Books for Writing as a Craft

This book is on our to read list because one presumes it is particularly orientated to business documents. We first saw it mentioned in the Computer Publishing magazine and the online review at Amazon makes it a must to buy and read if you are in the writing business.

This book is on our to read list. It was also mentioned in the Computer Publishing magazine and the Amazon reviews show it is very interesting. If nothing else, reading something that is essentially off-the-wall with respect to what most of us work with every day just might give one a mental kick in the pants and liven up our work once more.

This is an excellent book — and not just if you are Australian. It covers a wider scope of topics than just style and it draws on references outside of Australia's language. The book is very easy to read, often raising a chuckle with her comments and as clear as a bell for imparting understanding.

Peters also sorts out some basic grammar problems; for example, she explains that the term verb phrase means different things in different grammars and proceeds to summarise the differences.

It can still make sense to buy this book from Amazon — but only after you check the price in Australia. If Amazon ships it to the States and back, it would be amazing if the price was still lower than in Australia. The Australian contact is Cambridge University Press, 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne, Australia. We urge you to check before ordering from overseas.

This has been the standby for many years, and is still keeping up with the changes in the language from the Great Britain perspective in particular and the English language in general.

This book, like the previous one, is for helping with the niggly bits when you are trying to write your best piece of prose. For the most part they cover a lot of common ground, but the explanations are from different points of view. There are also sufficient differences between the books that make them both useful to have on the shelf.

We are only part way through this book, but it provides an excellent insight into the role and function of the editor. It is a much bigger role than one thinks if the editor's job is to be done properly.

There are two ways to go online — convert everything you can lay your hands on, using MS Office 97, and publish it or with a value for money approach that just might work for the intended audience.

If you are considering making a jump into online anything, this book is well worth a read as part of the lead up to making the decision. It does not tell you how to actually do the job, but what you need to consider and assess in going online and what the overall goals should be for your online delivery. The biggest mistake is to think going online is cheap and easy.

The biggest/only "problem" online delivery solves is the distribution channel. When you know what distribution is currently costing you, then you can make intelligent decisions about how much to spend in going online. And that is when you need this book. (The cost of the paper element of printing might be significant, depending on who carries the total cost of printing pages from the screen and how often that is likely to occur.)

Before ordering this book from Amazon, you might like to send mail to N&H Communications — as a service to the Australian Society of Technical Communication, you can buy JoAnn's books from N&H Communications at the same or possibly lower prices and usually with immediate delivery.