How to Write

by Herbert E. Meyer

The New York Times' William Safire calls How to Write "The most helpful book the beginning writer can buy." No wonder it's sold more than 200,000 copies worldwide! Whether you are a student, a professional -- or an aspiring writer -- this little handbook will teach you how to communicate your ideas and information clearly and concisely. It will show you how to organize for any writing project, how to turn out a first draft, and how to polish that draft into a finished product.

Genres: Writing

102 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

Reviews

[Noah Oanh · Rating 4 out of 5]

good one even though it was from 1993 (when you still have to access Internet through telephone lines!). But it still gave me some very useful tips on writing. Firstly, the writing process could be divided into 3 parts:
- Organizing for the Job: it would have 3 steps: choose your category, pick your points and collect your details. Make sure that your piece of writing will be anticipate, energetic, dogged and imaginative.
- Turning out a draft. This part will include figuring out your theme, making your outline, writing your draft. Have an imaginary conversation with whomever is the intended reader so you can put yourself on their shoes and it would help you to figure out what they want to read.
- Polishing the Product to make sure the final product will be accurate (of fact and description - use non-opinionated words), precise, consistent, brief (don't keep repeating things), fair (never be afraid to include a relevant fact just because it does not support your argument), have steady depth and tone, have an established layout and use a good grammar.

And last but not least, don't worry about how long it should be - should be just as long, and no longer than it takes to say whatever you need and want to say.

[S · Rating 3 out of 5]

An informative book. However, I did find "The Elements of Style" a bit more suited to my purposes.