Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by syrak 2265 days ago
I've learned quite a lot about editing from "Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace." It presents some tricks to restructure and improve the flow of sentences, and through that process, to generate the momentum to really think about what you want to say.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0134080416?tag=duckduckgo-d-20&lin...

5 comments

I second that.

It has two things that stood out for me:

* It clearly discusses "grammar rules" and "personal style", which helped me locate myself in all this.

* It doesn't just say "avoid the passive voice", but explains when the passive is needed (it has nothing to do with "when we don't want to say who acts", but a lot with "the sentence is easier to understand when X appears at the beginning of the sentence, the easiest way to achieve that is to use passive voice").

Oh, and a third: it has wonderful exercises.

There are many editions of the book (actually there are even three titles, all with "Clarity" and "Style" in them) – it doesn't really matter which one you choose.

This was a key textbook in an incredibly useful rhetoric class I took as an undergraduate that influences my writing to this day.
I agree, that book is much more useful than the advice in the posted article.
Thanks for sharing that.