Write Tight: Say Exactly What You Mean with Precision and Power

by William Brohaugh

Overview

"These days, most creative-writing courses teach self-indulgence. Write Tight counsels discipline. It is worth more than a university education. Its advice is gold."—Dean Koontz, New York Times bestselling author

Unlock the true potential of your writing! The go-to writing reference book for learning how to write in a concise, persuasive way.

Whether you're a professional author, a student, a business communicator, or anyone seeking to elevate their writing skills, this book is your ultimate guide to crafting concise, impactful, and persuasive prose.

In this comprehensive writing manual, William Brohaugh, former editor of Writer's Digest, shares invaluable techniques to sharpen your writing, enabling you to communicate with crystal-clear precision and harness the full power of your words. Through easy-to-follow lessons and practical exercises, you'll learn to eradicate wordiness, eliminate redundancies, and distill complex ideas into compelling, straightforward sentences.

• Precision is Key: Unleash the strength of succinct language to make your point with unwavering clarity, keeping readers engaged and informed.
• Power-Packed Prose: Transform your writing into a force to be reckoned with, as you master the art of impactful expression that leaves a lasting impression.
• Effective Editing: Learn step-by-step techniques for revising and polishing your work, ensuring every word serves a purpose and contributes to your overall message.
• Concise Communication: Craft persuasive emails, reports, essays, and stories that captivate your audience and drive your intended message home.

With Write Tight, you'll elevate your writing skills to new heights, captivating readers and leaving them inspired by your powerful prose.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781402210518
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	09/01/2007
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	524,699
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

William Brohaugh is the former editor of Writer's Digest magazine and the former editorial director of Writer's Digest Books. He is the author of Unfortunate English and Professional Etiquette for Writers, and is the director of English through the Ages. He lives in Amelia, Ohio.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction: A Tight Fit Into Today's World

1. The Four Levels of Wordiness and How to Tackle Them: Learn the secrets of idea selection, manuscript planning, writing to feed into the manuscript's focus, and trimming and revising.

2. Sixteen Types of Wordiness and How to Trim Them: Specific advice on identifying and eliminating common wordweeds, including the affected, the circuitous, the empty, the evasive, and many others.

3. Prewriting Tight: Tips on keeping your writing concise even at the

first-draft stage.

4. Testing Your Writing for Flab: Verbal aerobics to trim your writing into shape.

5. The Danger Signs of Wordiness: Keys to verbal vigilance—how to spot little problems in your writing that could signal bigger problems.

6. Exercises for Developing Your Awareness of Concision: A variety of methods for loosening and tightening your prose.

7. Reducing the Mental Length of Your Manuscript: What to do when your writing is slow (or just seems to be).

8. Nonverbal Streamlining: Physical elements such as sidebars, subheads, and checklists can trim your prose to improve readability.

9. How Tight Is Too Tight?: How and when to loosen up to preserve clarity, emphasis, and flow without risking wordiness.

10. Putting It All Together: Writing Light: Pulling triggers in your reader's brain. Learn how to rely on what your reader already knows.

11. Tips for Trimming During Manuscript Revision: Recollection in tranquility can help you spot the wordiness that creeps in during the early writing stages.

12. Shave and a Haircut and a Few Bits: A potpourri of do's and don'ts to keep your writing at fighting weight.

Bibliography and Sources

Appendix: A Baedeker of the Redundant

Apologia

Index

About the Author

Editorial Reviews

Telling writers how to say exactly what they want with grace and power, using not only the right word, but also the right number of words, Brohaugh tackles the compactness, concision and precision of writing with specific instructions and helpful exercises that help the writer explore the middle ground between tight and wordy.

Ingram