Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing by Claire Kehrwald Cook (PDF)

Description

The essential guide for all writers. With over 700 examples of original and edited sentences, this book provides information about editing techniques, grammar, and usage for every writer from the student to the published author.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review Line by Line . . . encourages and facilitates a precision in English syntax and usage that will add force to the work of any writer. –College Composition and Communication About the Author After earning her M.A. in English literature, Claire Kehrwald Cook taught English Composition fro three years at a midwestern university before she went into publishing. For the next eight years she worked for a major book company, rewriting problem manuscripts in the trade, business, and college departments. Since 1976 she has worked at the Modern Language Association, where she enjoys styling literary essays considered worthy of painstaking editorial efforts.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐it’s all good.

⭐Fairly early in the book, the author explains that her professional background primarily involved editing the work of others. I’ve done some of that myself and it is tricky to fix grammar and clarify thoughts without losing the voice of the original author. When I edit my own work, adding clarity and conciseness matter more than maintaining the original. I had hoped this book would help me to be more concise in my writing. It doesn’t. I had hoped I could learn enough tricks of the trade to make my work require less self-editing. No luck there either.The author does not appear to give herself permission to really rewrite and edit her own examples. Many of the suggested corrections look like they were constrained to maintain sentence structure rather than be edited correctly. Within the first 20 pages of the book, we have “corrected” examples like the following…”In his classical period Goethe was so taken with the concept of a single ideal of beauty that…””The boy that had chased the big dog before attacked him with the stick.”I thought perhaps I was being overly critical and asked other writers on a webmaster forum what they thought of those two sentences. Some agreed the sentences were generally socially acceptable but most agreed they were poorly constructed.The grammar expert of our group, not me by any means, quickly jumped on both sentences. She called them both awful. Her frustration at books like this one showed in her rewrite of the second sentence.She suggested that the first one should have been changed to something like: “During his classical period, Goethe was so taken with the concept of a single ideal of beauty that he blah.”The second one has an obvious pronoun/antecedent problem. Her suggested rewrite was: “The boy chased a big dog and then attacked him with the damn stick.”Before anyone goes there, the grammarian I consulted has not published a book and I have no suggestions for an alternative to this one.I suppose the author did the best she could when editing the writing of others. Author’s egos must be stroked and an editor doesn’t want to insert themselves into the work. However, this was supposed to be a book about editing your own writing. When the examples of corrected writing are poorly constructed and even grammatically incorrect, it would seem the advice given offers little value.I would not recommend this book.And, by the way, to the folks who attacked the other negative review…in some parts of the world, they use advise instead of advice just like they use colour instead of color.

⭐Be aware that this book was published in 1985, a fact I overlooked when I was purchasing it. A number of suggestions are grossly outdated despite the general good advice the author provides. This is particularly true when it comes to new or evolved terminology related to computers and technology now commonplace in our lives. It is interesting to see how language changes over the years. In addition, many examples refer to Biblical events, a style decision I don’t think a modern author would make. It actually contains the phrase “Writers like God and Shakespeare know when to break the rules,” which gave me a hearty laugh. Although I would love to see a new edition of this title, it is not so out-of-date to be considered useless. This book contains a wealth of great content that will help me improve my writing.

⭐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.

⭐Of the hundred or so books on writing idling away in my library, this book has earned an honored place right next to my Oxford dictionary, my Strunk and White, and my Writer’s Digest Grammar Desk Reference. This is a no-nonsense reference book written by a practicing editor for the serious scribbler from mid-level to the most grizzled pro. It contains common sense advice and plenty of excellent examples to walk you through the editing process. The less work you can make for the editor, the more likely your work will be considered seriously. In order to get the most out of the instructions, a short section in the back of the book will scrape the rust off long-forgotten but essential knowledge on the parts of speech and the construction of sentences. It also has a handy “glossary of usage” where it makes sense of those who/whom, lie/lay, that/which and many other such pesky constructs. It is not a book for beginners. I would recommend this book to any serious writer and to college professors trying to teach those young skulls full of mush how to write coherent sentences.

⭐Line By Line: How To Edit Your Own Writing demystifies line editing and enables authors to polish their own manuscripts. Author Claire Kehrwald Cook walks writers through the process step-by step from how to read and evaluate a sentence, to how to condense sentences to succinctly and clearly convey meaning. Along the way she tackles all the usual suspects: weak verbs, prepositional phrases, modifiers, structure, ambiguous words, parallelism and correlative conjunctions, punctuation, and subject-verb disagreement.Most helpful are the extensive glossary of `questionable word usage’ and the numerous examples that help guide readers during editing. Used alongside a good book on grammar (such as Mignon Fogarty’s Grammar Girl’s Quick & Dirty Tips For Better Writing) and a professional developmental editor, Line By Line is a valuable resource for any writer wanting to craft a well-written manuscript.

⭐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.

⭐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.

⭐No matter how many times authors check through their work, there is always something that can be improved. I find the creative part the easy bit, the hard work comes when you have to knock it into shape so others can make sense of and hopefully enjoy what you have written. Books like this are a must for the aspiring author, editor and publisher. Highly recommended.

⭐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.

⭐Ratings Sero Sed Serio

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