Analyzing Prose: Second Edition

by Richard A. Lanham

Book Overview

This second edition of the classic linguistics text provides a basic descriptive terminology for prose style. What is a noun style? A verb style? A hypotactic or a paratactic one? How does the running style differ from the periodic style? What do "high, middle, and low" prose style mean? How might one apply the classical terminology of rhetorical figures to prose analysis? Analyzing Prose supplies detailed, carefully charted answers to these questions...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826461905
• ISBN13: 9780826461902
• Release Date: June 2003
• Publisher: Continuum
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Another winner

Again, this guy has the right idea, but no one pays attention and he is having seemingly zero affect on the verbose language which is academia.

Scribners: reprint this book!

I taught college writing classes for 17 years and have been an editor for a computer software company for nine. So far, Lanham's "Analyzing Prose" is the only completely reliable book about writing and language I have come across. It's not an easy book. As Lanham says, "We are simply not trained to look at the words on the page." And to read this book, you have to look at the words on the page. If you're up for the challenge, get this book. It won't be easy to find. It won't be cheap once you've found it. It won't be easy to read once you buy it. But as you realize how rewarding looking at words can be, really looking at them and not just through them, you will thank me over and over again for writing this review. And you will thank Richard Lanham over and over again for writing this splendid book.