Author: Christopher Lasch Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN: 9780812218145 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 140
Book Description
"The late Lasch, college history professor and the author of The Culture of Narcissism (1979), among other seminal works, so despaired of his graduate students' writing that he began to compile a list of common compositional errors. This list soon evolved into a full-fledged writing guide. . . . Lasch's wry, distinctive voice is evident throughout."—Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist
Author: Peter Auski Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP ISBN: 0773564896 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 384
Book Description
Locating the roots of the plain style in secular and philosophic classicism, Auksi examines theories on classical rhetoric from Demetrius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus to Cicero and Quintilian. He shows how biblicists deliberately transformed a heathen mode, and demonstrates that rhetoric served a pragmatic function among the church fathers. He also discusses the different responses of Renaissance translators, rhetors, polemicists, and humanists to the stylized medieval inheritance, paying particular attention to the issue of sacred plainness in preaching. The epilogue provides a convincing argument for the decline of the plain style in the late seventeenth century and describes how the almost vanished ideal of plainness was transformed by Methodists, Quakers, Mennonites, Amish, and Hutterites.
Author: Richard Lauchman Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM ISBN: 0814424295 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 81
Book Description
Good writing is good business. Simple, straightforward writing saves time, creates good relationships, and prevents expensive misunderstandings. But why is it so hard to achieve? This incisive guide suggests ways to think about writing -- what it should look and sound like, as well as what it should accomplish -- that can simplify how writers choose to express their ideas. It examines the reasons why many businesspeople with good skills tend to write strange, needlessly complicated sentences -- and shows them how to break the habit. Plain Style offers 35 practical techniques that foster simplicity, conciseness, and emphasis.
Author: Francis-Noël Thomas Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400887356 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 234
Book Description
Everyone talks about style, but no one explains it. The authors of this book do; and in doing so, they provoke the reader to consider style, not as an elegant accessory of effective prose, but as its very heart. At a time when writing skills have virtually disappeared, what can be done? If only people learned the principles of verbal correctness, the essential rules, wouldn't good prose simply fall into place? Thomas and Turner say no. Attending to rules of grammar, sense, and sentence structure will no more lead to effective prose than knowing the mechanics of a golf swing will lead to a hole-in-one. Furthermore, ten-step programs to better writing exacerbate the problem by failing to recognize, as Thomas and Turner point out, that there are many styles with different standards. In the first half of Clear and Simple, the authors introduce a range of styles--reflexive, practical, plain, contemplative, romantic, prophetic, and others--contrasting them to classic style. Its principles are simple: The writer adopts the pose that the motive is truth, the purpose is presentation, the reader is an intellectual equal, and the occasion is informal. Classic style is at home in everything from business memos to personal letters, from magazine articles to university writing. The second half of the book is a tour of examples--the exquisite and the execrable--showing what has worked and what hasn't. Classic prose is found everywhere: from Thomas Jefferson to Junichirō Tanizaki, from Mark Twain to the observations of an undergraduate. Here are many fine performances in classic style, each clear and simple as the truth. Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: Publisher: University of Georgia Press ISBN: 9780820328058 Category : Antiques & Collectibles Languages : en Pages : 272
Book Description
Neat Pieces is a detailed, extensively illustrated survey of the major forms and makers of the "plain style" of furniture made and used by Georgians in the 1800s. Simply designed, solidly constructed of local woods, and usually unadorned, such pieces were used daily by their owners for storage, sleeping, eating, and more. Today, this furniture is read by historians, folklorists, and other experts for clues into a past way of life. It is also prized by museums, antiques dealers and auction houses, and furniture appraisers, collectors, and makers. Neat Pieces first appeared as the companion volume to the Atlanta History Center's seminal 1983 exhibit of the same name. The exhibit featured 126 exemplary pieces of furniture, including chairs, tables, huntboards, washstands, and candlestands. Each of them is described and illustrated in this book. Photographs in the original edition of Neat Pieces were black-and-white; here they are color. A new foreword by Deanne Levison looks at related publications and exhibits of the subsequent two decades. The introduction, by William W. Griffin, provides information on furniture forms, nomenclature, and finishes. Also included in the book is a list of more than twelve hundred nineteenth-century Georgia furniture craftsmen, with key details of their lives and work. 126 exemplary pieces of furniture (including chairs, tables, huntboards, washstands, and candlestands) 172 color photographs, 17 black-and-white photographs Information on furniture forms, nomenclature, and finishes Details about more than twelve hundred nineteenth-century Georgia furniture craftsmen
Author: Steven Pinker Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 069817030X Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 370
Book Description
“Charming and erudite," from the author of Rationality and Enlightenment Now, "The wit and insight and clarity he brings . . . is what makes this book such a gem.” —Time.com Why is so much writing so bad, and how can we make it better? Is the English language being corrupted by texting and social media? Do the kids today even care about good writing—and why should we care? From the author of The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now. In this entertaining and eminently practical book, the cognitive scientist, dictionary consultant, and New York Times–bestselling author Steven Pinker rethinks the usage guide for the twenty-first century. Using examples of great and gruesome modern prose while avoiding the scolding tone and Spartan tastes of the classic manuals, he shows how the art of writing can be a form of pleasurable mastery and a fascinating intellectual topic in its own right. The Sense of Style is for writers of all kinds, and for readers who are interested in letters and literature and are curious about the ways in which the sciences of mind can illuminate how language works at its best.
Author: Rudolf Flesch Publisher: ISBN: Category : English language Languages : en Pages : 328
Book Description
Alphabetical guide to hundreds of simpler and more effective ways of speaking of writing, avoiding the clumsy, pedantic, or verbose phrase or sentence.
Author: David Randall Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 131731428X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 252
Book Description
Elizabethan and early Stuart England saw the prevailing medium for transmitting military news shift from public ritual, through private letters, to public newspapers. This study is based on an examination of hundreds of manuscript news letters, printed pamphlets and corantos, and news diaries which are in holdings in the US and the UK.
Author: Christopher Lasch
Author: Peter Auski
Author: Richard Lauchman
Author: Francis-Noël Thomas
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Author: Steven Pinker
Author: Rudolf Flesch
Author: Cristanne Miller
Author: David Randall
Author: Alexander Cambitoglou