There's no shortage of good books about writing style, but a few lay above the rest for their depth and authority, and for their enduring value to writers. Here are five books every writer should know about.
1. Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace
Joseph M. Williams and Joseph Bizup
No book teaches practical style (also called plain style) with more depth and insight than Williams and Bizup's Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace. Practical style is what many people have in mind when they think of good writing, writing that is clear and concise, easy to follow and easy to act upon.
This is the type of writing most of us do daily. Writing emails and letters. Posting on blogs and social media. But features of the practical style also enrich other styles, such as literary style and persuasive style (e.g., copywriting and speech writing).
After covering practical effects, the book transitions to pleasurable effects, focusing on techniques for achieving elegance and grace in your writing.
2. A Pocket Style Manual
Diana Hacker and Nancy Sommers
A Pocket Style Manual is one of the best writing reference books I've seen. It gives fundamental advice on traditional grammar issues, punctuation, and mechanics, as well as formatting for different house styles, such as MLA, APA, and Chicago.
What makes it so useful is its to-the point explanations and examples, as well as its meticulous organizational scheme, which makes looking up topics like the dangling modifier a breeze.
3. Rhetorical Grammar
Martha J. Kolln and Loretta S. Gray
I still remember the sense of revelation I had after reading this book. It was required reading for a grammar class I had as an undergraduate, and up to that point I thought the purpose of studying grammar was to learn how to avoid mistakes. If you stayed within the rules, you had good grammar, and if you had good grammar, you could be a good writer.
But Rhetorical Grammar wasn't just about rules, it was about choices.
The grammatical choices we make as writers lead to different effects, shaping the reader's experience. Move a word or phrase to the end of a sentence and the entire focus of the sentence changes. Add a comma here and a certain words gets stressed, remove the comma and the stress falls elsewhere in the sentence. These were empowering lessons for a student writer.
It's easy to forget that grammar and writing are two different things, but this book honors the distinction, while affirming the importance of their relationship.
4. The Sense of Style
Steven Pinker
The Sense of Style is a great usage guide for our times. As we encounter multiple Englishes by writers from all over the world, we are forced to re-examine the time-honored "rules" of usage and grammar, to which many writers (and speakers) do not conform. What makes this book valuable is that it takes a middle-ground position between Prescriptivist and Descriptivist approaches to grammar and writing. It models how to have a conversation about usage, not a war.
But usage and grammar topics fill only a portion of the book. Much of the book is devoted to helping you write better. To this end, Pinker covers classic prose style, which aims for clear and elegant communication without bending to the ascetic codes of practical style.
Other discussions include how the curse of knowledge interferes with good communication, and how to achieve coherence in your writing.
5. The Elements of Eloquence
Mark Forsyth
This book is an engaging introduction to the style techniques used by ancient rhetoricians. A number of books cover these techniques, but The Elements of Eloquence is distinguished by its humor and breadth of examples.
Even if you don't recognize the techniques by name—anaphora, epistrophe, chiasmus—you'll know them from the work of many great writers and speakers, which Mark Forsyth cheerfully curates.
Honorable Mentions
Here are some other great style books to consider.
The Elements of Style
Most contemporary writing teachers agree that Strunk and White's The Elements of Style is limited in scope and usefulness for modern writers. It was composed, after all, in 1918 and updated in 1959. It's a hodgepodge of grammar, composition, and usage topics, none of which it fully treats.
Yet the book remains valuable in other ways.
It's true value is in its accessibility. The book is short. The book is easy to grasp. It carries the social proof of a generations of writers who have sworn by it and continue to recommend it. It's a book that for a moment makes you feel like you have writing figured out, giving you a high of enthusiasm and confidence that is reinforced by the approving nod of tradition. It is the ultimate gateway drug of writing books.
On Writing Well
Much of what allows a writer's style to emerge comes from courage. The courage to be oneself. The courage to experiment with words, ideas, form. A willingness to play. On Writing Well is one of those books that, like Writing Down the Bones, like Bird by Bird, helps you grow as a writer by combining practical advice with inspiration and encouragement. It is one of my favorite writing-book pep talks.
Mastering the Craft of Writing
Mastering the Craft of Writing is probably one of the more underrated writing books I've seen. Stephen Wilbers artfully guides you through 52 weeks of writing lessons, covering topics that are sort of a cherry pickings of the first five books listed in this article. If you have time for only one book on this page, you'd do well to read this one.
Clear and Simple as the Truth
While Steven Pinker promotes classic prose style in The Sense of Style, Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner lay out its entire philosophical underpinnings in their book Clear and Simple as the Truth. This book helps you understand that your writing style isn't just about your sentence structure and diction; it's mostly about the conceptual stance you take toward the elements of style: the role of the writer, your readers, thought, language, and truth. Your stance leads to your writing style.
This book is a bit challenging compared to the others, but it's a great book if you're looking for a deeper understanding of style in general, and of a style in particular that many writers would benefit from.
Stylish Academic Writing
This book should be required reading for anyone writing in academia. Reading scholarly works can be challenging because the subject matter is often challenging, but too often such work is challenging because academic writers disregard (or aren't familiar with) fundamental principles of style that would strengthen (not dumb down) their arguments.
To be fair, academic writers write within contextual forces that encourage an opaque style. Insight and originality are highly rewarded in this genre. And when there's incentive to write with penetrating insight, the cushions of convoluted syntax, extraneous hedges, and exotic diction become all too tempting. Helen Sword, however, shows that it's possible to write clearly and elegantly without sacrificing the rigor that defines academic writing.
Garner's Modern English Usage
This is the best reference book on English usage. Its breadth and depth almost makes you feel inadequate if you're a writer. Well over a thousand pages of nuanced discussion on the most commonly encountered usage problems in English writing.
As a writer you know that almost every time you write, you face moments of doubt when it comes to word choice. Who or whom? Further or farther? Abjure or adjure? Knowing these conventions is important because—even if they are just made-up rules—breaking them can distract readers and lower credibility.
You can write the most insightful, well-researched argument you've ever written, and someone will take the time to tell you that you should have written "an historic" instead of "a historic." (What about the merits of the actual argument?). It's an annoying fact of the writing life, but it's one you're better off acknowledging so you can keep readers' focus on the actual ideas in your work.
Conclusion
These books are among the best for improving your writing style. But I know there are other great ones out there. What is your favorite book on writing style? Do you have a book you're always returning to or recommending to others?
Please share them in the comments below.