The Well-Crafted Sentence: A Writer's Guide to Style

by Nora Bacon

Grounded in the art of writing, The Well-Crafted Sentence zeroes in on the building block of great the sentence. With a friendly, approachable, and elegant tone, Nora Bacon shows the benefits of attention to style and offers a range of revision strategies that give students the tools to strengthen and develop their writing. Giving students the opportunity to see successful rhetorical choices at work in writing they admire, the text includes a brief anthology of readings by ten accomplished stylists, five of them new to this edition. Examples throughout the text are drawn from these model pieces, as are integrated exercises that help students apply concepts to their own writing. Additionally, a new first chapter, Approaches to Style, introduces students to the concept of style. Affordable and brief, The Well-Crafted Sentence works as a core classroom text or as a supplement.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Teaching, How To

320 pages, Paperback

First published December 24, 2008

Reviews

[Selin]

Final Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

It was hard to keep my attention, but manageable.

[Joe]

Most books on style are pitched to fairly advanced writers, but this one addresses beginners. Bacon's advice is sensible and useful. I particularly like her five tips for sharpening the focus of subject-verb pairs in sentences (pp. 49–55).

Unfortunately, as often seems the case with books on style, her advice tends to be burdened by an excess of categories, qualifications, examples, and exercises. The book is often daunting on a visual level—cluttered with boxes, lists, underlinings, italics, and bolded terms—and as a result can feel a bit of a slog to get through.

[Noura Alhomsi]

This was my first good grammar book. I was surprised to find it wasn’t as boring as I expected. It explains a lot of sentence structures and how and when they should be used. It also has a great grammatical glossary in the back. You can use the whole book as a reference and you can just read the chapters individually and without chronological order.

[Jas]

really great guide to the sentence. been putting off reading this and i feel like, after reading through, i have a better grasp of my syntax. while i understood and recognized all the grammatical structures discussed, it's always nice to have it laid out in plain terms.

[Sarah Hurst]

A good, basic style guide for beginner writers. Probably best for high school seniors or college freshmen.

[Maddy]

A nice reference and accessible. Obviously I'm not going to read it for fun, but I might revisit it sometimes while writing papers.

[Deborah]

A nice handbook (complete with definitions and exercizes!), but one that focuses on effects and context a little more than most handbooks. Essays in the back to read to consider style and implications (and which are the sources of the exercises).

[Mills College Library]

428.2 B129 2013

[Jeremy]

This would be a great accompaniment for an introductory college English class. I hope Bacon's book catches on...