Harold Evans, former editor of the Sunday Times of London, presents a beneficial (not at all didactic) book on how to make writing sparkle with as few words as possible in appropriately, "Do I Make Myself Clear: Why Writing Well Matters."Evans discharges mountains of examples of bloated words and hackneyed terms to avoid, along with “dozy verbs in the passive voice’’ with chapters titled: "Be Specific," "Tools of the Trade" "Pleonasms" (more words than necessary), along with a list of “flesh-eat...

The field of English grammar can be a pedant’s paradise (or nightmare), what with Twitter and texting divining their own rules, and for over 400 pages noted wordsmith Evans sounds off about his favorite peeves. He also, if readers take away nothing else, reminds us that the passive voice (not tense) can bloat a sentence, whereas active voice (subject+verb+object) allows for clearer and briefer writing. Evans takes governmental babble and rewrites it so that one can understand it:White House: “...

Highly recommend for anyone who writes or contemplates writing. Also an excellent book for people who love to read!

There are some very good points in this book ... but they are buried in a mountain of repetitive examples which make reading, in the normal sense of that word, a difficult task ...

Sir Harold is an editor by vocation and by inclination. I can see him in his wingback chair, in front of a tiny fireplace that is more about scene setting than warmth, perhaps with a pipe forgotten in an ashtray on the tiny table that also supports a reading lamp and a tepid cup of forgotten tea. Felt slippers on his feet, a Montblanc fountain pen in hand. His lips are pressed together, his brow furrowed, the manuscript he's reading trembling. Ink stains dot his smoking jacket. This book is a su...

I needed this book. Everybody needs this book - even if English is not your language of choice. In an age when degenerated vernacular makes its way into electronic mail, and worse... papers, reports, news stories...when the idiotic term "fake news" is slung with chopped sentence fragments of Twit-verse...the need to write well has never been more, ... needed.This was listed as a reference in a class on writing I had last month and as I had it on my "someday" list, I bumped it up to "now". Ev...

After writing my first book I felt it was time to return to the “classroom” and sit by the side of one of the best editors and authors of our time and continue working on my art. I was not disappointed. The insights on good writing permeated the entire book, and as an added benefit the book was filled with insightful commentary on our times presented with both cutting humor and satire, and the graceful charm the British are so proficient at.The growth of “alternative facts” and the “fog” caused

A CLARION CALL FOR EXCELLENT WRITINGLong-time journalist and former President of Random House Harold Evans has written a fascinating audiobook on the subject of clear communication. He uses classic texts as examples throughout the book combined with interesting stories.I listened to the audiobook version of this book. With the numerous writing examples, I found it a bit overwhelming and hard to listen to the entire book cover to cover. After a while the examples do not sink in and make sense—at

If you are more interested in his political views than you are in learning how to write well, then this book is for you. It’s about 1/3 advice on writing, 1/3 filler, and 1/3 a leftist manifesto.

This book seemed to me to be pure political propaganda. I could find nothing to help authors with actual writing and editing. The sections skirting writing and editing seemed to be his muddy afterthoughts to me, just used offhandedly to frame his passionate true political message. The author is British, knighted as Sir Harold Evans. But his citizenship is no bar to his participation in American politics. (Alex says " Sir Evans is an American citizen who has lived in the US for 35 years.")In the

I was asked recently if I find it easy to forgive. I do not. And I have a hard time forgiving Harold Evans for writing a book about the paramount importance of clear writing that is so consistently hard to read. There are wonderful gems in this book: Evans has good advice, makes excellent lists, and introduces readers to pieces of writing that deserve a wide audience. The advice he gives will successfully propel a writer who follows it to make better decisions about her prose, but at some cost.

My thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for an eARC copy of this book to read and review.No.**To avoid being a smart-arse re:my above response to the question of the title, I will attempt to explain why the book did not resonate with me. The author took about 14 eReader pages to explain why he was so wonderful and why a book like this needed to be written. He's trying to explain how important being concise is...by writing 14 pages of dense text, with metaphors and the like that don'...

Sir Evans:I decided not to read your book. Here’s why.The four sentence-structure definitions on page 34 are not accurate, thus undermining the credibility of your book. For example:1. A simple sentence can have a compound verb, not just a “single-verb.”2. A compound sentence requires a coordinating conjunction, not just “a conjunction.”3. A complex sentence requires one or more subordinate clauses, not “statements or clauses.” (Also “…that modify or supplement the main statement” is redundant.)...

from Jim Holt's NYT book review: "Look, writing is hard. It's like some vile, incurable disease: there are bad days, and there are worse days. And writing well is a two-step craft: (1) write not so well: (2) fix it. Knowing that Stage 2 is coming, you can relax a little during Stage 1; your inner editor will diligently revise the clumsy, turgid bits later."

Want to see more... Bookstagram WebsiteI loved all the examples that this book provided and it gives you an insight on what to look for in conversations. However, I thought there might have been more information on constructing rather than just examples

Do I Make Myself Clear?: Why Writing Well Matters by Harold Evans“Do I Make Myself Clear?” is an entertaining guide in the art of writing well. Sir Harold Evans a British-born journalist, editor of much acclaim takes the reader on a journey of what it means to write well. He provides countless historical and practical examples, a welcomed approach of what would otherwise be yet another grammar book. This instructive 419-page book includes twelve chapters broken out by the following three parts:

A gem of a book and in many ways a book-length expansion of Orwell’s classic essay ‘Politics and the English Language.’ As well as a primer against the dangers of clotted, lifeless writing, it’s also superb on the dangers of empty verbiage and its ties to political corruption. Hence the angry reviews from Trump cultists.Get yourself a copy.

This book should be standard reading for every writer. Harold Evans has crafted a witty and persuasive argument for why and how everyone should write clearly. Evans enumerates ambiguous habits, clarifies clear style, and draws from his experiences as an editor, all while reminding the reader (and the writer) that clear writing literally saves lives.Evans also uses contemporary examples: an Obama administration press release, a Traveler's insurance lawsuit, an opinion article on the United Nation...

An exhausting, ironically hard-to-read book, not because of the prose style, but because it's essentially hundreds of pages of Evans correcting absurdly terrible writing and nothing else. After he corrects a terrible paragraph, he then tells you how and why he did it. If you're a good writer, it's boring and not illustrative of anything; if you're a poor writer, it's too narrowly focused, showy and didactic to teach anything.

This is more than an entertaining romp through the English language, it is an education. In Do I Make Myself Clear: Why Writing Well Matters, Harold Evans uses wit and wisdom and numerous real-life examples of how to correct bad writing and indeed, how to make good writing better. And although I read the book in linear fashion from cover to cover, there are chapters with enough linguistic heft to stand by themselves.Chapter 4 alone, “Ten Shortcuts to Making Yourself Clear,” is worth its weight i...