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Guide to Rapid Revision
The Seventh Edition builds upon its reputation as the most effective and economical solution to the widest variety of writing problems writers will encounter. This comprehensive guide uses the most effective teaching method there showing, not telling. Readers are guided to solve their writing problems almost entirely by means of typical, real-life examples. The authors maintain the brevity of previous editions and explain rhetorical principles in clear, concise language that students can easily understand and quickly implement. Even the longest sections take up only a few pages and each visually attractive page is designed to enhance the user-friendly format of the guide. Further, the content is arranged alphabetically by correction symbol, a feature found in no other handbook. This format gives readers instant access to information relevant to the problem at hand and helps them learn the principles of the English language so they do not repeat the same mistakes. Gives readers immediate answers to specific problems. Offers sufficient information to solve them, yet does so with extreme brevity and clarity. Presents a table of correction symbols that doubles as a table of contents to help students easily find answers. Cross-references a network of logical relationships among subjects that appear under separate headings. Helps develop writing style and addresses ESL problems. For anyone who writes, especially for composition, creative writing, and business and technical writing.
148 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
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September 1, 2022
Back in the days when all manuscripts (or "mss") were printed for submission, and those printed copies were marked up with red pen (or blue pencil or whatever), professors, TAs, and copyeditors all used a common codebook of "correction symbols." The student or writer or author would receive their printed mss back, covered—or at least speckled—with these cryptic symbols.
Daniel and Paula Pearlman put together a slim but comprehensive guidebook to simultaneously decrypt these symbols and respond to them. I have the eighth edition (published in 2003), but I can't imagine it has as wide a readership as it once did, since the correction symbols that were so quick and easy to jot on a student's paper do not lend themselves easily to electronic editing.
But if your professor or copyeditor still uses them, perhaps typing them as terse little margin comments in your Word doc, this book will decode them for you.
It also gives concise and helpful suggestions for fixing the issue that each symbol denotes, although those suggestions may be tricky to find since they are in alphabetical order by "correction symbol." This mostly, but not entirely, corresponds to alphabetical order ...you'll see. There is a "Topical Contents" section for writing instructors that I find much more helpful these days (see p.xiii in the 8th edition). The best part of the Pearlmans' suggestions is their brevity. These have been actively improved and condensed over a 38-year span of publication, with feedback from academic, corporate, technical, journalistic, and fiction writing. Their bit about Comma Usage, for instance, takes only a few pages in this small-format book, but is more helpful than some lengthy chapters I have read from other grammar books. And it covers writing style and sentence syntax (structure and clarity) in addition to the old "grammar and punctuation" mechanics of writing.
The best part of the book, the part that will never go out of date, is the 8-page "Introduction to Writing as a Process" (p.1-8). This is a brilliant expansion of the classic PDREP approach, and has informed my own writing instruction and writing coaching from the beginning. Those eight pages alone make it worth keeping the book on my shelf.
Also, it takes up very little room! ;-)
Daniel and Paula Pearlman put together a slim but comprehensive guidebook to simultaneously decrypt these symbols and respond to them. I have the eighth edition (published in 2003), but I can't imagine it has as wide a readership as it once did, since the correction symbols that were so quick and easy to jot on a student's paper do not lend themselves easily to electronic editing.
But if your professor or copyeditor still uses them, perhaps typing them as terse little margin comments in your Word doc, this book will decode them for you.
It also gives concise and helpful suggestions for fixing the issue that each symbol denotes, although those suggestions may be tricky to find since they are in alphabetical order by "correction symbol." This mostly, but not entirely, corresponds to alphabetical order ...you'll see. There is a "Topical Contents" section for writing instructors that I find much more helpful these days (see p.xiii in the 8th edition). The best part of the Pearlmans' suggestions is their brevity. These have been actively improved and condensed over a 38-year span of publication, with feedback from academic, corporate, technical, journalistic, and fiction writing. Their bit about Comma Usage, for instance, takes only a few pages in this small-format book, but is more helpful than some lengthy chapters I have read from other grammar books. And it covers writing style and sentence syntax (structure and clarity) in addition to the old "grammar and punctuation" mechanics of writing.
The best part of the book, the part that will never go out of date, is the 8-page "Introduction to Writing as a Process" (p.1-8). This is a brilliant expansion of the classic PDREP approach, and has informed my own writing instruction and writing coaching from the beginning. Those eight pages alone make it worth keeping the book on my shelf.
Also, it takes up very little room! ;-)
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review