Customer Reviews

Plain Style: Techniques for Simple, Concise, Emphatic Business Writing

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Sometimes an infinitive can only be split, sometimes a paragraph is just one sentence, and sometimes a sentence has to end with a preposition. PLAIN STYLE business writing breaks the rules when that is what it takes to be what works best for readers and writers: concise, emphatic and simple. The author says that it is always easy to simplify: ape good speaking and think of the reader ready to boil things down, misunderstand and read words, not the dictionary or the writer's mind. Richard Lauchman's entertainingly helpful book works wonders with CLEAR TECHNICAL WRITING by John A. Brogan, TECHNICAL WRITING by William S. Pfeiffer, and THE COMPLETE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO GRAMMAR AND STYLE by Laurie Rozakis.

Plain Style is an excellent guide to writing more clearly for business. It follows much of the Strunk and White Elements of Style material, and in some ways, duplicates quite a bit of it, but with its own emphasis on business writing, not just all writing. It has great advice such as "In business, readers are ferociously impatient. They expect you to come to the point." Also "If you give the reader a chance to misunderstand you, he will take it.", and "The principal goal of good writing is to convey." Excellent guide.