ABSTRACT

Writing with Clarity and Style, 2nd Edition, will help you to improve your writing dramatically. The book shows you how to use dozens of classical rhetorical devices to bring power, clarity, and effectiveness to your writing. You will also learn about writing styles, authorial personas, and sentence syntax as tools to make your writing interesting and persuasive. If you want to improve the appeal and persuasion of your speeches, this is also the book for you.

From strategic techniques for keeping your readers engaged as you change focus, down to the choice of just the right words and phrases for maximum impact, this book will help you develop a flexible, adaptable style for all the audiences you need to address.

Each chapter now includes these sections:

  • Style Check, discussing many elements of style, including some enhanced and revised sections
  • Define Your Terms, asking students to use their own words and examples in their definitions.
  • It’s in the Cloud, directing students to the Web to locate and respond to various rhetorically focused items, including biographies and speeches.
  • Salt and Pepper, spicing up the study of rhetoric by stretching students’ thinking about how their writing can be improved, sometimes by attending to details such as punctuation, and sometimes by exploring the use of unusual techniques such as stylistic fragments.
  • Review Questions, providing an end-of-chapter quiz to help cement the chapter ideas in long-term memory.
  • Questions for Thought and Discussion, a set of questions designed for either in-class discussion or personal response.

New to the Second Edition

  • Additional examples of each device, including from world personalities and the captains of industry
  • More and longer exercises, with a range of difficulty
  • Advice from classical rhetoricians including Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Cicero, and Quintilian.

chapter |4 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|10 pages

Balance

chapter 2|11 pages

Emphasis I

chapter 3|10 pages

Emphasis II

chapter 4|12 pages

Transition

chapter 5|11 pages

Clarity

chapter 6|12 pages

Syntax I

chapter 7|12 pages

Syntax II

chapter 8|16 pages

Figurative Language I

chapter 9|12 pages

Figurative Language II

chapter 10|11 pages

Figurative Language III

chapter 11|10 pages

Restatement I

chapter 12|11 pages

Restatement II

chapter 13|10 pages

Restatement III

chapter 14|13 pages

Sound

chapter 15|10 pages

Drama

chapter 16|11 pages

Word Play