Writer's Digest Guide to Better Writing: 50+ Grammar Rules and Practical Strategies for Strong Writing and Revising
Sometimes, the best way to improve your writing is to go back to basics, to revisit the things you should have been paying attention to in your high school English classes (we won’t tell!). Whether you’re writing freelance articles for publications, editing your novel draft, or trying to write more professional emails, the Writer’s Digest Guide to Better Writing offers more than 50 techniques, strategies, and grammar rules with practical, real-world examples to help improve your writing. Additionally, you’ll learn to tell the difference between the grammar rules that need to be followed for the sake of clarity, and those that can be broken or played with as you develop your writer’s voice.
Topics include:
- General Writing Advice, such as writing dates correctly, how to use semicolons, when and why to use the Oxford comma, and many more.
- Writing Mistakes Writers Make, including neglecting research, waiting for inspiration to strike, and believing naysayers, plus fixes for each mistake.
- Explanations and examples of common terms like novella, pronouns, acronyms, semantics, MacGuffins, and more.
- This or That: When and how to tell when to use similar words (e.g., your vs. you’re vs. yore, further vs. farther, its vs. it’s, and e.g. vs. i.e).
As author Robert Lee Brewer explains in his introduction, “This guide to better writing does not profess to be a complete and perfect guide, but it is a perfectly imperfect guide to improving your writing skills, aptitude, and attitude.”
