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Re: Books on writing?



andy turnbull wrote:

a manual by Strunk and White (authors) is the standard. I don't know the name of the book -- most people just refer to Strunk and White.

It's _The Elements of Style,_ and while it's useful (though it
has an error or two, if you're a strict, analytic grammarian), it's not the be-all and end-all that some seem to think.
 
In Canada we use the Canadian Press Style Book to standardize spellings
and such, but that would not help in The States. On the other hand, I'm
sure there are AP and UPI style books.

We need to distinguish: there are style books, such as the
various Press style books, _Chicago_, and the out-of-date and out-of-print but enormously useful _Words into Type._ Then there are guides to grammar and usage, such as Fowler's _Modern English Usage_, Follett's _Modern American Usage,_ Bernstein's _The Careful Writer,_ and the really heavy grammars, such as Quirk, Jespersen, and the like. All of these are useful for writers, and essential for editors.
 
What Valmond Ghyoot is talking about, however, is another class
of work: how-to-write books, and I'm going to go out on a
curmudgeonly limb and say they're a waste of time and money. To
write, you need (IMHO) three things: a knowledge of your subject
matter; an organizational plan for how you want to tackle it; and
a knowledge of the language in which you are going to write. If
you're targeting a specific audience, you should probably know
something about that audience (e.g., you explain a procedure on a
computer one way to a techie, another to a clueless dweeb).
I'm talking about factual, expository writing. Creative stuff is
another matter, and I suspect creative writers are born, not made.
 
--
Patricia M. Godfrey
PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx