Customer Reviews

Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This smallish book summarizes and updates "Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace (7th Edition)." I rank both books at least a "5 out of 5" ranking. I bought the "Style: Ten Lessons" book first and after reading his previous book, I wanted more from this author. This new book is a fitting treat; it is destined to be a classic in the field of writing.

This smaller 150 page book presents many easy-to-apply principles and, for me, were easier to understand.

The principles that I liked most were:

+ How nominalizations can be very good or very bad, depending on their purpose, or lack of it.
+ How to re-arrange sentences putting the new and most important ideas on the end; thus sometimes flipping the sentence around and making good use of the passive tense.
+ The importance of aligning the characters of your story with the subjects of your sentences, and using active verbs to make "interesting subjects do interesting things."
+ Why and how to keep the distance between subject, verb and object short.

There are many, many other writing principles that you will find very useful. Although this book is written for someone with writing experience, a beginner will also find it MOST helpful.

I recommend any budding writer to buy both books. The bigger, older book has more discussion. But I found this smaller, newer book easier to read and understand. I'm now reading his Craft of Research book, and it looks like a winner too.

This is an author whose books you should collect. He has become a highly recommended expert in the field of writing. Look at the reviews of the bigger book to see what others are saying. I am so happy that I found his books.

John Dunbar
Sugar Land, TX

The longer version of Joseph Williams "Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace" has been justly praised for many years. But as a director of writing programs at NYU, Princeton, and Yale, I never felt right adopting that text: it was too expensive, and more than the average student needed. This "Basics" Style is the perfect solution. All the brilliance of the longer book at 1/3 the price, "Style" perfectly balances explanations of style rules with practical examples. The rules that Strunk and White encourage are good ones, and American prose would be leaner if their precepts were universal. The problem with that book is that the advice is not explained systematically. You can use their suggestions when you face similar cases, but only Williams' text breaks down topics like elegance, coherence, and cohesion in ways that will let you carry the ideas into every text you write. I would not recommend this book for the casual 10th grader; although it's clearly written, its ideas are somewhat advanced. But for professionals, college writers, and any teenager who takes writing seriously, "Style" is an indispensable tool, a book you'll use for the rest of your life. For learning to write good college papers, I also highly recommend his "Craft of Research."

Teaching style is not an easy task. Just look at the number of books on the market that portend to do this task, and it becomes obvious that not all authors succeed in their efforts. Some manuals attempt to teach by rules, others by persuasion, and still others by example. This book takes all three approaches and illustrates that the art of stylistic writing is a matter of know-how. Unlike most books in the field, I find this one generally successful.

The book's method is heuristic. It begins with causes of bad writing, and progresses to clarity, cohesion, emphasis, coherence, concision, length, and elegance. Each principle is given a bad examples compared to a good one. Direct, subject-verb-object writing is extolled, and certain anathemas of other texts are approved under the right circumstances. While I disagree with one its principles: That it is acceptable to begin a sentence with "There" and "It," these are minor quibbles in an otherwise strongly argued case.

Strunk & White's "Elements of Style" now has a major competitor, and this book is it. Whether one writes in fiction or non-fiction, the principles and examples given throughout this book are to be commended. I know of one author, a philosopher, who took these principles to heart. What once was ambiguous and contorted writing is now lucid, clear, and vivid. If this book can make this kind of progress, I certainly recommend it to all writers.

While on the subject of good writing, I also recommend Corbett's "Classical Rhetoric" for those authors who want to write convincing arguments. One on style, the other on substance. While William's book on style will make prose more readable, Corbett's book will make it more intelligible.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The clear prose and abundant examples improved my writing. That was worth the price right there.

Particularly fine is the final chapter, in which he argues compellingly, using observations from the previous chapters, that Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address was craftier than it seemed. He examines the choices Lincoln made and the reasons behind the choices. Riveting!

Chapters: Understanding Style, Correctness, Actions, Characters, Cohesion and Coherence, Emphasis, Concision, Shape, Elegance, The Ethics of Prose.

I am a non native speaker, and even though my grammar is not too bad, my writing style has always been a source of frustration. At work, when comparing the texts I would write with the one of good native writers, I could see that theirs were better, but could not find why.
I bought this book based on the high reviews it got on amazon, and I was not disappointed. After reading a few pages, I scanned the research proposal I was writing at the time, and could already make significant improvements on it. The advices that the author give are sometimes quite simple, especially at the beginning of the book (for example : the main character should be the subjects of the verbs, which themselves should correspond to the main action). But surprisingly, I realized that I was rarely applying these simple rules of clarity. The author is never dogmatic, and insists that the only thing that matters is that the reader easily understands what we're writing. All throughout the book, numerous examples illustrate the concepts just introduced so that it is quite easy to test whether one has really got the point.

I found an used copy of " The Basics of Clarity and Grace" at bookstore. After reading 3/4 of the book I ordered two more copies. One copy for my son who is a journalist major and the other for my eldest son who writes good comedy. I liked its size and its no nonesense approach.

I have taught college courses for six years, have read more than a dozen writing guides and used at least six major writing guides in courses. In my experience, this is absolutely the best writing guide on the market. I would go so far as to say that anyone who intends to write anything, ever, should own this book...especially at this price.

Within its slim quarter inch spine the reader will find thoughtfully ordered chapters that cultivate an internal sense of style and clarity. Where other books leave the acolyte beholden to a dizzying array of obtuse rules, this book patiently and clearly walks the reader through a handful of basic ideas that cultivate ones own internal compass of clarity. Each idea is made concrete through application to a series of accessible examples that even Freshmen in my classes can quickly grasp. The presentation style leads to a deeper appreciation of why writing in particular ways produces clearer writing (or more confusing writing). Moreover, each suggestion for improving writing can be summarized in a way that is elegantly simple--e.g. move from familiar to new ideas. These deceptively simple suggestions, together with the weight of understanding why and how they make such a difference in writing, are easy to remember and practical to apply.

In short, of the dozen or more texts on writing I have read and taught, this is the single one that perches on my shoulder, whispering into my ear as I write, and continually improving my writing.

If you are a college student, graduate student, or a doctoral student this book will be of great value in writing term papers, a thesis, or dissertation. It is also good for term papers, speeches, etc.

Shorter than many of Williams' other similar works, Style is a great little book that any writer should read many times. His points on concision and clarity are must read for anybody who wants to improve their writing.

This book helped me to fine tune writing. Being a Department of State employee and considering myself an already excellent writer, I was able to reassess my composition and cut out the unnecessary verbage and get down to the facts in concise sentences.