Sin and Syntax: How to create Wickedly Effective Prose by Constance Hale

Love writing, but your writing inspires no love? Got a serious case of boring work when it comes to reading what you've written? Feel like the rules of grammar are a rope around your neck, stranging the life of whatever you are trying to write? Suffer no longer! Sin and Syntax is here to rescue you from a life of profanely boring prose and wicked errors that derail your train of thought worse than a four-track siding collision.

If your last English class was longer ago than you'd like to admit, Sin and Syntax brings you up to speed on the things you learned back then and promptly forgot. You'll find yourself reminded of how to diagram a sentence, and what all those parts of speech are, what they mean and how to use them most effectively. Each section is laid out in four parts: Bones lays bare what it is that the section is talking about, Flesh uses the bones to illustrate good writing using that noun, verb, interjection, adjective, adverb and so on. Cardinal Sins covers what *not* to do and how you can be tripped up, while Carnal Pleasures shows some of the best possible uses of the thing they are talking about.

But the book covers more than words. It goes into the sentences and then the music of writing, the tone and lyricism that lifts the sentences you are writing from the mundane to the sublime. Certain types of writing just sing. Don't you want your prose to sing as well? It's not just a matter of chance, but craftsmanship and wordsmanship that will get you to that point. Whether you want your words to sound like Brittney Spears' latest single or a concerto by Mozart, Sin and Syntax can guide you on your journey from having a tin ear of writing to being able to appreciate and craft like a veritable connoisseur.

This is an excellent book on writing, written so that both the beleagured writer and the grammar snob will find something for them, and often a whole lot of something to sink their teeth into. This book is wonderful for someone at any stage of writing, and fits those who write factual articles as well as those who wish to craft soaring fictive prose. Even if you already know (and love... or hate) E.B. Strunk and White, this is the perfect companion volume, sure to delight both writers and readers of any kind. Highly recommended.