Some recommended books for effective writing

Here are some  English text books someone recommended to me that may prove useful in your daily writing endeavours.  

 

McGraw-Hill Handbook of English-- Canadian Edition:
Mind the Stop: a Brief Guide to Punctuation

Common Sense Writing

I recently discovered the book “The Art of Plain Talk”-- real oldie but goodie-- by Rudolf Flesch . As the book quotes: ” it shows you how to say and write what you mean in English that people understand.”

It is well worth a look through for those interested in what I call “ common sense writing”.

The Importance of Plain Language for the Web

A lot of websites suffer from a bad combination of “gobbledy gook” corporate speak addiction, excessive jargon use and superfluous words.

The literacy level of these sites are also often too high for their target audience/market niche. As a result, they are turning off existing users who may become potential customers and in the process, giving users/clients headaches who are trying to access the info. they need to use the service or product the site is offering.

Most websites have way too much info. that speaks too little about their services or programs . They fail to emphasize the “FAB factor” of using their product or services “Features, Advantages and Benefits”. Because most of today’s products and services are highly complex ,along with the barrage of daily communications from all directions and sources, we often end up acquiring the 21st century’s condition of attention deficit disorder/ information overload. Such a situation makes it critical that all content on websites be in Plain Language/Plain English- no matter what the type of info. it is and what format it is in.