Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (9th Edition) [Paperback]

Joseph M. Williams (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0321479351 | ISBN-13: 978-0321479358 | Publication Date: December 15, 2006 | Edition: 9th

Engaging and direct, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace is the guidebook for anyone who wants to write well.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, Ninth Edition
Joseph M. Williams

Why have thousands of college writers loved–and learned from–this book? Listen to what Joseph Williams has to say:

“The ninth edition of Style aims at answering the same questions I asked in the earlier ones:

• What is it in a sentence that makes readers judge it as they do?
• How do we diagnose our own prose to anticipate their judgments?
• How do we revise a sentence so that readers will think better of it?

The standard advice about writing ignores those questions. It is mostly truisms like Make a plan, Don’t use the passive, Think of your audience–advice that most of us ignore as we wrestle ideas out onto the page. When I drafted this paragraph, I wasn’t thinking about you; I was struggling to get my own ideas straight. I did know that I would come back to these sentences again and again, and that it would be only then–as I revised–that I could think about you and discover the plan that fit my draft. I also knew that as I did so, there were some principles I could rely on. This book explains them.”

Now even better, Style, Ninth Edition, includes more on:

• How gifted writers manipulate the language of argument and thereby our responses to its logic and substance, and the ethical implications of that manipulation
• How to work quotations into the flow of a sentence gracefully
• Plagiarism–why readers suspect it, and how writers can avoid the mistaken perception of it.

Also new to this edition are “Quick Tips,” short bits of practical advice about how to deal with some common problems.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Pearson/Longman; 9th edition (December 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321479351
• ISBN-13: 978-0321479358
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #95,527 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Guide and Workbook, August 25, 2007

By 

C. J. Singh (Berkeley, California, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (9th Edition) (Paperback)

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Reviewed by C.J.Singh

Even a brief browsing of Joseph Williams's STYLE: LESSONS IN CLARITY AND GRACE, ninth edition, would persuade most readers that it makes the much touted Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style" look, well, elementary. Simplistic. If the seductively slender "Elements"--easily read in a day, no exercises to do--could deliver its claim, by the end of the day there'd be millions of excellent writers. Besides, Williams shows how Strunk & White flout their own advice to "omit unnecessary words": he edits their 199-word paragraph to just 51 words (Williams, pp. 126-28). Williams shows grace in conceding that "in boiling down that original paragraph to a quarter of its original length, I've bleached out its garrulous charm."

In his preface to the 289-page book, Williams urges the reader to "go slowly" as it's "not an amiable essay to read in a sitting or two.... Do the exercises, edit someone else's writing, then some of your own written a few weeks ago, then something you wrote that day."

I assigned STYLE as the main textbook in Advanced Editorial Workshop, a ten-week course, I taught at the University of California. Each term, students rated the book as excellent. (The prerequisite to the workshop was a review course, with the main textbook "The Harbrace College Handbook." Although STYLE includes a 32-page appendix summarizing grammar and punctuation rules, most readers would be well-advised to review a standard college handbook, such as the Harbrace or Bedford. See my review of Bedford, seventh edition on Amazon.)

To date, Amazon has published 42 reviews of STYLE. The one-star reviews criticize the author's own writing in the book as lacking grace. Let's not forget that this is a text- and work-book -- occasional pedagogic tone is to be expected. On the whole, the author's voice sounds earnest, refreshingly honest: Commenting on what's new in the ninth edition: "Finally, I've also done a lot of line editing. After twenty-five years of revising this book, you'd think by this time I'd have it right, but there always seem to be sentences that make me slap my forehead, wondering how I could have written them."

His expository style is clear. Two examples: Introducing the concepts of cohesion and coherence, Williams writes, "We judge sequences of sentences to be cohesive depending on how each sentence ends and the next begins. We judge a whole passage to be coherent depending on how all the sentences in a passage cumulatively begin. . . . It's easy to confuse the words cohesion and coherence because they sound alike. Think of cohesion as pairs of sentences fitting together the way two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle do. Think of coherence as seeing what all the sentences in a piece of writing add up to, the way all the pieces in a puzzle add up to the picture on the box."

"You can write a long sentence but still avoid sprawl if you change relative clauses to one of three kinds of appositives, resumptive, summative, or free. You have probably never heard of these terms before, but they name stylistic devices you have read many times and so should know how to use.

To create a resumptive modifier, find a key noun just before the tacked-on clause, then pause after it with a comma . . . . Then repeat the noun ... and that repeated word add a relative clause beginning with `that': 'Since mature writers often use restrictive modifers to extend a line of thought, we need a word to name what I am about to do in this sentence, a sentence that I could have ended at that comma, but extended to show you how resumptive modifiers work.'"

"To create a summative modifier, end a grammatically complete segment of a sentence with a comma . . . . Find a term that sums up the substance of the sentence so far . . . . Then continue with a relative clause beginning with `that': 'Economic changes have reduced Russian population growth to less than zero, a demographic event that will have serious social implications.'" And, free modifiers: "Like the other modifiers, a free modifier can appear at the end of a clause, but instead of repeating a key word or summing up what went before, it comments on the subject of the closest verb.

"'Free modifiers resemble resumptive and summative modifiers, letting you (i.e., the free modifier lets you) extend the line of a sentence while avoiding a train of ungainly phrases and clauses.'" In the preceding sentence, Williams simultaneously explains and exemplifies the concept of free modifiers.

In the chapter titled "Elegance," Williams points out that "the device that often appears in elegant prose" is the use of resumptive and summative modifiers. An example from Joyce Carol Oates, using two resumptive modifiers: "Far from being locked inside our own skins, inside the `dungeons' of ourselves . . . our minds belong . . . to a collective `mind,' a mind in which we share . . . the inner and outer experience of existence."

In the final chapter, "The Ethics of Style," Williams takes on academics who "rationalize opacity," with a ". . . claim that their prose style must be difficult because their ideas are new, they are, as a matter of simple fact, more often wrong than right. . . . Whatever can be written can usually be written more clearly, with just a little more effort."

Well-crafted writing emerges only from repeated rewriting. This five-star text- and workbook teaches the exacting--and joyously rewarding--craft of rewriting. Moreover, I wholly agree with the author's observation on writing clearly and cognitive psychology: "The more clearly we write, the more clearly we see and feel and think."

-- C J Singh

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Write for the People, June 20, 2007

By 

doomsdayer520 (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (9th Edition) (Paperback)

Some style guides are highly respected in the writing community, but others are just vanity operations by literary snobs who think they're important enough to tell the rest of us how to write. There's a reason this guide by Williams has made it through nine editions, and that's because he has gained respect while debunking the condescending language snobs. Williams presents fairly standard recommendations on word choice and sentence construction, but the key to this book is its organization. Constructing this guide around the maters of clarity, grace, and ethics leads to a great amount of illumination on the opportunities and responsibilities of writing. Williams is not afraid to cut down style tyrants and academic obfuscators, with bodacious convictions like "it's a language of exclusion that a democracy can't tolerate" and "what is at stake is the ethical foundations of a literate society." But unlike his opponents, Williams can back up such convictions with serious tips for avoiding language that will make you look like an obtuse egghead, a shifty demagogue, or any other villain who talks down to the reader. And while you can get basic style tips anywhere, Williams has the edge in making you realize why you should care about strong style, besides pleasing your instructor. You can also write for yourself and for the people.

(Note: this rather skinny book just barely avoids being docked one star for its excessive retail price. Find a cheap used copy of an older edition, which would not really be "outdated" as you'll only be missing a few minor updates.) [~doomsdayer520~]

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Toward Strunk and White for poindexters, February 6, 2007

By 

Kevin B. Moses "kmoses31" (Memphis, TN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (9th Edition) (Paperback)

Brian,
You certainly have a point; Williams' book is not always elegant. But to suggest that the Elements of Style is a substitute for it is not only dishonest, but wrong. The Elements of Style doesn't even cover the same material as Williams' book. Williams' book concerns itself with writing on a sentence level, almost on a word level (which you might feel as pedantry), yet I find invaluable. Elements won't tell you why readers stress the final words of a sentence, or why readers stumble on complicated information at the beginning. It is just this sort of rhetorical advice that writers need and what I find valuable in the book.

Elements, on the other hand, is merely a well written book of do's and don'ts, with an admixture of flashy writing. Why do I need to know a description of William Shrunk, Jr.? Or more to the point, why does E. B. White need to tell it. Is he ego-tripping, or amusing himself? And furthermore, if Williams himself is prone to the complicated sentence, White certainly isn't immune: "Having recovered from his adventure in prolixity (sixty-three words were a lot of words in the tight world of William Shrunk, Jr.) the professor proceeds to give a few quick lessons in pruning."

Elements of Style is a good book. It advocates to omit needless words, a fine crusade. But it certainly not the only aim in writing. Neither should it be the only aim in rule books. E. B. White admits to that when he confesses that this book does not pretend to survey the whole field of English Grammar. And neither should you. Brain.