Polishing Your Prose: How to Turn First Drafts Into Finished Work

by Steven Cahn, Victor Cahn, Mary Ann Caws (Foreword by)

Overview

This singular book illustrates how to edit a piece of prose and enhance its clarity of thought and felicity of style. The authors first present ten principles of effective composition, and then scrutinize three extended paragraphs, suggesting with remarkable specificity how to improve them. The volume also offers challenging practice questions, as well as two finished essays, one serious and one humorous, that demonstrate how attention to sound mechanics need not result in mechanical writing. Steven M. Cahn and Victor L. Cahn help readers deploy a host of corrective strategies, such as avoiding jargon, bombast, and redundancy; varying sentence structure; paring the use of adjectives and adverbs; properly deploying phrases and clauses; and refining an argument. Here is a book for all who seek to increase their facility in written communication.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231532013
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	03/26/2013
Series:	NONE
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	104
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Steven M. Cahn is professor of philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He has written or edited fifty books, among them Fate, Logic, and Time; God, Reason, and Religion; Saints and Scamps: Ethics in Academia; and From Student to Scholar: A Candid Guide to Becoming a Professor.

Victor L. Cahn is professor of English at Skidmore College. Among his numerous nonfiction works are Shakespeare the Playwright: A Companion to the Complete Tragedies, Histories, Comedies, and Romances and Classroom Virtuoso: Recollections of a Life in Learning. He has also published two novels and many plays, seven of which were produced Off-Broadway.

Mary Ann Caws is distinguished professor of comparative literature, English, and French at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Mary Ann Caws
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Strategies
Part II: Passages
Conclusion
Epilogue
About the Authors
Index

Editorial Reviews

The authors, both exceptionally talented writers and teachers, present the material at the right level of detail, organize it well, and engage their readers. The book is an invaluable resource for anyone serious about writing well.

Peter Markie