From: danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny Yee)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.reviews,rec.arts.books,alt.books.reviews,misc.books.technical,alt.books.technical,misc.writing
Subject: Book Review - Bugs in Writing (Lyn Dupre)
Followup-To: misc.writing
Date: 13 Oct 1995 07:32:24 MET
Organization: Basser Dept of Computer Sciece, Uni of Sydney, Australia
Originator: brock@ucsub.colorado.edu

     title: Bugs in Writing
          : A Guide to Debugging Your Prose
        by: Lyn Dupre
 publisher: Addison-Wesley 1995
  subjects: writing
     other: 649 pages
_Bugs in Writing_ contains 150 sections, each offering advice on an aspect of writing. Some deal with questions of word choice, punctuation, and syntax; others give advice on things as practical as writing a dissertation, preparing visual aids for presentations, or overcoming writer's block. _Bugs_ is designed for browsing rather than use as a reference work: the sections are randomly arranged and there is no proper index, only conceptual and alphabetical lists of the section titles. _Bugs_ is aimed at computer people, but almost all of it is applicable to those in other scientific and technical disciplines and most of it is quite general.

I found parts of _Bugs in Writing_ useful, but overall I thought it a rather poor work. Perhaps the biggest problem is that it makes no attempt either to use underlying principles of grammar and syntax or to teach them, giving it a very _ad hoc_ feel, as if it were simply papering over the cracks in narrowly scientific educations. I also found the use of large print, the long lists of examples and the categorisation of sentences as Bad, Ugly, Good or Splendid somewhat patronising. This wouldn't be so bad, except that other things in the volume make it unsuitable for primary school children. A compensating feature is that Dupre has a good sense of humour and has picked some amusing examples.

Judging by Dupre's introduction, she does understand that grammar is _descriptive_ rather than _prescriptive_, but she is still prepared to write "a split infinitive constitutes a grammatical error". This is just wrong (pedants are referred to Pinker's _The Language Instinct_). I actively disagree with many of her usage suggestions, too: I can live with preferring "one-half of" to "half", but "Max went hiking for 1/2 an hour" is ugly, while "Cosmo grabbed the bigger moiety of the cookie" is just bizarre. (I didn't know "moiety" was used outside anthropology; most people I ask don't know the word at all.) I am a strong believer in gender-neutral language, but I thought "parentboard" was just a joke, while there must be less verbose alternatives to "manhole" than "subterranean-access lid"!

There are some good things in _Bugs in Writing_, but I have to recommend giving it a miss; Strunk and White's _The Elements of Style_ is still in print...

--

Disclaimer: I received a review copy of _Bugs in Writing_ from
Addison-Wesley, but I have no stake, financial or otherwise, in
its success.

--

%T	Bugs in Writing
%S	A Guide to Debugging Your Prose
%A	Lyn Dupre
%I	Addison-Wesley
%C	Reading, Massachusetts
%D	1995
%O	paperback
%G	ISBN 0-201-60019-6
%P	xxxiii,649pp
%K	writing

Danny Yee (danny@cs.su.oz.au)
12 October 1995

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Last changed on 1995-10-26 13:49. Comments&corrections to mfx@pobox.com.