Much-needed guidance for academics looking to strip their writing of unnecessary words and awkward usage.
A detailed guide to English usage, with a particular focus on discouraging academic writers from unnecessary jargon.
Romero (A Soldier’s Story, 2008) offers a comprehensive reference guide to academic writing. Arranged in alphabetical order, the book provides definitions and explains the subtle differences in meaning that allow authors to write fluently. Take, for example, his explanation of synonyms for animal: “When the word is applied to a human being in other than a scientific context, the emphasis is on depravity or amorality. Creature does not have this range of possibility in meaning; it refers invariably to all living beings other than plants. When a human being is referred to by this word, however, pity or contempt is usually present.” Many of the book’s recommendations are couched in no-nonsense terms: “Avoid ablative as a big word that impresses no one.” Romero is particularly adamant about encouraging writers to cut words that add length without enhancing meaning: “A proposal is a plan put forward for consideration or discussion by others. It is also an offer of marriage. As in both cases, they must be real or solid. To put concrete, (sic) therefore to precede proposals is redundant.” Other entries in the lexicon clarify easily confused terms (“He is an ingenious inventor, but disingenuous in his relations”) and spellings (“ ‘Please pass the saccharin,’ she said with a saccharine smile”). A thorough index guides readers through the book’s many cross-references. Occasionally, a suggestion seems unnecessary for contemporary writers; it is unlikely, for instance, that modern academics need to be told to “CHANGE We have some negro students. TO We have some black students.” Such items may be of little use to institutions in the United States, but on the whole, the book can serve as a valuable addition to a writer’s bookshelf.
Much-needed guidance for academics looking to strip their writing of unnecessary words and awkward usage.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1480098527
Page Count: 376
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The sub-title of this book is "Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools." But one finds in it little about education, and less about the teaching of English. Nor is this volume a defense of the Christian faith similar to other books from the pen of C. S. Lewis. The three lectures comprising the book are rather rambling talks about life and literature and philosophy. Those who have come to expect from Lewis penetrating satire and a subtle sense of humor, used to buttress a real Christian faith, will be disappointed.
Pub Date: April 8, 1947
ISBN: 1609421477
Page Count: -
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1947
A somewhat fictionalized account of Minahan's semester at Brown ``in the early 1980's.'' There, as an adjunct lecturer, he taught a writing course called ``Democracy and Education,'' in which students discussed texts from the Declaration of Independence to the writings of E.D. Hirsch, and subjects from race, class, and gender to the ills of society. The students here are composites—allegorical types: the lazy, the passionate, the idealistic, the methodical, the manipulative, the arrogant, the silent; Ray, Toshiro, Pete, Rahjiv, Helga, and Juanita—the sort of cultural array that admissions officers fantasize about. Meanwhile, Minahan is critical of contemporary ideology; of political correctness, as well as of the DWM (dead white male) curriculum; of the cultural poverty of ``American education'' and ``college students today'' (who don't know Latin or the meaning of ``transcendentalism''); of a system that hires black women without Ph.D.s while he's unemployed (``Shit''); and of the ultimate disease—greed—the ``American illness'' perpetuated on campuses. But he likes his own students, plus Allan Bloom and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, and he advocates compassion (``the only idea that makes any sense'')—which he defines in increasingly general ways until concluding that ``the society we get is the society we deserve.'' But while Minahan criticizes US education- -students, faculty, the MLA—his book offers neither cogent analysis nor solutions but, ironically, is itself symptomatic of a problem. Hired to teach writing, the author presents opinions as truth, ideology as ideas, polemic as rhetoric, cultural diagnoses as ``personal essays,'' stereotypes as style. If he were one of his students, Minahan probably would find that his own writing—replete with generalizations, shifting voice (the implicative ``we'' and accusing ``you''), and lack of discipline—would earn him a recommendation to change his major.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1993
ISBN: 1-883285-01-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Delphinium
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993
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