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Comment by spenrose | Hacker News Reader

Here is a well-reviewed book on this topic:

    http://www.amazon.com/Style-Clarity-Chicago-Writing-Publishing/dp/0226899152/

From the editorial reviews:

"Telling me to 'Be clear,' " writes Joseph M. Williams in Style: Toward Clarity and Grace, "is like telling me to 'Hit the ball squarely.' I know that. What I don't know is how to do it." If you are ever going to know how to write clearly, it will be after reading Williams' book, which is a rigorous examination of--and lesson in--the elements of fine writing.

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Joseph M. Williams's "Style: Toward Clarity and Grace" is by far the best book on learning HOW to put sentences and paragraphs together. It teaches principles that I've never seen anywhere else -- principles for making my writing easy to understand.

Then it teaches methods for applying those principles.

So instead of teaching rules, it teaches how writing can be clear. Instead of "don't use passives" it shows when a passive verb makes the writing easier to read. It teaches how much new information to put in a sentence and where to put it. And it shows how to connect this sentence to the next for simple flow.

This link goes to an older edition of the book; it's since been split into a short version ("basics of clarity and grace") as well as a longer version ("lessons in clarity and grace") -- the longer version has exercises (I think) and the shorter one doesn't. I own the shorter version and haven't felt a need to look at the longer one.

In any case, this book is great and helped me immeasurably in writing my dissertation in grad school. It gives some advice on sentence structure that I haven't seen elsewhere (like when and why the passive voice can be useful) but also gives a lot of "formulaic" advice on how to organize the entire document. I say "formulaic" because he essentially gives you a formula, which is exactly what I needed and seems to be what you're asking for.

FWIW, I own or have read well over 30 books on writing and this is easily the best one on general---i.e. subject-agnostic---writing.

Williams' book is all that 'Skunk and White' should have been. Consistent, actionable, readable.

And contrary to the OP's assertion, there is no "missing trick" here.

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