Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing

I wish to thank the author, Claire Kehrwald Cook, and all those who made this book possible. This book [delete 'It'] is one of *the* leading authorities on editing and writing well as it brings many authoritative texts together from Strunk & White, Bernstein, Fowler [insert comma], and Follett [delete 'so that' clause]. As a result you don't have to read umpteen different books on editing.I also managed to save myself a pretty penny as this book only cost me £6.06 - a large saving on all those other editing books that start at £35 and offer the same information.[if you're wondering what the bits in the square brackets are doing in the above text, you'll just have to buy this book to find out!]

If, like me, your school failed to teach you the basics of syntax, grammar, or the English language in general, then this book will help you recover that lost knowledge, and form a solid base for all your future writing

As a researcher studying for a higher degree, I needed to improve my academic writing. I studied this book after thoroughly reading Elements of style by Strunk and used it extensively while editing my manuscripts. I am glad to say that it had the desired effect: Almost all reviewers (more than 6) who reviewed my papers commended the papers for being well-written. I can confidently recommend this book to anyone seeking to improve his (Strunk recommends male pronoun over the 'politically correct' female pronoun or the incorrect gender-less plural pronoun 'they') English writing. However, you should expect to read this book several times and keep it at hand while you are editing your paper to get the most out of it.

Well received and in good condition - thank you!

This is the best book about writing that I have read. Despite its apparently boring subject, it is easy to read and understand. It is beautifully written, itself an example amongst the many in it showing the characteristics of good writing and editing. I believe that I have benefitted greatly from the lessons of this book.

I am midway through an Open University degree course and have found 'Line by Line' to be an absolutely indespensible resource. Whenever an academic essay is required I find remaining within strict word limits to be one of the most taxing requirements. Using the simple, but effective, techniques in the book I am able to literally cut an essay word length in half without losing valuable content. Trust me, if you are about to embark - or are already engaged in - any type of scholarship, this is the book for you!

Excellent book for picking up and reading a few pages at a time; I'd probably find it hard to read cover-to-cover.As the title states, the book is primarily about re-reading your own writing and improving it so that it is clearer and reads better. But it also serves as a very good introduction to good grammar.One of my concerns was whether this would be too American,, however this is not the case and the suggestions work equally well in British English.

I was lured into buying this book by the five-start reviews. It is thorough. It does the job. But I have read better.Being 'old-fashioned' is not necessarily bad, but the parsing and anatomizing of each sentance feels laboured. I have a small Edwardian guide to grammar, sadly long out of print, that is beautifully clear without ever saying 'appositive', 'verbal' (a noun), 'copula', or words like that. These words are all explained in the book, but it does not make for easy reading.For instance..."I read the book" has a subject, predicate, and object. The subject of "The book was read by me?" is "the book". To newcomers, this might seem illogical - the subject is the thing that is <doing>, innit? Not with passive verbs, though. The rules for determining the subject are explained in the book. Once you understand them, they are unambiguous. However, even terms like subject, predicate, and object cannot be used unless you are sure your reader understands them. If they understand them perfectly, then they probably do not need the book.In some cases, I find the terminology a bit suspect. She says the noun 'horse' has an 'adjectival form' in terms such as 'horse race'. maybe. How would you parse modern agglutinative horrors such as 'image stack operator syntax hierarchy'. We stuff nouns together in bunches to make different nouns. There aren't any clear rules; 'horse race' and 'human race' are not similar things. I remember having to parse some six-noun pile-up a bit like my invention above for a Japanese translator, who could speak engish beautifully, but could not pick apart stuff like this.There is a bit in the introduction that suggests that computer programs may be able to check syntax. This dates the book to about 1985. I remember using an early style checking program from about then that was a great help. Style checkers still can convert a perfectly good sentance into rubbish by mindlessly applying rules, but they have a worthwhile contribution. I found the most helpful feature was something that highlighted any sentence over 24 words. I found any sentance that long can be broken into two shorter sentences, and shorter sentences have fewer ways of going wrong. If you find your longer sentence works, then you can always leave it alone. The passive voice is usually avoidable, um, you can usually avoid the passive voice, and the more familiar <subject> did to <object> order usually makes comprehension easier. If you know what constructions are risky, you know where to use extra care.The author has spent a lifetime correcting and adjusting other people's sentences. Her corrections seem to favour rearrangements of existing words to get the correction past the original author, in the days when such corrections were done on paper and sent by post. It is not really a book on good writing style - the subtitle clearly tells you this. But if you are going to proof-read, and want to pwn people with your mad gramma skilz, then maybe this is the book for you.

This book was received yesterday and I have only skimmed it. It seems to be a very well presented guide to editing in general. I think that anyone doing any serious writing should have a copy at hand and that includes students. The price of USD 8.76, including shipping, is a give away. This book has 219 pages!

One of the best book on self editing.

Being a non-native speaker of English, I am always interested in improving my English skills. I brought this book after I found it referred many times in academic writing guides, and I like it, it is helping me to improve my writing skills :)

Superb! I am a programmer by day and a writer of articles on programming at other times.Growing up in England I was taught every miniscule detail of the English language. How to construct sentences and how pronunciation changes depending on word stems, Country of origin and so on. I had a pretty good grasp on writing. At work I spend some of my time re-writing briefing notes, user manuals, and proof-reading emails.On top of this I study grammar and style manuals. You get a feel for where I'm coming from in terms of expertise.This book changed my entire outlook on writing. I am only up to page 26 and already I have hacked through some articles like a whipper-snipper through a weeded garden. I found some habitual mistakes I constantly make and curbed some emerging ones. This is a fantastic book!The last briefing note I edited started as a monstrosity of bad grammar and ended as a shining example of what this book has to offer.I cannot recommend this book enough. It is only 200 pages but not a word is wasted. It is concise and packed full of information and is an example of its own subject.

修文技術を磨くのにいい本です。わかりづらい文章をどう直すかじっくり考えるのにいいです。本の構成が少しlinearなので、辞書的には使うには向いていません。