Writing

How to Not Write Bad: The Most Common Writing Problems, and the Best Ways to Avoid Them

Name: How to Not Write Bad: The Most Common Writing Problems, and the Best Ways to Avoid Them
Author: Ben Yagoda
ISBN: 9781594488481

by Ben Yagoda

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Overview

Ben Yagoda's How to Not Write Bad illustrates how we can all write better, more clearly, and for a wider readership.

He offers advice on what he calls "not-writing-badly," which consists of the ability, first, to craft sentences that are correct in terms of spelling, diction (word choice), punctuation, and grammar, and that also display clarity, precision, and grace. Then he focuses on crafting whole paragraphs—with attention to cadence, consistency of tone, sentence transitions, and paragraph length.

In a fun, comprehensive guide, Yagoda lays out the simple steps we can all take to make our writing more effective, more interesting—and just plain better.

Synopsis

Ben Yagoda's How to Not Write Bad illustrates how we can all write better, more clearly, and for a wider readership.

He offers advice on what he calls "not-writing-badly," which consists of the ability, first, to craft sentences that are correct in terms of spelling, diction (word choice), punctuation, and grammar, and that also display clarity, precision, and grace. Then he focuses on crafting whole paragraphs—with attention to cadence, consistency of tone, sentence transitions, and paragraph length.

In a fun, comprehensive guide, Yagoda lays out the simple steps we can all take to make our writing more effective, more interesting—and just plain better.

About the Author, Ben Yagoda

Ben Yagoda is a journalism professor at the University of Delaware. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of ten books, including Memoir: A History, Will Rogers: A Biography, and When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It, and has written for Slate, The New York Times Magazine, and publications that start with every letter of the alphabet except J, K, Q, X, and Z. He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife.

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Editorials

Kirkus Reviews

A forgiving--a purist might say overly forgiving--handbook for those in need of remedial grammar lessons, a category that includes most college students. Yagoda (Journalism/Univ. of Delaware; Memoir: A History, 2010, etc.) appreciates the Anne Lamotts, William Zinssers and E.B. Whites of the world, but he fears that their entreaties to add beauty to the language are misplaced. "Most students, I've found, can't handle writing ‘well.' At this point in their writing lives," he writes, "that goal is simply too ambitious." He later elaborates: The chief task is to rid students of such bad habits as stacked prepositional phrases and dysparallelism. Thus this handbook and its grating title: The goal is not to write well, but not to write badly--or, now that we don't have to worry about split infinitives, to not write badly. Yagoda strives a little too hard for laughs at times, but showmanship is part of the game. Much of what he has to say is the stuff of every other writing handbook, especially the admonition that every good writer--every not-bad writer, that is--is a good reader. But Yagoda occasionally turns in a truly fresh take on a problem, and this dictum alone is worth the price of admission: "When possible, make the subject of a sentence a person, a collection of persons, or a thing." Pair that with the injunction to avoid two spaces after a period, and you've got the makings of improved writing already, even allowing for Yagoda's liberal take on split infinitives and the use of "they" as the pronoun for a singular subject. It won't take the place of Strunk and White, but a useful addition to any writer's bookshelf.