I guarantee that Lanham's "Paramedic Method," his book's core concept and a remarkable editing tool, will make your writing better.
Shows a different perspective on how to become a clear communicator. Examples were very helpful.
Another recommended book to have in your home especially when you want to improve your writing skills. A must have.
I found this book, quite straight to the point in some cases, removing the lard factor from my words have worked in some cases and in some I have not had enough examples to utilise what I have learned from the book. If you are really bad at reducing and writing succinctly then this book is a must.
Outstanding working aid/writing guide for all writers. Purchased this for my grandson, in his 2nd year of college.
Professor Lanham correctly finds the problem with the Official Style people pick up as they go through school and their jobs. They write noun-heavy, passive sentences that pile up prepositional phrases on each other.
REVISING PROSE (5th ed.) by Richard Lanham is an excellent book I would love to require in my classes.
I've been using Lanham's "Revising Prose" video (now available on DVD) in my university writing classes for years--it's a bit clunky, but entertaining and lucid. In a nutshell, it provides a concise, powerful method for evaluating and improving sentence clarity and structure, thereby remedying the "official style" (convoluted and murky sentences with passive-voice constructions and strings of prepositional phrases).
.Reviewed by Dr C J Singh (Berkeley, California) * * *Years ago, I attended a weekend workshop for instructors of college composition that was led by Professor Richard Lanham, author of [[ASIN:0321441699 Revising Prose ]], visiting from UCLA, and Professor Joseph Williams, author of [[ASIN:0205747469 Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace ]], visiting from the University of Chicago.
I first encountered Professor Lanham's book in 1980 when I was a freshman at UCLA. It introduced me to "active versus passive voice," an issue that stalks many people's prose.
I got clear through high school, college, and grad school without finding the process Richard Lanham lays out so concisely in this book. I was always told that revising meant planting my posterior in a chair and just muscling through, and I told my students that, too.
If you read this book, you will discover how to recognise what is wrong with bad writing, and how to transform it into good writing.Having read this book, I can recall books I have read in the past which used tedious stuffy prose, and convert it mentally into better language.
Using this book, I have tutored students for less than an hour, and have then watched their paper scores go from "C" grades to "A" grades over the course of a week or two. It can dramatically improve one's writing.
I have the second edition (1987) and it cost me all of $2 on a secondhand stall. I'm sure the current $38 pricing is from some idea of marketing it as a school textbook to be purchased in bulk...
The book explains a simple method to analyze and rewrite a sentence. The first fifty pages felt redundant, but slowly changed my view of writing.
