Focus on Prose Style
& Williams’
Style for exercises (use these to structure the course)
Other Readings
Zinsser, On Writing Well
Strunk & White (online)
Use for lectures (lecture questions on test)
Walsh, Bill. Lapsing Into a Comma: A Curmudgeon’s Guide to the Many Things That
Can Go Wrong in Print
Walsh, Bill .The Elephants of Style: A Trunkload of tips on the Big Issues & Gray Areas of Contemporary American English
Gordon, Karen Elizabeth. The New Well Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed
Gordon, Karen Elizabeth, The Disheveled Dictionary: A Curious Caper Through Our
Sumptuous Lexicon
Gordon, Karen Elizabeth. The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed
Gordon, Karen Elizabeth, Torn Wings and Faux Pas: A Flashbook of Style, A beastly
Guide Through the Writer’s Labyrinth
Woe is I
?Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Hale, Constance. Sin and Syntax
SAVE GRAMMAR & PUNCTUATION BOOKS FOR A THREE-UNIT ENG 395.
Readings: model essays,
Grading: midterm (25%), final (40%), preparation—voice ex., submitted electronically, comment on these randomly, although they can request a closer look; exercises, called on randomly in class (15%); 20% participation in online groups
Examples from recognized prose stylists, from Quotation books, from my own prose
Part I: Basics (simpler examples & exercises, no vocab)
A.
Exercises in Conciseness a.
Principles of Modern Style i.
Jargon, Cliches & specialized style ii.
Well-chosen verbs iii.
Ineffective Repetition iv.
Levels of Style v.
Precision & Abstraction vi.
Usage vii.
Readings: Zinsser, Orwell “Politics,” Atwood

viii.
Sentence Exercises: eliminating unnecessary long words & expressions, including jargon & circumlocution, rewriting of famous quotations (to good prose and from good prose) ix.
Voice Exercises: folksy, plain wisdom (topics: a job, a character, a time you were out of tune with the “script,” self-deception, feeling “more mature” or “superior”: “Rewrite the following sentence, using precision to build the scene” Adapt some of May’s exercises from Interacting with Essays , check also Rockas. x.
Balance newer approaches (sentence combining) with ancient technique (imitation) xi.
Exam: Multiple Choice. Content questions over reading &
“Choose the better sentence” (a) & (b) why. Example: Which of these two sentences better represents accepted principles of modern style? A B C D “Why” A B C D
Exercises in Expansion
Set One: (Concession/Refutation, or the virtues of qualifying)
(Enumeration, or the virtues of listing)
(Parallelism, or the virtues of patterns)
(Incongruity, or the virtues of pattern breaking)
Balance, or the virtues of weighing
Emphasis, or the virtues of stress
Part II: Advanced (more complex examples, parsing, vocab)
Indebted to “scholarship” of text books: Sentence combining books, Prose Style, Strunk
& White, Joe Williams, Classical Rhetoric,
7. Coordination.
8. Subordination.
10. Transitions.
11. The Sound of the Sentence.
12. Parallelism.
13. Sentence Variety.
14. Figures of Speech.

15. Slanting.