Revising Prose

by Richard A. Lanham

Book Overview

Lanham's eight simple steps to clearer, more understandable writing will win you praise from bosses, colleagues, and clients. KEY TOPICS: Voice; Business Prose; Professional Prose; Electronic Prose;... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0023674458
• ISBN13: 9780023674457
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: MacMillan Publishing Company
• Length: 85 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

a blessing

In brief: this book is amazing. Lanham will teach you to write with precision and clarity; and he will help you with revising and self-expression. Academics must read this book - and especially graduate students. Buy this book and internalize the 'paramedic method'. Take a deep breath, and read your thesis or dissertation with red pencil in hand. Get ready for a shock. But as you dissect your prose, you will improve as a writer. Immensely. I swear it.

Buy it, read it, become a better writer

This book teaches you to reanimate dead writing, restoring action and personality to it, one sentence at a time. Starting from analysis and reconstruction using small number of rules, progressing to the philosophical question of why you should revise prose, this book remains interesting after multiple readings. I can't speak hightly enough of it. A true eye opener.

The best book about writing

I first read this book in 1980 as a graduate student and it changed the way I write. I still remember the shock I felt then at learning that academic writing did not have to be tedious, wordy and stuffy. Everybody to whom I've given this book (back before it became so expensive)has also found that it radically changed their writing for the better.

Grammar CAN make you roll on the floor laughing

One of the most informative and entertaining books I've ever read. This book teaches concise writing methods. If bureaucrats around the world learned from this book, we'd save the old growth forests.After I buy this copy, I will no longer lend it to my "friends", as this is the 4th copy which has disappeared.

A fantastic book to improve your nonfiction prose writing

Take a deep breath, ignore the hefty price tag, and click Add to Cart. Lanham does a fantastic job providing simple techniques that allow anyone from the the casual writer to the technical writer streamline their prose to create clearer and more powerful sentences, paragraphs, and documents. As an English major, this book was by far the most helpful book I read to improve my writing.