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Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writers (Pimlico)
 
 
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Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writers (Pimlico) [Paperback]

Harold Evans , Crawford Gillan
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Pimlico; 2nd Revised edition edition (4 May 2000)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0712664475
  • ISBN-13: 978-0712664479
  • Product Dimensions: 13.5 x 2.2 x 21.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 29,275 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

Don't write "remunerate" when you mean "pay". You should "send" not "transmit" and "help" but not "facilitate". Take care with meanings too. If you're "disinterested" you're not bored, you're impartial. "Less" is not interchangeable with "fewer" and a "principle" is different from a "principal".

Harold Evans, editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981 and then of The Times for a year, first wrote his Newsman's English and News Headlines in the 1970s. In an age of increasingly sloppy English, Evans's books acquired the status of classics with their condemnation of dangling participles and gratuitous adjective and adverbs. Now they've been edited, updated and merged into a single new volume by Crawford Gillan. The emphasis, which hasn't dated at all, is still on the need for plain muscular English which says what it has to say in as few well-chosen words as possible.

The book has at least three uses. First, it could be a text book for trainee journalists, especially given the large number of published verbose examples Evans quotes and then rewrites as demonstration pieces. Second, it has plenty of advice for experienced journalists and editors trying to write better. Third, it is full of useful advice for anyone--beyond the media--who wants to write more coherently.

Essential English certainly raises awareness. You probably won't read it without feeling obliged to double back and delete your redundancies the next time you write something. In the common expression "depreciate in value" the last two words, for instance, can go without loss of meaning. You don't need "gainful" in front of "employment" either and Evans lists dozens of other examples. And be brutal with tired expressions such as "wealth of information" or "pillar of the church", he advises. He also provides an intriguing thesaurus for headline writers in search of pithiness. For "harmonisation," try "accord", "bargain", "compact", "pact", "peace", or "truce", he says. --Susan Elkin

Review

"Demonstrates how to clear whole jungles of vagueness and verbal clutter." - "TLS"

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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews

9 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Want to be a journalist? To write well? Read this, 18 Feb 2004
By 
C. Arthur (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writers (Pimlico) (Paperback)
When I got my first job as a journalist, the first thing I did was to buy this book (when it was called "Newsman's English" - nice new non-seixt title, I see) and the other four in the group. They're all essential in understanding how newspapers work, if that's what you want to do; this one is key for writing tight prose, which too few people do.

Now I'm a journalist on a national newspaper, I think I can partly thank this book for the help. It's an ideal tool for the job. I reread it every couple of years. It's still true.

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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A valuable book for all students of journalism, 5 Oct 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writers (Pimlico) (Paperback)
This book is recommended by the Society of Editors as it is an excellent guide to well written english and therefore especially useful in journalism. This edition combines parts from two earlier books written by Harold Evans whose reputation is excellent. The book discussses how to write for newspapers after first explaining exactly how newspapers function.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Please read this, 24 Feb 2007
By 
Mycroft (London, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writers (Pimlico) (Paperback)
If you are a journalist, for God's sake read this book and improve your copy tenfold. Don't think you don't need it, everyone can improve.
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