Getting the Words Right: How to Rewrite, Edit and Revise

Rating:
Summary: The best book on editing your own work I have ever read.
Review: Cheney doesn't mince words. His techniques will cut, clarify and polish your writing like no other book. This book replaces a couple of writing classes, at least. It should be on every aspiring, and experienced, writer's book shelf.

Rating:
Summary: Writing it doesn't make it ready for publication.
Review: How is this different from any other writing book out there, you ask? Well, here's how to evaluate what you've written, how to recognize and fix awkward transitions and wordy or clumsy sentences, how to find hidden flaws all through your writing and what to do about them.

Rewriting is the crux of communication through words on paper. "Books aren't written, they are re-written" is so very true. School children aren't taught to get it down on paper, then go back and revise once...and again...and again...and again. They are taught to look for spelling and punctuation errors and encouraged (by default) to leave their work as close to the first draft as possible. Professional writers learn quickly the importance of revision.

Cheney clarifies the issue and leads the reader down the thorny path of pruning, clarifying and restructuring for the best possible prose.

Rating:
Summary: Good book but not the best I've seen
Review: The author doesn't mince words when it comes to what he thinks is important. Not an especially long book, it is loaded with examples and references all the way through that give you some concrete materials to work with to apply to your own work. Mostly intended for fiction writers, he does bend it some to try and simplify bureacratise and other business writing but more to help *you* figure out what they are really saying that truly simplfying someone's advertising copy. One thing I found slightly annoying was his constant use of percentages to show how by cutting these three words then the sentence was X% shorter. That can be misleading because while a sentence may be shorter, you haven't necessarily clarified it, or you might have cut it too short and lost the point. Use with caution.