Understanding Style: Practical Ways to Improve Your Writing

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. 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. Joe 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. Appendices include: a glossary of writing terms; a brief dictionary of usage; a guide to punctuation; and, a detailed index.
The Second Edition brings the text up-to-date and emphasizes recent advances in word processing and the Internet. The author also plans to update references throughout and include online resources. The new edition will also include a new chapter which discusses the basic distinction between the complete subjects of sentences from their predicates. In addition, the author has updated the downloadable exercises, useful writing links, and other tips found on his personal website.