Rating: 
Summary: Sits Beside My Strunk and White
Review: As a professional author with over 49 books to my credit, I've collected a number of guides to writing over the years. This book sits on my reference shelf right between Strunk and White, and the Chicago Manual of Style. I recommend it to other authors on a regular basis because it contains so many clear examples that are easy to read and understand. As far as I'm concerned, my reference shelf would be incomplete without this book.There are two reasons that I like this book. First, it isn't dry and hard to understand. I like a little humor when I read. Second, the examples are clear and easy to follow. It's easy to write a book that defines writing in terms that only an English major would love. Writing a book like this is difficult, and I appreciate the author's hard work.
Rating: 
Summary: Not good for reference, or for non-cat people
Review: As a technical writer, I am on the lookout for books I can recommend to engineers and others with whom I work who want to improve their writing. This book's explicit orientation toward "computer people" and the concept of "debugging" prose make it seem like a good candidate. However, the author's self-indulgence in cuteness in this book renders it inappropriate for me to recommend in a professional context. If you don't mind all the cat pictures and personal references, it is a good book to browse for tips on improving your writing. Dupre states that her goal is to help the reader develop an "ear" for good writing. As you develop an ear, you will gain a sense of which of her rules to take to heart, and which to take with a grain of salt. It is *not* organized or indexed such that you can easily find a topic again. Do not expect to use it as a reference book when you have finished browsing.
Rating:
Summary: Not good for reference, or for non-cat people
Review: As a technical writer, I am on the lookout for books I can recommend to engineers and others with whom I work who want to improve their writing. This book's explicit orientation toward "computer people" and the concept of "debugging" prose make it seem like a good candidate. However, the author's self-indulgence in cuteness in this book renders it inappropriate for me to recommend in a professional context. If you don't mind all the cat pictures and personal references, it is a good book to browse for tips on improving your writing. Dupre states that her goal is to help the reader develop an "ear" for good writing. As you develop an ear, you will gain a sense of which of her rules to take to heart, and which to take with a grain of salt. It is *not* organized or indexed such that you can easily find a topic again. Do not expect to use it as a reference book when you have finished browsing.
Rating: 
Summary: A good reference for the occasional technical writer.
Review: Bugs in Writing is a "Strunk and White" for the technical crowd. In short, easy to digest (though occassionaly conflicting) sections, Dupre covers the writing problems she has encountered while editing technical manuscripts, and lays out clear examples of how to fix them. I keep this book within easy reach.
Rating:
Summary: Very quick explanations of issues often wondered about
Review: Each tiny section deals with a specific class of error, how to do it right, and how to know (or remember) that it's right. If you wonder if you've used the right word among alternatives, for example, you'll have your result in an instant. And if you don't wonder, browsing this book will give you enough info to *start* wondering if you have been doing things wrong for some time. END
Rating:
Summary: Author has ugly style
Review: I already had ordered this book from Amazon, but I just cancelled it.
While I was checking my order I found style examples in the excerpt of the book with which I strongly disagree.
One of the book's examples I saw is the following:
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UGLY: In a stack, both insertions and deletions are performed at one end only; both poping and pushing are allowed.
GOOD: When you use a FIFO list queue, you make insertions, at one end of the list, and deletions at the other end; you therefore must maintain rear and front pointers.
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First of all, the author should rewrite the UGLY statement producing a GOOD statement which expresses the same idea. But, she does not. Instead, she writes a statement which expresses a diferent idea about another cumputer science concept.
Next, the statement she labels with GOOD has many unnecessary words, and, for my taste, is UGLY. I, instead, would write something like this:
"A queue is a list where insertions are made at one end,
and deletions at the other end."
The previous statement is more clear and clean than the supposedly GOOD statement given by the author.
I suspect that the author is not a person whith science education nor a writing style expert. Because if she were familiar with scientific writing she would know that satetements should have the minimum number of words, and she would not insist in introducing the unnecessary and UGLY "when you use...", "you make...", "you insert..." etc. When a formal science or technical book or paper is talking about a concept X (like stacks, queues, memory, cpu, etc.), it has to talk about propiertes of X; it does not matter who uses X.
The author, dogmaticaly and mecanically, tries to avoid every use of passive voice, getting wordy and ugly statements. She does not have elegant and imaginative means to convert from passive to active voice; she limits herself to use pronoun "you" as the "universal converter".
Of course, most ideas are better expressed using active voice, but there also many cases in which passive voice is more adecuate. NOTE: Is it UGGLY to say "most ideas are better expressed using active voice"?
I use English as second language, mostly for reading. Nevertheless, I have checked many books and papers about writing style, and I always have found their examples instructive and better than what I would write. This is the first time I feel that the recommendations are worse than what I would write.
There are at Amazon many other books about technical writing that have all the good things this book may have, but without its defects.
Rating:
Summary: Go back to school!
Review: I did not know how bad my writing was untill I read this book. I not only has helped my writing but my career as well. If you write technical notes, manuals or guides at work get this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Enough with the PC stuff already!
Review: I like the pictures of cats and the large typeface. I appreciate the book's organization, which makes it easy to use as a reference. That's where my appreciation ends.
This book is not a guide to grammar. Unfortunately, the given examples of bad writing are, essentially, examples of bad grammar. What's worse, the 'bad' examples are not followed by rewrites showing proper construction. Instead, they are followed by entirely different sentences, which makes spotting the underlying usage problem difficult. Dupre insists that the book's aim is to improve a writer's ear, but using completely different sentences to illustrate points about good versus bad writing undercuts its ability to do that. Improving one's ear is a laudible goal, but it is impossible to do without reference to the causes of clumsiness in writing.
I found it odd that Dupre took such a purist view of the split infinitive, but such a revisionist view of gender-indicative language. Thankfully, some words have been dropped from common usage, but Dupre appears to think that the censorial hammer has not fallen hard enough, and advocates "sensitivity" over grace. The result is often silly; the gender-specific sentences listed as "ugly" are either unrealistic, or not offensive to anyone but the most battle-ready feminist, and the "good" sentences often sound stilted, unclear or self-conscious. I'm sick of being beaten over the head with bizarre constructions in the name of fairness. Turn down the volume Mizz Dupre! You're making my ear bleed!
This format has potential. The book would have helped me improve my writing if it would have been able to give more attention to the causes of bad writing, and less attention to personal crusades. One other reviewer summed up well: self-indulgent.
Rating:
Summary: A good excercise in grammar
Review: I particularly enjoyed the many examples Ms. Dupre provided with her topics. She did a good job making rules of grammar hit home. She also prompted you to actually THINK about the subject matter, rather than read the standard counterexamples found in most other grammar texts. For a student in a computer-related program with minimal english courses, this book does a great job in teaching good grammar with little pain.
However, the way the book is organized does make it hard to quickly find grammar rules. It's better used as a learning tool than a reference.
Rating:
Summary: More of a textbook than a manual of style...
Review: If this book had exercises for the reader, I'd have used it as a textbook for introductory technical writing classes. It's organized into big, rich chapters with lots of examples -- which is just the ticket for folks who are learning new skills. For an experienced writer seeking advance on points of usage, I think there are more concise style guides -- but none funny enough to read for pure pleasure. One caution: Dupre's prose style, while ornate, is clear and eminently readable, but writing like Dupre takes a great deal of skill and practice. A lot of the examples of "splendid" writing are compound-complex sentences with lots of flourish and flair. Such sentences may be dangerous models for total novices to follow.
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