Writing With Style: Conversations on the Art of Writing by John R. Trimble

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This is an interesting, thought-provoking book that leads you toward better writing without driving you crazy in the process. Annotated examples help the instruction here.

AlexTheHunn | Nov 2, 2007 |

Amazon Book Description :: A storehouse of practical writing tips, written in a lively, conversational style. Readers lean to develop a “writer's sense”: the book demonstrates that writing is really applied psychology since it is essentially the art of creating desired effects. Provides an explanation of what effects are desirable and how to create them. An exceptional book that works successfully on several levels simultaneously. Provides new insight into: how to generate interesting ideas and get them down on paper; how to write a critical analysis; how to write a crisp opener; how to invigorate a banal style; how to punctuate with confidence; how to handle various conventions, and much more. For anyone who needs a reference guide on writing. (

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edtree | Feb 20, 2007 |

If you have to do any writing ever, read this book. Trimble's tips are invaluable. Even if the only writing you ever do is an email to a colleague, this book will still help you be a better communicator. (

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snozzberry | Dec 31, 2006 |

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Series (with order)

Canonical Title

Writing With Style: Conversations on the Art of Writing

Original publication date

1975

People/Characters

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Important events

Awards and honors

Epigraph

Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying.

JOHN UPDIKE

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one tuns, as it were instinctively, to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish, squirting out ink.

GEORGE ORWELL

The indispensable characteristic of a good writer is a style marked by lucidity.
HEMINGWAY

And how is clarity to be achieved? mainly by taking trouble; and by writing to serve people rather to impress them.
F. L. LUCAS

A writer's job is sticking his neck out.
SLOAN WILSON

(show all 20 items)

The art of writing has for backbone some fierce attachment to an idea.
VIRGINIA WOOLF

What gets my interest is the sense that a writer is speaking honestly and fully of what he knows well.
WENDELL BERRY

It is in the hard, hard rock-pile labor of seeking to win, hold, or deserve a reader's interest that the pleasant agony of writing again comes in.
JOHN MASON BROWN

My style of writing is chiefly grounded upon an early enthusiasm for [Thomas H.] Huxley, the greatest of all masters of orderly exposition. He taught me the importance of giving to every argument a simple structure.
H. L. MENCKEN

The most emphatic place in clause or sentence is the end. This is the climax; and, during the momentary pause that follows, that last word continues, as it were, to reverberate in the reader's mind. It has, in fact, the last word. One should therefore think twice about what one puts at a sentence-end.
F. L. LUCAS

Less is more, in prose as in architecture.
DONALD HALL

In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written you have no idea what vigor it will give your style.
SYDNEY SMITH

When we encounter a natural style, we are astonished and delighted for we expected to see an author, and we find a man.
PASCAL

Sentences are not different enough to hold the attention unless they are dramatic. No ingenuity of varying structure will do. All that can save them is the speaking tone of voice somehow entangled in the woods and fastened to the page for the ear of the imagination.
ROBERT FROST

Above all, we believe that naturalness is unnatural, that informality is unacceptable, and that individuality is unpardonable.
TOTELARIAN CREED

To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
e. e. cummings

Don't expect your reader to accept a piece of writing that you wouldn't accept yourself.
DONALD H. ROSS

Punctuation, to most people, is a set of arbitrary and rather silly rules you find in printers' style books an din the back pages of school grammars. Few people realize that is the most important single device for making things easier to read.
RUDOLF FLESCH

Are you confused by this? You look confused. . .amused. . .or maybe a little repulsed.
J. V. FLEMING

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.
EZRA POUND

Dedication

For Judy, with gratitude

First words

About a year ago a bright sophomore came by my office for his first writing conference of the term. (Introduction)

Books on writing tend to be windy, boring and impractical.

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Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0130257133, Paperback)

A storehouse of practical writing tips, written in a lively, conversational style. Readers lean to develop a “writer's sense” : the book demonstrates that writing is really applied psychology since it is essentially the art of creating desired effects. Provides an explanation of what effects are desirable and how to create them. An exceptional book that works successfully on several levels simultaneously. Provides new insight into: how to generate interesting ideas and get them down on paper; how to write a critical analysis; how to write a crisp opener; how to invigorate a banal style; how to punctuate with confidence; how to handle various conventions, and much more. For anyone who needs a reference guide on writing.

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:00 -0400)

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Writing With Style: Conversations on the Art of Writing

by John R. Trimble

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Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0130257133, Paperback)

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