![]() As useful as those now out-of-fashion copybook exercises. He introduces characters and incidents with his unusual literary style and grace, bringing to the fore those that have been forgotten or obscured. His own prose is generally competent, often urbane. Barzun describes what Western Man wrought from the Renaissance and Reformation down to the present in the double light of its own time and our pressing concerns. As a text, however, or even as a desk-top standby, this has only limited value: Barzun's informal organization and conversational tone preclude easy reference to comments on any specific problem of style or word usage. His discussions of diction, syntax, tone, meaning, composition, and revision guide the reader through the technique of making the written word clear and agreeable to read. ![]() Most of them are In fact little known and quite striking. A fter a lifetime of writing and editing prose, Jacques Barzun has set down his view of the best ways to improve one's style. Barzun includes many examples of literary infelicity which the reader is supposed to rework (though his failure to provide ""solutions"" or hints tends to undermine their usefulness) and gives several examples of what he considers to be good prose. ![]() Barzun covers the standard topics-diction, sentence structure, tone, precision of meaning, and composition-and adds a salutary chapter on the inevitable revisions. ![]() ![]() This primer in rhetoric is aimed at the same audience, i.e., those tyros, chiefly academics, who write in hope of publication. Over the years, Jacques Barzun, University Professor of History at Columbia, has had to help many students recast their work into readable prose. ![]()
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