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How to Write Well: Witty, Breezy & Informative Guide - The Mail on Sunday | Essential Writing Tips for Bloggers, Students & Professionals
How to Write Well: Witty, Breezy & Informative Guide - The Mail on Sunday | Essential Writing Tips for Bloggers, Students & Professionals

How to Write Well: Witty, Breezy & Informative Guide - The Mail on Sunday | Essential Writing Tips for Bloggers, Students & Professionals

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Description

Writing matters. We all do it, and we all admire it when it’s done well. It doesn’t just express us; it represents us. We write to connect with other people – to make them laugh, or cry, or think. We also write to work out what we think ourselves: there’s nothing like it for concentrating the mind. So what’s the secret of a stylish essay, or story, or email? How do you make your sentences sparkle? Dorothy Parker had a point when she said that writing “is the art of applying the ass to the seat”, but in this slim volume, a leading editor who is also a pop critic and sportswriter shows you much fun you can have while sharpening your pen. Tim de Lisle’s book is packed with good, simple advice: be clear, be concise, be vivid, be organised. In a few breezy chapters, he explains the secrets of good writing, and along the way he quotes dozens of great lines, from the plays of Shakespeare to the journalism of Caitlin Moran. “Writing,” he says, “is like dancing, in that you can tell instantly if someone is good at it. But it’s also like driving in that it can be learnt.” Spend a couple of hours with this book and you’ll learn things that will help you in years to come.

Reviews

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- Verified Buyer
I jumped the gun on my first review. First my background: I write in my spared time about different subjects. Although considered good at it, I realized I could be much better, that's why I bought this.The Pro's of this book: It is filled a lot of good tips and techniques. I read the introduction and breezed through the book looking over tips and other advice it offered. On Page 50, a tip called "Seven Bad Words" (that one should never used in writing) caught my attention. One of these was the word "very". According to the author, it is an over-used word that instead of heightening a passage, "very" diminishes it. With this in mind I put it to the test. I'm a writing a novel and so I went to the "find" function to locate a "very". When I did, I scrutinized my sentence with "very". Damn! He was right, so out came my thesaurus...along with a proper replacement word, and it read so much better. So I went through 3 chapters hunting for "very". When I found them, in each case it not only diminished the sentence, but effected other elements of the paragraph to where it didn't get the intended thought across. This one word replacement greatly improved the three chapters I wrote. Although, I have yet to go any further, this book countered some bad mistakes I made in my writing with just that one tip.The Con's of this book: The author dips into American politics which apparently he has no knowledge on...or common sense about. "The rubbish" he talks in his opinions, I found offensive to the point I could not overlook them. Ergo, I down-graded my review once I had read the book. This book I thought was about improving one's writing, and most certainly not regaling us in one's worthless political opinions that have no bases in truth, but rather the opposition's talking points. So now you pay a price. And I leave you with a quote from Mark Twain: “It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt”