Understanding Style: Practical Ways to Improve Your Writing

by Joseph Glaser

Style is often the most difficult issue for writers to deal with. Most people feel helpless and confused when asked to improve something they have written. In fact, key secrets to improving style often remain concealed because even the authors who write on style may not be able to explain them
clearly.
An ideal text for courses in advanced composition, Understanding Style uncovers some of the inherent mystery of style and explains how to craft good sentences and combine them into writing that is clear and readable. While similar books often fail to address the relationship between written style
and spoken voices or to discuss the ways that writers control rhythm and emphasis--precisely the kind of issues that give style its reputation as a difficult topic--this unique book adapts the findings of modern linguistic research into detailed writing advice seldom found elsewhere.
Though it emphasizes the "sound" of the written voice throughout, the text also covers diction, coherence, and sentence variety. Glaser includes numerous open-ended exercises drawn from such areas as business, history, and popular science to encourage students to practice as they learn. Each
chapter concludes with a boxed summary for quick reference and a "Your Writing" prompt, asking students to apply these principles directly to their own work.
The book also features a glossary of writing terms, a brief dictionary of usage, a guide to punctuation, and a detailed index. Downloadable exercises, useful writing links, and other help may be found at the author's website at

Genres: Nonfiction, Writing

256 pages, Paperback

First published September 3, 1998

Reviews

[Daniel Kim]

Overall not a bad read. Very informative and straight forward, but the plot jumped around a lot and was confusing. There were so many heart wrenching moments and parts that moved me to unstoppable tears.

[Persy]

I liked this book and I found a lot of the chapters insightful. I wish there would have been more examples and less practice exercises to really give me a firm grasp of the reading, but c’est la vie.

[Sarah]

Taught me a lot, but I took a star off just because it was also really hard.

[Alejandra]

Personally, I didn’t enjoy the book, though some tips are really useful.

[Jenny Ashley]

I LOVE this book. Not only did it help to improve my own writing, I now use it in my composition classes to teach my students that everyone can improve their writing with simple yet challenging concepts.

[Katie J Schwartz]

Some of exercises are frustrating, but overall Understanding Style: Practical Ways to Improve Your Writing was a useful, easy to understand guide.

Four Stars: This book was really good and I'll definitely recommend it to people with relevant interests.

[Julie S.]

Wordiness is bad. I'm glad that he agrees.

[Sarah]

I am currently using this book in my I&E class in college. The exercises are very neat and it is overall a helpful book in improving my writing.