Marketing Information

/ Articles / Business Nuggets / The Book on Writing: The Ultim...

---

The Book on Writing: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Well by Robert Morris

The Book on Writing: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Well
Paula LaRocque
Marion Street Press

The Book on Writing is widely adopted (or recommended) by school, college, and university instructors. I think it will also be of great value to just about anyone else who needs to improve reasoning and reading as well as writing skills. LaRocque divides her 22 chapters within two parts, "A Dozen Guidelines to Good Writing" and "Language and Mechanics." The chapter titles suggest several key points, all of which are evident in the non-fiction of masters such as George Orwell and E.B. White. For example: Chapter 1: Keep Sentences Short, and Keep to One Main Idea Per Sentence; Chapter 5: Use the Right Word; Chapter 7: Prefer Active Verbs and the Active Voice; Chapter 8: Cut Wordiness; and Chapter 12: Get Right to the Point. And Stay There. Although these and other of LaRocque's guidelines may seem obvious, my own experience as a classroom teacher suggests that few students seem to be aware of them...and even fewer follow them. What sets LaRocque's book apart from almost all others which cover much of the same material is that her personal, indeed conversational style establishes and then sustains a tutorial relationship with her reader; also, throughout her book, she includes hundreds of real-world examples of writing which is correct or incorrect, appropriate or inappropriate, effective or ineffective. In Chapter 23, LaRocque includes "A Brief (But Not Necessarily Easy) Quiz" which I encourage everyone to take before reading anything else in the book. The quiz consists of 20 sentences. LaRocque then identifies "common grammar and punctuation problems that trouble many people," followed by "A Pronoun primer" because she asserts (and I agree) that proper use of pronouns will solve most of the most common grammar problems. By first taking the quiz and then reviewing the explanations and pronoun primer which follow, most readers will have a strong motivation to absorb and digest the material provided in the other 24 chapters.