Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle Reading App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Apple
Android
Windows Phone
Android
To get the free app, enter your email address or mobile phone number.
The Associated Press Stylebook 2015 This new edition contains more than 3,000 A to Z entries detailing the AP’s rules on grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, abbreviation, and word and numeral usage. Learn more
$13.53
FREE Shipping on orders over $35.
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Gift-wrap available.
Frequently Bought Together
{"currencyCode":"USD","itemData":[{"priceBreaksMAP":null,"buyingPrice":13.53,"ASIN":"0061840548","moqNum":1,"isPreorder":0},{"priceBreaksMAP":null,"buyingPrice":9.88,"ASIN":"0143112724","moqNum":1,"isPreorder":0},{"priceBreaksMAP":null,"buyingPrice":9.48,"ASIN":"0385480016","moqNum":1,"isPreorder":0}],"shippingId":"0061840548::zs9LS5B3B8Azqlqyk9KhElltIxZDFquOU8LW5M%2Fin5ADsHejxONSOnr30PtOAfctakHvLv4PmJCBF2Yxnk0x5124%2BoZrUjGLdePro53yDXkJSwyWN9QQ%2BQ%3D%3D,0143112724::QTVKBY6f29CAaLgRk8l%2Fr%2BaDBnEjXX5JHUinnF461MnC3gqjS25A0czhgzKvNAo8CddQKMzSF0%2FNR%2FuZVMXONRNe0Rr4ftSsJyqetlRHdaU%3D,0385480016::aX%2Fc9OTY9NFjOjCab4HAS%2BEJTfb2s%2BhVzi3uPv98Y5%2BlySxjUtjHpeFK07u1jDYbFlYVBhcw%2B7IEpFxqaNzzQJidNnykQ%2FtzD8669LAnrMQ%3D","sprites":{"addToWishlist":["wl_one","wl_two","wl_three"],"addToCart":["s_addToCart","s_addBothToCart","s_add3ToCart"],"preorder":["s_preorderThis","s_preorderBoth","s_preorderAll3"]},"shippingDetails":{"xz":"same","xy":"same","yz":"same","xyz":"same"},"tags":["x","y","z","w"],"strings":{"addToWishlist":["Add to Wish List","Add both to Wish List","Add all three to Wish List","Add all four to Wish List"],"addToCart":["Add to Cart","Add both to Cart","Add all three to Cart","Add all four to Cart"],"showDetailsDefault":"Show availability and shipping details","shippingError":"An error occurred, please try again","hideDetailsDefault":"Hide availability and shipping details","priceLabel":["Price:","Price for both:","Price for all three:","Price For All Four:"],"preorder":["Pre-order this item","Pre-order both items","Pre-order all three items","Pre-order all four items"]}}
This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.
Best Books of the Month
Want to know our Editors' picks for the best books of the month? Browse Best Books of the Month, featuring our favorite new books in more than a dozen categories.
Author Annie Dillard ("The Writing Life," 1989) was asked by a student, "Do you think I could be a writer?" Dillard's response: "Do you like sentences?" According to Stanley Fish, author of "How to Write a Sentence," it's as important for writers to genuinely like sentences as it is for great painters to like paint. For those who enjoy an effective sentence and all that it involves, this short (160 page) book is insightful, interesting and entertaining. For those who consider reading or writing a chore, perhaps this book can help one's interest level and motivation regarding sentences, though the author's intended audience is clearly those with a genuine interest in writing.
Fish would seem to be well qualified to write, having taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University, Duke University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. However, as any student who has suffered with a highly qualified--yet thoroughly boring--professor knows, a significant part of the education/communication process involves instilling motivation. That's where Fish shines. If it might seem that a whole book on sentences has to be boring, Stanley Fish quickly overcomes this perception. His book is divided into 10 chapters: (1) Why Sentences?; (2) Why You Won't Find the Answer in Strunk and White [Strunk and White authored the classic, "The Elements of Style"]; (3) It's Not the Thought That Counts [nothing like a little provocation to get us interested]; (4) What Is a Good Sentence?; (5) The Subordinating Style; (6) The Additive Style; (7) The Satiric Style: The Return of Content; (8) First Sentences; (9) Last Sentences; and (10) Sentences That Are About Themselves (Aren't They All?).Read more ›
11 Comments
Was this review helpful to you?
Yes No
Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
I was looking forward to absorbing Prof. Fish's advice, because even though I taught university-level English for twenty-five years I was fully aware of my many shortcomings as a writer. (Exposure to too much current literary criticism/ cultural theory will do a number on anyone's language skills.)
The first few pages are fine, because they're chiefly concerned with pointing out a few splendid sentences. My favorite is easily John Updike's comment on the home run the great Ted Williams hit on his last at-bat in his final game in 1960. Wrote Updike, "The ball was in the books while it was still in the sky."
Fish seems to believe that Updike came up with that winner of an utterance because he'd learned to master "templates" or sentence patterns. My own belief is otherwise. I think that Updike's real secret was that he was a brilliant, talented, insightful individual with many years of thoughtful writing and reading behind him. No one in the history of the world had written that sentence before. Internalizing patterns, perhaps unconsciously (not what Fish recommends) undoubtedly helped, but he could describe Williams's swan-song home run so well chiefly because he was John Updike, with John Updike's mind.
Updike's really was a great sentence, but here's another that Fish admires, by J. L. Austin (someone else has already pointed it out):
"And we must at all costs avoid over-simplification, which one might be tempted to call the occupational disease of philosophers, if it were not their occupation."
Not very great, if you ask me. Even I could do better: "We must indeed avoid over-simplification - which would be the occupational disease of philosophers were it not their actual occupation.Read more ›
Comment
Was this review helpful to you?
Yes No
Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
177 of 223 people found the following review helpful
What I like about this book, what I really like, is how Stanley Fish cares about good writing. Fish's love for sentences shines from the first page to the last; it could not be more pronounced. HOW TO WRITE A SENTENCE starts well enough, as Fish relays how a great piece of writing finds itself at the mercy of great sentences. In the first four chapters, the reader learns a few basic (somewhat technical) parts of a sentence, and how these little parts -- often taken for granted by inexperienced readers -- become building blocks to masterpieces (Stein, Hemingway, Fitzgerald). The next three chapters examine three different "styles" of sentences. The styles are Subordinating, Additive, Satiric, names chosen arbitrarily by Fish himself. These chapters give examples of each style from famous writers. The book rounds out with a chapter on "first sentences" (from famous books) and another on "last sentences."
In my opinion, the book contains one serious flaw.
Fish believes that good writing starts with sentence templates and ends when the writer fills in the templates with content. Fish backs his thesis with example after example of "great" sentences that adhere to his templates. Fish claims that there are a finite number of templates that can be filled with an infinite combination of words, the content. As an exercise, Fish asks the reader to "copy" the structure of simple sentences (John ate meat -- subject, verb, object) and then to fill in the template with more complex words and phrases, until the student's sentence becomes 100 words or more. In this way, Fish claims, the student may learn the craft of writing.
Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more
This item: How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One
