Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose By Constance Hale, Karen Elizabeth Gordon ISBN: 9780767903080 Published: 1999 Number of Pages: 304 Edition: 1st Binding: Hardcover

Pricing & Availability: Additional Details: Product Type: Book Publisher: Broadway Description: Want your writing to sell, shock, or just sing? The acclaimed author of Wired Style presents a hip, real-world guide to the rules of grammar--and when to break them.Today's writers need more spunk than Strunk. Whether crafted for the Great American Novel, Madison Avenue advertising, or Grammy Award-winning rap lyrics, memorable writing must jump off the page. Now, from copy veteran Constance Hale comes a fun, informative, indispensable guide to taking your writing from ordinary to extraordinary.Sin and Syntax is more than just a style manual with examinations of sentence structure and parts of speech. In addition to spelling out the basic rules, Constance Hale teaches you when--and how--to effectively break them. Chock full of examples from traditional and nontraditional prose--from advertising jingles to song lyrics to literary classics--Sin and Syntax shows you why learning to "sin" will make you a better writer. Discover how to: Distinguish between words that are "pearls" and words that are "potatoes" Innovate with adjectives to avoid clichés Avoid "couch potato thinking" and "com-mitment phobia" when choosing verbs Use literary devices such as onomatopoeia, alliteration, and metaphorPLUS--You'll learn: How Rich Little boosted his comedy career with the perfected use of one particular interjection Why Muhammad Ali's syntactically surprising speech worked as well as his jabs Which famous opening line from American literature contains no subject whatsoeverA perfect display of Hale's own literary principles, Sin and Syntax, with its clear, crisp, modern approach to style, will be an essential guide for all those who want to improve their command of the English language.

Library of Congress Control Number
   - LC control Number:  99013591
   - LC control Number: 99013591: 40675137

International Standard Book Number: 0767903080: 0767903080 :
   - Terms of availability: $20.00

Library of Congress Call Number
   - Classification number: PE1408
   - Item number: .H299 1999

Dewey Decimal Classification Number
   - Edition number: 21
   - Classification number: 808/.042

Main Entry - Personal Name
   - Personal name: Hale, Constance.

Title Statement
   - Title: Sin and syntax :
   - Remainder of title: how to craft wickedly effective prose /
   - Statement of responsibility, etc.: Constance Hale ; foreword by Karen Elizabeth Gordon.

Edition Statement: 1st ed.

Publication, Distribution, etc. (Imprint)
   - Place of publication, distribution, etc.: New York :
   - Name of publisher, distribution, etc.: Broadway Books,
   - Date of publication, distribution, etc.: c1999.

Physical Description
   - Extent: xviii, 285 p. ;
   - Dimensions: 22 cm.

Bibliography, etc. Note
   - Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references and index.

Formatted Contents Note: Words -- Nouns -- Pronouns -- Verbs -- Adjectives -- Adverbs -- Prepositions -- Conjunctions -- Interjections -- Sentences -- The subject, the predicate -- Simple sentences -- Phrases and clauses -- Sentence variety -- Music -- Voice -- Lyricism -- Melody -- Rhythm.

Subject Added Entry - Topical Term
   - Topical term or geographic name entry element: Creative writing.
   - Topical term or geographic name entry element: English language
   - Topical term or geographic name entry element: Report writing.
   - General subdivision: Rhetoric.