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debthebee's review
4.0
This is a decent short guide for improving one's academic writing. There's also a free online tool accessible on a dedicated website named the same way as the book.
emmalowe73's review against another edition
5.0
As a creative person I find myself sitting a lot and writing. I battle with my weight and can be a compulsive eater, so this book really helped find solutions to the issues I face daily. I’d recommend it for any person who lives a creative life.
hammo's review against another edition
4.0
Short, to the point. Good book.
The core idea seems to be: keep writing simple. It can be simpler than you realize. Stick to SVO structure as much as possible, using lemmas where you can. Spice up your writing with variety, rather than complexity. Create vivid mental animations via concrete nouns and specific, active verbs. Prepositions are garbage. Ad-words (adjectives and adverbs) are mostly garbage. But worst of all are demonstratives and pronouns, which invite ambiguity, fuzzy thinking, and grammatical complexity. Avoid like the plague. Similarly, starting sentences with "there is" often leads to sweeping generalizations. Similarly, avoid.
Expanding on the animation idea, I suspect a good mental framework is this: you are animating a scene in your reader's brain. Each sentence should encode the transition to the next key frame. For example, "left hand moves from here to there", "door opens".
The core idea seems to be: keep writing simple. It can be simpler than you realize. Stick to SVO structure as much as possible, using lemmas where you can. Spice up your writing with variety, rather than complexity. Create vivid mental animations via concrete nouns and specific, active verbs. Prepositions are garbage. Ad-words (adjectives and adverbs) are mostly garbage. But worst of all are demonstratives and pronouns, which invite ambiguity, fuzzy thinking, and grammatical complexity. Avoid like the plague. Similarly, starting sentences with "there is" often leads to sweeping generalizations. Similarly, avoid.
Expanding on the animation idea, I suspect a good mental framework is this: you are animating a scene in your reader's brain. Each sentence should encode the transition to the next key frame. For example, "left hand moves from here to there", "door opens".
davenash's review against another edition
3.0
The
The writers diet is about: choosing active verbs, avoiding nomilzations, adverbs, and filler words. Use preposition that convey motion and use them with care. Keep the verb close the subject.
Great excersize: Abstract to concrete then back again – take abstract word and make it concrete. Take concrete word and make it abstract.
Avoid so called action verbs that are bland – have, make do and use.
Ion, ism, ty, ment, ness, ance,ence.
Use preposition with pep – motion not static.
That, there, this, it = Avoid as filler. Only used when it's clear what it is.
Avoid more than 2 preposition in a sentence.
In one hundred word – less then three to be verbs, less than four nominalizations, less than 14 prepostions. Less than three waste words, less then 6 ad-words that’s the formula
The writers diet is about: choosing active verbs, avoiding nomilzations, adverbs, and filler words. Use preposition that convey motion and use them with care. Keep the verb close the subject.
Great excersize: Abstract to concrete then back again – take abstract word and make it concrete. Take concrete word and make it abstract.
Avoid so called action verbs that are bland – have, make do and use.
Ion, ism, ty, ment, ness, ance,ence.
Use preposition with pep – motion not static.
That, there, this, it = Avoid as filler. Only used when it's clear what it is.
Avoid more than 2 preposition in a sentence.
In one hundred word – less then three to be verbs, less than four nominalizations, less than 14 prepostions. Less than three waste words, less then 6 ad-words that’s the formula
gillygab's review against another edition
3.0
This book doesn't have much novel advice to offer. It's short and to the point. Would be most beneficial to someone who's never read a book about writing. The most helpful bit for me was the online writing test that accompanies this book. It was neat to see the weak points of my writing laid out so clearly. Will definitely be helpful when self-editing.
jessicaaaaaaa's review against another edition
5.0
A hands-on approach to decreasing the lard factor in your writing. Has worked wonders for me, and I anticipate returning to it again and again to rework the exercises.
gymbeannz's review against another edition
2.0
To begin with, let me point out how criminally expensive this book is. I bought it from the publisher's website for $31 NZD and the book is the tiniest thing I have ever read. (Before you hate on me for my own stupidity I needed to buy the book for my Web Writing course)
Now let the review proceed:
The Writer's Diet attempts to "trim down" your own writing by giving you guidelines on how to make your text more readable. So you would assume it makes it's points clearly and uses relevant examples to keep you on the right path? It doesn't. Instead it uses poems and Shakespearean texts as examples. And that's fine if you're into that kind of stuff; but for us average Joe Bloggs we don't know what the heck Shakespeare was on about and assume he was probably on drugs during writing periods. So, that being said, I was still in the dark as to what writing is good and what's bad.
If you nearly failed English (like me) this book is not for you. Nouns, adjectives, adverbs, hedgehogs... It's all incredibly overwhelming.
The Writer's Diet preaches to the choir and closes the door to heathens.
Now let the review proceed:
The Writer's Diet attempts to "trim down" your own writing by giving you guidelines on how to make your text more readable. So you would assume it makes it's points clearly and uses relevant examples to keep you on the right path? It doesn't. Instead it uses poems and Shakespearean texts as examples. And that's fine if you're into that kind of stuff; but for us average Joe Bloggs we don't know what the heck Shakespeare was on about and assume he was probably on drugs during writing periods. So, that being said, I was still in the dark as to what writing is good and what's bad.
If you nearly failed English (like me) this book is not for you. Nouns, adjectives, adverbs, hedgehogs... It's all incredibly overwhelming.
The Writer's Diet preaches to the choir and closes the door to heathens.
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