The Elements of Technical Writing

This book manages to pack a lot of material in quite a small bundle! Chapters 1-4 outline 50 umbrella rules to good (technical and other) writing. This address issues as wide-ranging as avoiding jargon, using proper hyphenation, and formatting complex mathematical formulas within your writing. It's not just a list -- it spans 4 chapters and includes both explanation and examples! The remaining 5 chapters are dedicated to specific topics such as writing manuals and proposals. Throughout, Blake and Bly manage to be both concise and incredibly useful. They provide examples for everything: writing numbers and symbols, revising wordy sentences, and the overuse of "-ize" (with lists of false words, though I disagree with several which have become standard in the language, business, or industry). Showing good writing vs. poor speeds effective learning! There are 2 appendices: A) "Writing in the Systems Environment", a short 2-page guide about how systems departments work and how this affects writing, and B) "A Brief Guide to Software for Writers." I found the appendices less useful than the text. Personally, I think "The Elements of Technical Writing" is top-notch. However, someone who needs in-depth tutoring in English grammar would not be served well by this book. Some people need a slower intoduction to everything. This book is *not* wordy, but it covers a lot of ground quickly. This warning should not be necessary for a college class, but unfortunately, people graduate from high school unable to write as even an eighth-grader should! Professors may consider using this book as a supplement to another -- not because it's inadequate, but because too many students have such low skills. Let the slower book baby them along, and match chapters from this book as reference material. For the rest of us, this book reminds us of grammar rules that have gotten fuzzy over time. This is staying on my shelf!

A solid, common-sense guide to technical writing that is applicable to writing in general. The tips and pointers presented in this manual will improve all your writing, not just technical. This book makes the excellent point that good technical writing is ultimately just good writing...applied to technical subjects. Excellent buy.

As a technical writer I have found this book an excellent resource. Most examples are short and concise. The rules and examples are probably the most up-to-date in the Technical Communications industry.

I found this book to be extremely useful. It was easy to read and clearly pointed out the major elements in technical writing. I recommend it to anyone who needs a boost in their writing, but not for someone looking for a thick reference guide. The only reason it gets 4 instead of 5 stars is it didn't have as many examples as I would have liked or any practice problems. Overall, it helped me organize my papers properly, avoid common writing flaws, and get my main points across.

A CLEAR CONCISE WELL WRITTEN TECHNICAL WRITING GUIDE. IT IS EASY TO FOLLOW FOR THE NOVICE AND EXPERIENCED TECHNICAL WRITER. I KEEP MY COPY ON MY DESK FOR A REFERENCE.