The Elements of Style (Fp Classics)

An excellent product

This is a concise and helpful book designed to eliminate clumsy and incorrect usage of English. To give a few examples: 'Less than ten' is incorrect, whilst 'fewer than ten' is correct. 'This man, who is my friend,' is better written 'This man, my friend,' 'I should like tea' is usually correct, 'I would like tea' is usually not. 'Worthwhile' is best avoided altogether - not exactly incorrect but poor style. And so it goes on. I found this book moderately useful, although it does seem to concentrate on American English rather than UK English. Some of the advice doesn't apply on this side of the Atlantic. For example, we tend not to use `most' as an abbreviation of `almost' so we're not going to make the mistake of saying `most everyone' as many Americans do. Some reviewers commented that the kindle version was hard to read, but I didn't have any problems with it. I think it must have been reformatted as a result of some early negative reviews. On the whole this is a great book for anyone who's got into sloppy writing habits (like me). Stephen King recommends it in his book `On Writing' - and recommendations don't get much stronger than that. It's probably fair to summarise the message of the book by saying `express yourself in as few words as possible and be as precise as possible'.

An excellent book for any writer to have in their reference library. Small but powerful. In the case of this book, less is most definitely more. The information it presents is in small, bite sized chunks, easy to understand and even easier to digest. It answers all you literature questions, punctuation, phrasing, syntax, sentence structure, etc. It's just invaluable This book was recommended to me by a fellow author and I can't thank him enough for such excellent advice.

Interesting but disappointed with yet another cheap Amazon print run of a well-known book. There are underlined titles where hyperlinks would have been in the original e-book. In addition, you can see where edits have been made to the text, just like the edits for review you'd find in a MS Word doc. Does this matter? Not really but don't give it as a gift or to someone who likes books printed properly.

I recommend.

Reading about grammar is about as fun as it sounds, but it's still really useful to have the rules (conventions?) of writing clearly stated and easy to follow. If you're serious about improving your writing, this is essential reading.

A favourite of Stephen King's, this tome is a rather dry but nevertheless 100% necessary refresher of the tools and insights every writer needs, whether that scribe is into writing novels, screenplays or essays. This book is proof old school can be the best and I always recommend it for my students and the writers I work with. I think I like it best on the Kindle because of the highlighting/clippings function, though annotating a paper copy can be great for research too. Recommended.

This wlim bool, popularly known as 'Strunk and White', is essential for anyone who writes anything, from school to post-grad. The information it contains is excellent and should be learnt by heart--observance of the advice should become automatic. In my 30 years as a technical wroter and editor at IBM, "The Elements of Style' and 'The Chicago Manual of Style' were dessential books in all information developers' toolkit.