Joseph Bizup

This book did an excellent job providing examples of poor writing and providing exercises in how to fix those problems. The section on clarity was enlightening and well organized. It can be difficult to take on such a challenging topic as style because style has so many different components. Often, a student's writing contains multiple stylistic problems in a single paragraph. Given these problems, it's easy for a professor to throw up their hands and say, "Style is something you either have or don't. I can't teach it (and I like the students who naturally have style more than the others)." Given the difficulty of the topic, I applaud Joseph Williams for attempting to identify what is helpful and what is confusing when writing English prose.

That said, I must warn readers that the book assumes that the reader knows the basics of English grammar. I already knew how to identify the subject and object of a sentence and whether a sentence was passive or active. Without this prior knowledge, I probably would have been completely lost when reading this book.

William's book provides a good organizational structure and provides many useful examples to help students tackle this challenging aspect of writing.

When Williams discusses clarity, he talks about action, characters, cohesion & coherence, and emphasis. This was a good ordering. While many professors tell students to use active verbs, Williams was the first to discuss the topic of nominalization of verbs and adjectives. Nominalization is when a verb or adjective is changed into a noun. For example, 'decide' becomes 'decision.' Persistent nominalization saps writing of its energy, but can be difficult for students to understand and diagnose on their own.

Williams also discusses the importance of keeping characters consistent in a paragraph. This discussion helps students understand the link between writing and attention. It also helps students understand when the use of the passive voice is appropriate and when it is distracting.

I admire Williams's focus on logic and problem solving when talking about writing. Writing, particularly at the level of a school essay, can be graded as rigorously and objectively as a mathematical problem set. Unfortunately, few teachers have the time or energy to articulate what skills they want students to demonstrate in their essays. I appreciate Williams's attempt to identify the skills and features that are often the hallmark of clear writing.… (meer)