Revising Prose

Revising Prose
Author: Richard A. Lanham
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Total Pages: 152
Release: 1979
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN:

Lanham's eight simple steps to clearer, more understandable writing will win you praise from bosses, colleagues, and clients. Voice; Business Prose; Professional Prose; Electronic Prose; General Interest; improving your writing.

The Longman Guide to Revising Prose

The Longman Guide to Revising Prose
Author: Richard A. Lanham
Publisher: Longman Publishing Group
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2006
Genre: Editing
ISBN: 9780321417664

True to its title, Revising Prose is about revising, not about original composition. It will not teach you how to pray for inspiration, marshall your thoughts, or find the willpower to glue backside to chair. All writers face these dragons in their own idiosyncratic ways. But revision belongs to the public domain. Anyone can learn it. Revising Prose teaches you how, using a simple, rule-based, eight-step process called The Paramedic Method that concentrates on turning the bureaucratic official style so common today in business and government writing into plain English. Its focus on the individual sentence enables you to identify the surplus verbiage (what Lanham calls the Lard Factor) in an effort like this: The history of new regulatory provisions is that there is generally an immediate resistance to them. And turn it into this: People usually resist new regulations. A Lard Factor of 69%. Lanham's method aims to eliminate 50% from most writing, to create a sentence half as long and twice as strong. A saving of 50% in writing time, in reading time, in paper and screen space, in human patience and understanding-it all adds up to real money. It also adds up to a more persuasive and amiable presentation of self, as Revising Prose argues in its final chapter.

Analyzing Prose

Analyzing Prose
Author: Richard Lanham
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2003-06-26
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780826461902

This second edition of the classic linguistics text provides a basic descriptive terminology for prose style. What is a noun style? A verb style? A hypotactic or a paratactic one? How does the running style differ from the periodic style? What do "high, middle, and low" prose style mean? How might one apply the classical terminology of rhetorical figures to prose analysis? Analyzing Prose supplies detailed, carefully charted answers to these questions in order to teach the student of prose style how and where to begin.

Good Prose

Good Prose
Author: Tracy Kidder
Publisher: Random House Incorporated
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2013
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1400069750

The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author of House and the editor of Atlantic Monthly share stories from their literary friendship and respective careers, offering insight into writing principles and mechanics that they have identified as elementary to quality prose.

Revising Business Prose

Revising Business Prose
Author: Richard A. Lanham
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Total Pages: 120
Release: 1981
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

As its title implies, this book deals with revising, not with original composition. In business writing, where a first draft often emerges quickly under the pressures of facts, figures, and deadlines, revision is typically the major part of a writing task, and collaborative revision often produces the final document. Revising Business Prose provides detailed revision guidance and a collaborative approach to writing easily applied to writing in business, industry, government, and academics. Based on the premise that bad writing in organizations imitates the bureaucratic style The Official Style, as it's called here this book shows readers how to transform stilted, dense prose into plain English. For anyone interested in the revision process in every business writing context.

Revision

Revision
Author: David Michael Kaplan
Publisher: Writer's Digest Books
Total Pages: 248
Release: 1997
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN:

With rousing enthusiasm, David Michael Kaplan introduces you to his unique brand of revision: a process of discovery in which your story's words, structure, even its very meaning may change as it grows stronger. He takes you through every stage of the writing process, providing strategies and criteria to help pinpoint the problems in your work and fix them. In addition to illustrating his points with examples from contemporary writers, Kaplan traces the evolution of three of his own stories from journal entries to first (and subsequent) drafts to finished pieces. He shows the changes he made - from single words to entire characters and story lines - and explains why he made them.

Several Short Sentences About Writing

Several Short Sentences About Writing
Author: Verlyn Klinkenborg
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2013-04-09
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0307279413

An indispensable and distinctive book that will help anyone who wants to write, write better, or have a clearer understanding of what it means for them to be writing, from widely admired writer and teacher Verlyn Klinkenborg. Klinkenborg believes that most of our received wisdom about how writing works is not only wrong but an obstacle to our ability to write. In Several Short Sentences About Writing, he sets out to help us unlearn that “wisdom”—about genius, about creativity, about writer’s block, topic sentences, and outline—and understand that writing is just as much about thinking, noticing, and learning what it means to be involved in the act of writing. There is no gospel, no orthodoxy, no dogma in this book. Instead it is a gathering of starting points in a journey toward lively, lucid, satisfying self-expression.

Revising & Editing

Revising & Editing
Author: Les Parsons
Publisher: Pembroke Publishers Limited
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2001
Genre: Creative writing (Middle school)
ISBN: 1551381303

"Key strategies and activities for teaching specific revising and editing skills. Includes models, checklists and tips to help students grow as writers of fiction and non-fiction" Cf. Our choice, 2002.

Sin and Syntax

Sin and Syntax
Author: Constance Hale
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2013-08-13
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 038534693X

A fully revised and updated edition with writing prompts and challenges in every chapter Today’s writers need more spunk than Strunk: whether it's the Great American e-mail, Madison Avenue advertising, or Grammy Award-winning rap lyrics, memorable writing must jump off the page. Copy veteran Constance Hale is on a mission to make creative communication, both the lyrical and the unlawful, an option for everyone. With its crisp, witty tone, Sin and Syntax covers grammar’s ground rules while revealing countless unconventional syntax secrets (such as how to use—Gasp!—interjections or when to pepper your prose with slang) that make for sinfully good writing. Discover how to: *Distinguish between words that are “pearls” and words that are “potatoes” * Avoid “couch potato thinking” and “commitment phobia” when choosing verbs * Use literary devices such as onomatopoeia, alliteration, and metaphor (and understand what you're doing) Everyone needs to know how to write stylish prose—students, professionals, and seasoned writers alike. Whether you’re writing to sell, shock, or just sing, Sin and Syntax—now celebrating 20 years in print—is the guide you need to improve your command of the English language.

From Dissertation to Book

From Dissertation to Book
Author: William Germano
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2014-02-27
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 022606218X

How to transform a thesis into a publishable work that can engage audiences beyond the academic committee. When a dissertation crosses my desk, I usually want to grab it by its metaphorical lapels and give it a good shake. “You know something!” I would say if it could hear me. “Now tell it to us in language we can understand!” Since its publication in 2005, From Dissertation to Book has helped thousands of young academic authors get their books beyond the thesis committee and into the hands of interested publishers and general readers. Now revised and updated to reflect the evolution of scholarly publishing, this edition includes a new chapter arguing that the future of academic writing is in the hands of young scholars who must create work that meets the broader expectations of readers rather than the narrow requirements of academic committees. At the heart of From Dissertation to Book is the idea that revising the dissertation is fundamentally a process of shifting its focus from the concerns of a narrow audience—a committee or advisors—to those of a broader scholarly audience that wants writing to be both informative and engaging. William Germano offers clear guidance on how to do this, with advice on such topics as rethinking the table of contents, taming runaway footnotes, shaping chapter length, and confronting the limitations of jargon, alongside helpful timetables for light or heavy revision. Germano draws on his years of experience in both academia and publishing to show writers how to turn a dissertation into a book that an audience will actually enjoy, whether reading on a page or a screen. He also acknowledges that not all dissertations can or even should become books and explores other, often overlooked, options, such as turning them into journal articles or chapters in an edited work. With clear directions, engaging examples, and an eye for the idiosyncrasies of academic writing, he reveals to recent PhDs the secrets of careful and thoughtful revision—a skill that will be truly invaluable as they add “author” to their curriculum vitae.