Re: Books on writing?

[Harry Binswanger hb@xxxxxxxx]

> Mainly what *I* mean by strunking is prunining excess verbiage and
> eliminating overly-complex sentence structures.

God yes!
> As I dimly remember there's a better book of the ilk by a guy at
> Yale, but I'm forgetting the name.
A very interesting book is SYLE: Toward Clarity and Grace, by Joseph M.
Williams. He has some excellent thoughts about making the grammar fit
reality--e.g., rather than "A situation of marriage had its onset between
John and Mary." "John married Mary." It's not just that the latter is more
direct; it's primarily that the agents acting are made into the grammatical
subject.
I also sometimes apply his advice to have the end of one sentence connect
with the beginning of the next. E.g., not: "John never thought much about
retirement. John always felt retirement would take care of
itself."--rather: "John never thought much about retirement. Retirement, he
felt, would take care of itself." That's not a great example, because it
repeats the exact word, but you get the idea.


Harry Binswanger
hb@xxxxxxxx