Do your sentences sag? Could your paragraphs use a pick-me-up? If so, The Writer’s Diet is for you! It’s a short, sharp introduction to great writing that will help you energize your prose and boost your verbal fitness.
Helen Sword dispenses with excessive explanations and overwrought analysis. Instead, she offers an easy-to-follow set of writing principles: use active verbs whenever possible; favor concrete language over vague abstractions; avoid long strings of prepositional phrases; employ adjectives and adverbs only when they contribute something new to the meaning of a sentence; and reduce your dependence on four pernicious “waste words”: it, this, that, and there.
Sword then shows the rules in action through examples from William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Martin Luther King Jr., John McPhee, A. S. Byatt, Richard Dawkins, Alison Gopnik, and many more. A writing fitness test encourages you to assess your own writing and get immediate advice on addressing problem areas. While The Writer’s Diet is as sleek and concise as the writing ideals contained within, this slim volume packs a powerful punch.
With Sword’s coaching writers of all levels can strengthen and tone their sentences with the stroke of a pen or the click of a mouse. As with any fitness routine, adhering to the rules requires energy and vigilance. The results, however, will speak for themselves.
**
Review
“Who says nutritious material must be bland? This short book is packed with excellent advice on writing, offered with charm and good cheer.”
(Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century)
“Even the leanest and most muscular stylists can end up with jiggly bits in their prose. With Sword as your coach, and The Writer’s Diet as your training manual, you can slim down, tone up, and become a more energetic, engaging, and lively writer.”
(Rachel Toor, columnist for The Chronicle of Higher Education and associate professor of creative writing at Eastern Washington University)
About the Author
Helen Sword is professor and director of the Centre for Learning and Research in Higher Education at the University of Auckland. She is the author, most recently, of Stylish Academic Writing and manages the website www.writersdiet.com.

motw/The Writer's Diet_ A Guide to F - Helen Sword.pdf

Sword, Helen;

Chicago guides to writing, editing, and publishing, Chicago, 2016

United States, United States of America

2nd ed., 2016

producers:
Adobe PDF Library 10.0.1

Memory of the World Librarian: Slowrotation

Is your writing flabby or fit? The Writer's Diet will help you energise your writing, boost your verbal fitness levels and strip unnecessary padding from your prose. In contrast to most other writing and editing guides, The Writer’s Diet offers no ‘big picture’ advice on argument or audience, no instruction on composition or paragraph structure, no primer on grammar and punctuation. Instead, this book zeroes in on five common problems that frequently plague unfit sentences - weakness and excess in verbs, nouns, prepositions, adjectives/adverbs, and ‘waste words’. Writers at every level, from students to professionals, will benefit from The Writer’s Diet workout and enjoy the experience. Before long, you will find yourself producing stylish, energetic prose every time you put pen to paper.

This book offers an easy-to-follow set of writing principles. For example, use active verbs whenever possible, favour concrete language over vague abstractions, avoid long strings of prepositional phrases, employ adjectives and adverbs only when they contribute something new to the meaning of a sentence and reduce your dependence on the "waste words": 'it', 'this', 'that' and 'there'. The author also shows these rules in action through examples from famous authors such as Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson. The book includes a test to help you assess your own writing and get advice on problem areas

Contents 6
Acknowledgments 8
Introduction: The Writer’s Diet 10
1. Verbal verve 14
2. Noun density 26
3. Prepositional podge 38
4. Ad-dictions 48
5. Waste words 58
Afterword: Healthy writing 72
Appendix: The WritersDiet Test 76
References 83
Index 86

2025-10-27