Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (9th Edition)

I will be clear, and I aim for grace. Put simply, this is the best book out of scores of books on writing. Wonder why some writers have punch, why some sentences ring true while others lull you to a sleep? This book will take apart the structure of clear and graceful writing in much the way an analysis of artwork informs folks of a greater depth to art and helps a person understand the techniques of an artist. This is a writer's book and will likely put off folks who simply want to improve their writing, or creative writers who want refine a style. This is essentially the equivalent of Berger's Ways of Seeing book on art...

Style by Williams was recommended by a student of mine, who found it exceptionally useful. Instead of just stating the principles of good writing, Williams gives many examples of good (and bad) writing showing exactly how they follow the principles (or not). I teach English writing and this book is very helpful.

Finally, a guide to better writing that actually teaches you -- systematically -- how to write better. Throw away your Strunk & White, with its (often outmoded) rules that lack context. Let Williams guide you, with full clarity and focus, on each step of the path to elegant prose. Full of illustrations from accomplished stylists, as well as exercises to identify and practice effective writing, the book deserves a presence on the desk of every writer. Not since "Writing and Thinking," by Foerster and Steadmann, has there been so logical an explication of the subject matter. If you are pondering whether to buy instead the abridged version (entitled "Basics of . . ."), don't. This, full version is not so long as to be onerous, and every single concept in it is a nugget of gold. Three cheers!

Clarily in style and grace is anything but clear. It is difficult to follow and understand. It is not for anyone who needs help with grammar and punctuation. It disagrees with the rules that you used in elementary school and brings up that there are disagreements with other leaders in the world of academia. Unless you have to use this for a class as a mandatory book, pass by this one.

Even a brief browsing of Joseph Williams's STYLE: LESSONS IN CLARITY AND GRACE, ninth edition, would persuade most readers that it makes the much touted Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style" look, well, elementary. Simplistic. If the seductively slender "Elements"--easily read in a day, no exercises to do--could deliver its claim, by the end of the day there'd be millions of excellent writers. Besides, Williams shows how Strunk & White flout their own advice to "omit unnecessary words": he edits their 199-word paragraph to just 51 words (Williams, pp. 126-28). Williams shows grace in conceding that "in boiling down that original paragraph to a quarter of its original length, I've bleached out its garrulous charm."

In his preface to the 289-page book, Williams urges the reader to "go slowly" as it's "not an amiable essay to read in a sitting or two.... Do the exercises, edit someone else's writing, then some of your own written a few weeks ago, then something you wrote that day."

I assigned STYLE as the main textbook in Advanced Editorial Workshop, a ten-week course, I taught at the University of California. Each term, students rated the book as excellent. (The prerequisite to the workshop was a review course, with the main textbook "The Harbrace College Handbook." Although STYLE includes a 32-page appendix summarizing punctuation rules and grammar, most readers would be well-advised to review a standard college handbook, such as Harbrace or Bedford. See my review of Bedford, seventh edition on Amazon.)

To date, Amazon has published 42 reviews of STYLE. The one-star reviews criticize the author's own writing in the book as lacking grace. Let's not forget that this is a text- and work-book -- occasional pedagogic tone is to be expected. On the whole, the author's voice sounds earnest, refreshingly honest: Commenting on what's new in the ninth edition: "Finally, I've also done a lot of line editing. After twenty-five years of revising this book, you'd think by this time I'd have it right, but there always seem to be sentences that make me slap my forehead, wondering how I could have written them."

His expository style is clear. Two examples: Introducing the concepts of cohesion and coherence, Williams writes, "We judge sequences of sentences to be cohesive depending on how each sentence ends and the next begins. We judge a whole passage to be coherent depending on how all the sentences in a passage cumulatively begin. . . . It's easy to confuse the words cohesion and coherence because they sound alike. Think of cohesion as pairs of sentences fitting together the way two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle do. Think of coherence as seeing what all the sentences in a piece of writing add up to, the way all the pieces in a puzzle add up to the picture on the box."

"You can write a long sentence but still avoid sprawl if you change relative clauses to one of three kinds of appositives, resumptive, summative, or free. You have probably never heard of these terms before, but they name stylistic devices you have read many times and so should know how to use. . . . To create a resumptive modifier, find a key noun just before the tacked-on clause, then pause after it with a comma . . . . Then repeat the noun ... and that repeated word add a relative clause beginning with `that': 'Since mature writers often use restrictive modifers to extend a line of thought, we need a word to name what I am about to do in this sentence, a sentence that I could have ended at that comma, but extended to show you how resumptive modifiers work.'" And, "to create a summative modifier, end a grammatically complete segment of a sentence with a comma . . . . Find a term that sums up the substance of the sentence so far . . . . Then continue with a relative clause beginning with `that': 'Economic changes have reduced Russian population growth to less than zero, a demographic event that will have serious social implications.'" And, free modifiers: "Like the other modifiers, a free modifier can appear at the end of a clause, but instead of repeating a key word or summing up what went before, it comments on the subject of the closest verb. 'Free modifiers resemble resumptive and summative modifiers, letting you (i.e., the free modifier lets you) extend the line of a sentence while avoiding a train of ungainly phrases and clauses.'" In the preceding sentence, Williams simultaneously explains and exemplifies the concept of free modifiers.

In the chapter titled "Elegance," Williams points out that "the device that often appears in elegant prose" is the use of resumptive and summative modifiers. An example from Joyce Carol Oates, using two resumptive modifiers: "Far from being locked inside our own skins, inside the `dungeons' of ourselves . . . our minds belong . . . to a collective `mind,' a mind in which we share . . . the inner and outer experience of existence."

In the final chapter, "The Ethics of Style," Williams takes on academics who "rationalize opacity," with a ". . . claim that their prose style must be difficult because their ideas are new, they are, as a matter of simple fact, more often wrong than right. . . . Whatever can be written can usually be written more clearly, with just a little more effort."

Well-crafted writing emerges only from repeated rewriting. This five-star text- and workbook teaches the exacting--and joyously rewarding--craft of rewriting.

Moreover, I wholly agree with the author's observation on cognitive psychology: "I know that many who do see clearly, feel deeply, and think carefully can't write sentences that make their thoughts, feelings, and visions clear to others. I also know that the more clearly we write, the more clearly we see and feel and think."

-- C J Singh