Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Writing advice from Verlyn Klinkenborg

Wise advice:

You can almost never fix a sentence —
Or find a better sentence within it —
By using the words it already contains.

Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several Short Sentences About Writing (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012).
I just quoted these lines in a reply to a thoughtful question about a troublesome sentence.

I’m high on (“enthusiastically in approval or support of”) Klinkenborg’s book. My students like it too. It’s one of the best books I’ve chosen for teaching a writing course.

Other Klinkenborg posts
More from Several Short Sentences : On the English major : On e-reading

[Defintion from Merriam-Webster.]

comments: 2

Anonymous said...

You can already contain a sentence —
By finding a better sentence within it —
Or using the words it almost never fixes.
:)

Michael Leddy said...

Brava! Or, Bravo!