Pages: 238
Format: Paperback
Category: Language Arts/Reference
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Pages: 256
Format: Paperback
Category: Language Arts/Reference
|
As a stickler for correctness and very old school when it comes to dangling participles and split infinitives, not to mention the whole issue of constantly morphing comma usage, I find myself wandering through mine fields of doubt when writing in a contemporary voice. American English is not what it was fifty or even thirty years ago when I was diagramming sentences in sophomore English. We've loosened up. We've accommodated change. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is a matter for debate, but it is so, and so we adapt or become obsolete.
Mr. Walsh does a terrific job of guiding writers around the pitfalls and ambiguities which have resulted in American English getting hip. And, he does it with authority: Here's Goodread's author bio:
Bill Walsh was born in Pennsylvania coal country but grew up in Madison Heights, Mich., and Mesa, Ariz. He is a 1984 journalism graduate of the University of Arizona and has worked as a reporter and editor at the Phoenix Gazette and an editor at the Washington Times and the Washington Post. He is now the chief copy editor for national news at the Post.Language is my living. I forge words and thought into meaningful communication. Whether someone else's words or my own, I manipulate them in image, print and page, hopefully creating a coherent whole. And that coherence depends a great deal in understanding my audience. Whether I'm editing a manuscript or a master's thesis, transcribing medical documentation or personal history interviews, constructing business prospectuses, blogging, or writing historical fiction in my Regency voice, the form and style I use must connect with the reader, rather than throw up roadblocks because we're not really speaking the same language.
Changing voices strikes dread in my heart at times (I'm much better at clinical than casual) and I accept the
Then, I go and do what I want anyway.
FTC Disclaimer: These books were independently purchased. I received no compensation from the author or their agent for this content.
1 comment:
Thanks for sharing! I've been wanting to read a book on language to refresh my memory as I edit my first novel, but I always back out of it because I know it'll be boring. So maybe I'll try these ones!
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