Writing with Style: Conversations on the Art of Writing (3rd Edition)
Language: English
Pages: 192
ISBN: 0205028802
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This bestselling brief text is for anyone who needs tips to improve writing.
Writing with Style is storehouse of practical writing tips—written in a lively, conversational style. This text provides insight into: how to generate interesting ideas and get them down on paper; how to write a critical analysis; how to write a crisp opener; how to invigorate a dull style; how to punctuate with confidence; how to handle various conventions—and much more.
motley jury (analogous to your readers). sophisticated are they? What his How are their interests, their prejudices, Are they a solemn bunch, or do they smile at his Httle witticisms? The answers to these questions will determine the deUvery he uses, even to some extent the evidence he their intellectual capacities? chooses for presentation to them. He's lost many decisions in his younger years simply through misjudging the character of the jury, but he's naive no longer. Now he takes this
motley jury (analogous to your readers). sophisticated are they? What his How are their interests, their prejudices, Are they a solemn bunch, or do they smile at his Httle witticisms? The answers to these questions will determine the deUvery he uses, even to some extent the evidence he their intellectual capacities? chooses for presentation to them. He's lost many decisions in his younger years simply through misjudging the character of the jury, but he's naive no longer. Now he takes this
since and anything offbeat. and its it it tends to lack ease and inhibits variety of diction, simplicity, Its elaborate self-consciousness is both its virtue limitation. This brings me to its actual effects. There are two principal ones, seems to me, both of them negative. First, more often than not it ironically promotes writing as bad in its own way as the very writing it's hoping to discourage "bow-wow" language (Mencken called it) it — marked by stilted diction, rhythms, and
exclamation point or a question mark are necessary exceptions to the rule about no punctuation before a parenthesis. In such cases the punctuation is obviously essential to the sense of the quotation and thus must be retained within the quotes. This will often necessitate a second punctuation mark (i.e., your own) after the parenthetical reference. Example: "Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am II** (2.2.553), Hamlet exclaims. References for indented quotations have their own procedure.
no wonder that he fails repeatedly as a writer. Actually, he's not writing at all; he's merely communing privately with himself ^that is, simply putting thoughts down on paper. I call this "unconscious writing." The unconscious writer is analogous to a person who turns his chair away from his listener, mumbles at length to the wall, and then abruptly heads for the door without so it's passably clear to him, since for his purposes clearer; — — — much as a backward glance. moving from