The Little Red Writing Book

I've read this book over and over, yet each time I mine another nugget of valuable information. This book is the goldmine for a writer. It's like the Bathroom Reader books, only for writers. It may be small, but it's loaded with helpful hints and suggestions. It won't take the place of your grammar book, but it will make you think. It inspired me more times than I can count. Either to write something new or to look at something old I had written in a different way. A great book to keep with you for when you have a little time to kill.Michael Kelso, author of, 'One on One'.

An excellent guide to writing well based on the principle that good writing is supported by four foundational pillars: structure, style, readability and grammar. Within this context, Royal enumerates 20 principles of writing and 30 commonly needed rules of grammar. Each principle and rule is supported by concrete examples and mini exercises that illustrate and solidify the training. The book is well organized and filled with information both practical and useful. It is suitable for high school age and upward, though its age sweet-spot is probably college/grad school students. I found it quite useful at an age well past that.

What a GREAT book. It's everything I was looking for in a book of this type. It's been a terrific refresher and teacher. I really do enjoy all the books in this series. This book especially!

Every writer should own one of these books. Brandon Royal does an excellent job of explaining the rules of grammar, writing pitfalls, and common mistakes. He gives many examples using both correct grammar usage and incorrect. I have found it helpful in my writing. He has written several other books of the same type upon other subjects.

"The Little Red Writing Book:...", by Brandon Royal, Ohio: Writer's Digest Books, 2004 - ISBN 1-58297-336-9 HC, 160 Pg. (7.4" x 5") includes 100 pg. 20 Principles, 26 pg. Grammar Rules, 2 pg. Idioms, 7 pg. Punct., & 23 pg. Appendices (Overview, US vs UK, Latin, & Exercise Answers, 15 pg.)The 20 Principles cover Writing Top-Down, Break Down, Transition, Structure, Likes Together, Support Says, Personalize, Keeping Simple, Cutting Length, Eliminate Needless, Active Power, Favor Verbs, Parallel Form, Sentence Variety, Tone Apropos, suggesting Layout/Design, Readability, Headings/Headlines, Neuter Gender & Reworking.For those working to improve & to better use writing skills, be it for creative, communicative or business purposes, this cleverly assembled & learned primer is a commendable composition by a CPA & corporate teacher (here & abroad), & author of 8 books. I would like to have seen an Index included. The book is a classic "Show & Tell" from the title & cover's color to the 'guts' within the pages -- in a word, it has class, is elegant & is useful.

I've taught a lot of writing and grammar. Most of it from an academic perspective. This has a nice practical bent to it. I love to write and I gleaned quite a few things from this. My 7th grader LOVES this. We tried the Institute for Excellence in Writing but that was too strict and stifling for him.

It's OK, just not what I need. I thought I'd be getting ideas for new writing. Just a misunderstanding based on someone else's recommendation.

The name says it all. This book is a great tool to have handy when doing any type of writing. It is a great resource and provides easy access to many writing tips.

Love it

I love this book very much ... it's very nice to hold in his hands, looks great and it's content is very helpful to get the best writer you could be ...

Every writer should have a copy of this outstanding reference book!

Bought for girlfriend. She loved it!

Writing skill is usually more the product of many hours of writing than a quickly acquired skill, more akin to learning music than to learning how to drive. Of course, to improve our writing we need to learn grammar, punctuation and structure, but only through practice can we learn how to apply these effectively. Although writing is a process of growth, every so often we need to look over the basics, and every book like this can help us to fine-tune our craft in the same way a musician might play some scales.The 'Little red writing book', despite the unlikely title, offers good tuition from a good tutor. It addresses many of those structural issues that plague writers before quickly recapping all the necessary grammar, looking over those basic things we learned but now occasionally forget. The book presents a manageable set of principles, which are clearly explained before being tested through exercises, and then after this mini course, the book is presented in summarised form.Another book which is very useful and 'minimalistic' is It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences: A Writer's Guide to Crafting Killer Sentences, which, although it doesn't contain exercises, has some very interesting material. Also Sin and Syntax has a different approach, examining the effect values of various grammatical constructions. Reading these books will help, but practice is the only way to find your unique 'writer's voice'. All you writers - good luck on your journey!As with other books like this, the grammatical information presented in this book is more of a recap for those who know than a course for beginners - I for one would find concepts such as nominalisation hard to grasp if this were my first encounter with the idea. If you've read quite a lot of this sort of material already, don't expect any principles that will transform your writing, but enjoy a fun course.