The Reader Over Your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose

When I was a college student in China back in the early 80's, an American teacher brought us this book and made us read and follow it to the letter. Boy did I ever hate a college teacher: The first couple of months of her writing class turned out be excruciating to every student despite her seemingly simplistic motto: "Say what you mean, and mean what you say!" But her guidance ---- and this book's teaching quickly made its mark. Now, after 25 years in both public and private sectors, I have to say this book was by far THE most helpful tool in developing and improving my writing. Too bad I forgot that American teacher's name. She was not very tall, was in her late 40's or early 50's and teaching in the smallest college in Beijing. If you are reading this review, A BIG, BIG THANK-YOU for teaching me how to write and for introducing me this book!!! If you are serious about improving your writing, please read this book and practice its preaching. After a few months / years, you will never write the same way again.

With only a high-school education in English, and a style gained by reading excerpts from cereal boxes, a person can become a master of prose by seriously studyng two books. Both were written fifty or so years ago but clarity in thought and style were in vogue even in the times of Euclid. The first book is not easy to read but is really fun and so well-written it sings--"The King's English" by H.W. Fowler and F.G.Fowler. (Don't accept any interloper's revision of the book!) The second book, and it will give a writer courage,is the present one: "The Reader over Your Shoulder," Graves and Hodge.

THWACK! Down comes the headmaster's birch-rod on the sensitive knuckles of the bumbling pupil. Botch that passage again, lazybones, and I'll have your hide!Poet-novelist Robert Graves and historian Alan Hodge have written a delightful book containing a very quirky 126-page critical history of English prose, a few short chapters listing every conceivable principle of clear & graceful writing, followed by some 200 pages of the most carping, anal-retentive editing & revising you've ever seen. Unlike most style-book authors, who criticize hypothetical or anonymous examples of bad prose, Graves & Hodge courageously tackle many of the biggest names of their era (Hemingway, Aldous Huxley, Bernard Shaw) and relentlessly pick, pick, pick until the carcass is clean and the bones lie strewn about the lair. Then they put it back together again PROPERLY, the way the author should have done it the first time. As G & H themselves note, the book might as well be subtitled "A Short Cut to Unpopularity". Of course, if any headmaster ever treated me the way G & H treat their victims, I'd be outraged. Luckily, we are not one of their hapless victims suffering under their harsh tutelage; so, although we wince in sympathy with those being raked over the coals, we can also profit greatly from their chastisement. "The Reader Over Your Shoulder" is the most painstaking and explicit guide ever published on the craft of revising one's prose. Ideal for self-study. But beware: G & H get under your skin and stay there. Even as I write this review I can sense these two meticulous sadists hovering over my shoulder and I ready myself for a thrashing.This review refers to the out-of-print, unabridged 1944 edition.

If your students refuse to learn how important it is to focus on INDIVIDUAL WORDS-- if they insist on thinking that it is sufficient to 'get their point across in a rough way'-- if their sentences are as a result sometimes nonsensical, suggest this book. And then make them read it-- including the appendix at the back. Among other valuable aspects, the book uses examples of bad writing from famous authors-- simultaneously reassuring the student that a mistake can happen to the best of us, and reminding the student that vigilance is always necessary.

This is my favorite book. For years I struggled as a writer, unnecessarily as I now know, because I had never been taught the principles of clear communication.This book teaches those principles. I recommend it to any writer who is trying to improve his work.This book teaches a hard-core discipline of writing. To follow its principles will not only improve your writing ability, it will make you a better person.