 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Best argument against self editing, June 20, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: How to Be Your Own Best Editor: The Toolkit for Everyone Who Writes (Paperback)

This book has a lot going for it: it is written in a lively and engaging manner; it offers helpful suggestions, such as points on how to make your writing more coherent and how to use transitions to glue paragraphs and sentences; and it is thorough, covering many points that readers will find useful. However, this book is screaming for a final editor, someone besides its author. It has enough typographical errors to be distracting. It sets a world record for the use of colons and dashes, marks that are useful only when used sparingly. (After reading this book, my eyes were red after being zapped by so many of these usually underused marks.) Finally, the author reveals that he has little ear for idioms. For example, in his "after" passages used to illustate how passages can be corrected, he often uses the phrase "Still and all." I have never, ever read that phrase in print or heard it spoken. At first I thought the phrase was another typo, but after I ran across it a few times I knew that it was not. I can only assume that this book would have benefitted from a second set of eyes reviewing it before publication.

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Re-writing Manifesto, October 22, 2000

By 

S.Sridhar (Hyderabad, India) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to Be Your Own Best Editor: The Toolkit for Everyone Who Writes (Paperback)

Two of the three books written by Barry Tarshis - "How To Write Without Pain" and "How To Write Like a Pro" - seem to be out of print. Yet that doesn't take the merit away from Tarshis - his writing tips merit him an equal space with Strunk & White, Zinsser and Gutkind - masterly scholars all who wax eloquent on the art of fine writing. In the present tome - "How to Be Your own Best Editor", Barry gives invaluable tips on the lesser remembered tip which seasoned writers exhort - Re-writing, Editing. Barry hits the nail with his inimitable simplicity.

He takes us through the maze of editing - a must for good writing. Afterall, Truman Capote said: "Good Writing is Re-writing. And re-writing. And re-writing." Barry tells us how to cut sentences to size that sizzles, how to sculp whole words out of whatever godamn order you put them in the first place. Having taught writing himself, Barry gives us rich examples of re-drafting what seem hopeless into remarkable ones. I recommend Barry's book to anyone who aspires to write what the editor wants or readers read. The book not just deals with the art of sentence surgery; it also gives us the wherewithal to write short sentences, crispen paragraphs, put winning captions, and make any writing fit in a house style.

I also think that Barry has done it third time by making a mincemeat of all the editing principles used by skilful editors - look at the book. It is cut to the bone - 128 pages! Recommended.