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Would also like to mention that the Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B White is an all-time great book on non-fiction writing. It was required for my N
by samsolomon 3y ago
Would also like to mention that the Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B White is an all-time great book on non-fiction writing. It was required for my Newspaper Fundamentals class in college and I've used it so much since that the creases are wearing thin.
There's another fantastic book—On Writing Well—that is a recurring read for me. An aside—I was in one of the early programing bootcamps, The Starter League. My class was held in 37signals office. Jason Fried and some of the other 37signals designers were in this class with me. One day Jason stood up and answered a few questions. One of the other students asked him about books. He walked over to a closet and opened the door. There were hundreds of copies of On Writing Well. That's the book he'd gift to people.
That always struck me as interesting. Especially since he'd written (or co-authored) several books at that point.
- tptacek 3y agoThough, with respect to Strunk & White, Pullum's timeless takedown: https://www.chronicle.com/article/50-years-of-stupid-grammar-advice/ https://www.chronicle.com/article/50-years-of-stupid-grammar...
- gjm11 3y agoAh yes, as Pullum timelessly put it, "To continue reading for FREE, please sign up". An un-walled version is (legitimately, so far as I know) at https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-file-manager/file/5bd889926431f1de07115e6e/209-50-Years-of-stupid-grammar-advice.pdf https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-file-manager/fil... . [EDITED to add:] I don't know how close to identical this is to the Chronicle article; at the end it says "Adapted from an article written for The Chronicle of Higher Education"; my guess is that essentially nothing was changed, but I haven't tried to check.
- tptacek 3y agoYour link was the one I was looking for anyways.
- samatman 3y agoIt's a good read, but by its very nature invites the following sort of riposte. I'll indulge in just one. > “Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs,” they insist. (The motivation of this mysterious decree remains unclear to me.) The motivation is so that ponderous language like > Following the platitudinous style recommendations of Elements would make your writing better if you knew how to follow them Might be edited to something like "Though many are mere platitudes, following the style recommendations of Elements would make your writing better if you knew how to follow them". The sentence, as written, suggests that the platitudes, specifically, as opposed to any which might be less uhhhh, platitudinous, would make your writing better. I don't believe this was the author's intent.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- richrichie 3y ago+1 I also love “clear and simple as truth” by thomas and turner.
- kashyapc 3y agoYeah, that's an excellent book, too. Thanks for reminding, I need to re-reread parts of it.
- krrrh 3y agoThat’s a really great endorsement. I had Zinsser as a textbook for a non-fiction creative writing class in university. It was one of the only textbooks I never had a compunction to sell. Haven’t read it since then, but your comment will make me give it a re-read.
- kashyapc 3y agoYeah, while I appreciate the little classic, "Elements of Style", it falls short[1]. As you say, "On Writing" is indeed a better practical guide -- just by reading the first 80 pages, you get a lot of value out of it. Another book I love is, "Towards Clarity and Grace" by Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb (there are several expensive editions of it with modified names, but any older version would do). I elaborated more on it here[1] in the past. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24272968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24272968