Best for:
Writing classrooms.

In a nutshell:
Longtime writer and editor Harold Evans offers lessons to improve writing.

Worth quoting:
“We are more likely to understand the argument if we know where we are heading.”
“Anything that goes wrong will always be wordier than anything that goes right.”

Why I chose it:
I’m always looking to improve my writing.

Review:
In the first few pages of this book the author speaks well of both Churchill (racist) and Kissinger (war criminal), so I did have a little trouble moving past that. I was expecting something closer to Stephen King’s ‘On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft’; instead it is closer to a good text one might find in an introductory journalism or creative writing course at University. That is, it is well-written and helpful but dry (ironic, eh?) and repetitive.

Nearly every section comes down to editing; specifically to cutting words so one communicates in the simplest way. And that is solid advice! It’s just … there are only so many ways once can reiterate the same point.

Though, to his credit, Evans does find many ways to do just that. Most chapters include sample text that he then edits to be easier to read or straightforward. I could see those samples being helpful in a classroom: offer the originals to students and have them edit them down and compare to Evans’s edits. Some chapters also include lists of phrases that are redundant, or words that are misused, which makes the book worth keeping around. I’ll add it to my writing reference stack, and look at it occasionally.

Keep it / Pass to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it:
Keep it for the reference value. ( )

Nerdgasm achieved. Plan to acquire as reference and to re-read. Thank you, Sir Harold.

This was an immensely useful book. Any writer and/or editor should take careful heed of it. While some of the discussion pages seemed to be filled and slanted with political insinuations, the exercises that are given are a great resources for a writer to build the knowledge base and recognize patterns that qualify writing that needs to be amended. There are tricks, tools, and lessons to be garnished here. It is not a book to be forgotten.

4 stars: really good! ( )

I've read a great many books on writing and 'why writing well matters'. This is, easily, the best. ( )

I needed this book. Everybody needs this book - even if English is not your language of choice. In an age when degenerated vernacular makes its way into electronic mail, and worse... papers, reports, news stories...when the idiotic term "fake news" is slung with chopped sentence fragments of Twit-verse...the need to write well has never been more, ... needed.

This was listed as a reference in a class on writing I had last month and as I had it on my "someday" list, I bumped it up to "now". Evans has an impressive pedigree and writes with authority and knowledge. He also writes for a reader, no stretch given his editorial positions. In three parts, he breaks down the mechanics of writing well, focuses the reader on making words count and focusing on meanings, and explores the consequences of bad writing. And on the mechanics, I had difficulty not succumbing to monologophobia when writing that last sentence. Coined apparently by Theodore Bernstein, a monologophobe is "a guy who would rather walk naked in front of Saks Fifth Avenue than be caught using the same word twice in three lines." ("God said 'Let there be light,' and there was solar illumination.") Evans might have convinced me that there is nothing wrong with repeating the correct word.

Full of tools, great stories, even better examples of actual editing for content and communication, I'll be returning to this (particularly as I has to write a research paper for a course administrator who seemingly thinks just like Evans...)

Evans gets a sixth, invisible star for skewering the tragedy of what writing and communication has become since the ... come on, you can do it... tragedy... of 2016. ( )