Here are 100 books that Plain Words fans have personally recommended if you like
Plain Words.
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I have taught writing to adults for over half of my life—starting in my twenties, when I looked so young that my students once mistook me for a confused kid having wandered into the wrong room! I love love love seeing writers find their writing voice—and the only way to do so is simply to do it. Writing and communicating well is an art, a delight, a form of self-expression, and a way of being in the world—and it is VERY easy to learn with a good teacher. All of these books inspire me because their writers are excellent, encouraging, practical teachers.
Impossible to omit this one from a list for writers!
A perennial classic that keeps coming back in new forms—even illustrated! Even if the advice is often dry (as my first writing teacher used to say, its authors tend to “strunk you on the head”), The Elements of Style is solid. No minced words here.
In any century, in any genre, for any class or any project, this book teaches writing well.
You know the authors' names. You recognize the title. You've probably used this book yourself. This is The Elements of Style, the classic style manual, now in a fourth edition. A new Foreword by Roger Angell reminds readers that the advice of Strunk & White is as valuable today as when it was first offered.This book's unique tone, wit and charm have conveyed the principles of English style to millions of readers. Use the fourth edition of "the little book" to make a big impact with writing.
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I’ve been working with words for over 25 years, as a writer and editor in publishing houses, design studios, and now as a freelance. I help everyone from big brands and small businesses through to academics and consultants get their ideas out of their heads and on to the page. I was an original co-founder of ProCopywriters, the UK alliance for commercial writers. I’ve written and self-published four books, the most recent of which is How to Write Clearly. The books I’ve chosen all helped me to write as clearly as I can—not least when writing about writing itself. I hope they help you too!
I bought this when I saw it recommended online by a famous writer—and I’m very glad I did.
The title is apposite, since this is less of an all-encompassing writing guide, more of a toolbox of 55 practical ideas to help you write better. Some are about the basics, while others are ways to give your text a compelling structure or a touch of extra polish. Away from the actual hands-on craft, Clark also recommends 11 useful habits to help you become a better writer.
Buy it, keep it on your shelf, and dip in whenever you need a new direction or a dose of inspiration.
Tools Not Rules' says Roy Peter Clark, vice president and senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, the esteemed school for journalists and teachers of journalists. Clark believes that everyone can write well with the help of a handful of useful tools that he has developed over decades of writing and teaching. If you google 'Roy Peter Clark, Writing Tools', you'll get an astonishing 1.25 million hits. That's because journalists everywhere rely on his tips to help them write well every day - in fact he fields emails from around the world from grateful writers.
I’ve been working with words for over 25 years, as a writer and editor in publishing houses, design studios, and now as a freelance. I help everyone from big brands and small businesses through to academics and consultants get their ideas out of their heads and on to the page. I was an original co-founder of ProCopywriters, the UK alliance for commercial writers. I’ve written and self-published four books, the most recent of which is How to Write Clearly. The books I’ve chosen all helped me to write as clearly as I can—not least when writing about writing itself. I hope they help you too!
Some writing guides can be a little bit “citation needed.” The author certainly sounds like they mean it—but where’s the proof?
There’s no such problem with Anne Janzer’s superb Writing to be Understood. Setting out to get to the heart of what makes a piece of text clear and memorable, she offers a masterclass in clear and expressive writing.
Along the way, she interviews experts in every area from non-fiction writing to psychology, risk management, behavioral design, and even comedy, bringing their authoritative guidance directly into her book. Read, learn, and see your writing improve.
Have you ever wondered what makes your favorite nonfiction books so compelling, understandable, or enjoyable to read? Those works connect with you, as a reader. When you recognize what's happening, you can apply those same methods to your own writing.
Writing To Be Understood is the thinking writer's guide to effective nonfiction writing techniques, such as:
- Using analogies to illustrate unseen concepts - Appealing to the reader's innate curiosity - Balancing humility with credibility
For each topic, the book combines insights from cognitive science with advice from writers and expert practitioners in fields of psychology, technology, economics, medicine, policy,…
This book is an elegiac meditation on the will to survive. Tor, a beluga whaler, and his wife, Astrid, a botanist specializing in Arctic flora, are stranded during the dark season of 1937-38 at his remote whaling station in the Svalbard archipelago when they misjudge ice conditions and fail to…
In 2012, I escaped my corporate job to found Enchanting Marketing. I had discovered I love writing and I love teaching people how to write even more. I help small business owners and solo flyers find their voice and share their ideas with gusto, so they can captivate, educate, and inspire their audience. I created this list with 5 book recommendations as a mini-course on writing for the web. There’s little overlap between the books; they all complement each other. Happy reading and happy writing!
Content design is about creating content (not just written content but any type of content, including maps, infographics, and images) that best serves users’ needs, and it’s key to getting found and read online.
This short guide in plain English features many examples of how to create content that pulls readers towards a website (rather than just pushing content outwards). I especially like the chapter on the science of reading as well as the chapter on job stories and user stories.
I love how practical this guide is. It’s written by someone who’s clearly been knee-deep in the trenches of content design.
Between 2010 and 2014, Sarah Richards and her team at the United Kingdom’s Government Digital Service did what many thought impossible: they took over 400 separate government websites and transformed them into a single site designed to effectively serve its users. In doing so, they defined a new discipline: content design.
Content design isn’t graphic design or just copywriting under another name. Content design focuses on what content best serves the users’ needs, whether it be the written word, infographics, visuals, videos, or charts.
At the core of content design are the needs of the users—and this means determining what…
How could a historian of the USnotfind Lincoln an endlessly fascinating figure? As a young(ish) university teacher, I jumped at the invitation to write a study of the 16th president, but didn’t expect it to win the coveted Lincoln Prize. When it did, in 2004, the community of American Lincoln scholars made me, a Welsh professor from Oxford University, doubly welcome. In several books I’ve examined Lincoln’s political skill, strategic ambition, and moral purposes. But he was more than a gifted pragmatist. His greater goal was to leave his nation stronger and a little closer to realizing the principles of equality laid out in the Declaration of Independence of 1776.
Lincoln was a great communicator, whose greatest speeches deliver emotional power through unfussy language. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of the best-selling page-turner Uncle Tom’s Cabin, knew a thing or two about language. She said Lincoln’s compelling words had “the relish and smack of the soil.” Douglas Wilson’s study is an exercise in historical detection. Sleuth-like he uses the successive manuscript drafts of Lincoln’s speeches and public letters to show his care in choosing his words, and how alert he was to sense, sound, imagery, context, and clarity. Lincoln’s Sword is a masterpiece, a showcase of the literary and political sensibilities that made Wilson an acclaimed winner of the Lincoln Prize.
Widely considered in his own time as a genial but provincial lightweight who was out of place in the presidency, Abraham Lincoln astonished his allies and confounded his adversaries by producing a series of speeches and public letters so provocative that they helped revolutionize public opinion on such critical issues as civil liberties, the use of black soldiers, and the emancipation of slaves. This is a brilliant and unprecedented examination of how Lincoln used the power of words to not only build his political career but to keep the country united during the Civil War.
When your storytelling simulates imagined physiological experiences, it guides your listeners to vicariously see, hear, smell, taste, and touch the world of your story. While my books suggest six kinds of stories and four buckets to find stories, I also use these favorite resources for training my brain to think in sensory language. Dip in to find a steady supply of metaphors, images, mannerisms, and context builders that make your story come alive. Current strategies that maximize clicks rarely tap into the wealth of sensory language needed to build epic, long-lasting results.
Yes, it says for writers, but this book is a great resource for in-person storytelling. On these pages are thousands of ideas on how you can show, not tell.
Comb through ideas on how to express a character’s emotion with posture, tone, and mannerisms. Don’t just say, “he looked guilty.” Look up “guilt” and find ways to indicate guilt without telling people what to think. Have your guilty character “avert her eyes,” “shift her feet,” “pull at her collar,” or “suddenly lose her appetite.” I regularly flick through this book to train my imagination on the sensory cues that make a story come alive.
The bestselling Emotion Thesaurus, often hailed as “the gold standard for writers” and credited with transforming how writers craft emotion, has now been expanded to include 55 new entries!
One of the biggest struggles for writers is how to convey emotion to readers in a unique and compelling way. When showing our characters’ feelings, we often use the first idea that comes to mind, and they end up smiling, nodding, and frowning too much.
If you need inspiration for creating characters’ emotional responses that are personalized and evocative, this ultimate show-don’t-tell guide for emotion can help. It includes:
Tina Edwards loved her childhood and creating fairy houses, a passion shared with her father, a world-renowned architect. But at nine years old, she found him dead at his desk and is haunted by this memory. Tina's mother abruptly moved away, leaving Tina with feelings of abandonment and suspicion.
As a writer and historian, I’m all about rabbit holes. When something I’ve never heard about before catches my interest, I have to find out more—and sometimes I end up writing whole books on the subject! I have a head full of bizarre little nuggets of information, and I love reading books, like the ones here, that tell me something new and change my way of thinking.
This clever and funny book explains that there are specific techniques that make good writing sound good, or a pithy phrase stick in the mind, and tells you the long and difficult Greek (or slightly easier Latin) names for all these rules you kind of knew without actually knowing.
I can hardly retain any of the Greek labels, but I do remember the fun little examples, like why Oscar Wilde’s epigrams are so striking (antithesis) and how Shakespeare totally lifted part ofJulius Caesarfrom a historian, but polished it up (alliteration). And whenever you hear a memorable three-part phrase, it was probably longer but everyone forgot the other bits (tricolon).
This is not one for fans of utilitarian writing, but as Forsyth says, “To write for mere utility is as foolish as to dress for mere utility.”
From the #1 international bestselling author of The Etymologicon and The Horologicon comes an education in the art of articulation, from the King James Bible to Katy Perry…
From classic poetry to pop lyrics, from Charles Dickens to Dolly Parton, even from Jesus to James Bond, Mark Forsyth explains the secrets that make a phrase—such as “O Captain! My Captain!” or “To be or not to be”—memorable.
In his inimitably entertaining and wonderfully witty style, he takes apart famous phrases and shows how you too can write like Shakespeare or quip like Oscar Wilde. Whether you’re aiming to achieve literary…
I am passionate about bringing back to life persons from the past who have been forgotten, misunderstood, or even deliberately mischaracterized. In order to get to the truth, there are a host of myths that must be shattered or discarded. Most of the histories that I have written have done precisely this–showing the fallacy of familiar myths and discovering the hidden truths about people and events that have been distorted, often by some of the most popular literature. In order to achieve these results, I have had to spend years in “boring” archives in order to reveal people and events that are never boring.
I was fascinated by Foster’s detective work in literary history–searching for the actual authors of poems, political novels, and proclamations, the authors of which had always been considered “anonymous.” Using a variety of ingenious methods, Foster tracks down the persons behind mysterious documents ranging from the Unabomber’s threats to “The Night Before Christmas.”
I loved Foster’s wry and sometimes caustic sense of humor, especially when he is skewering the “experts” whom he proves to be wrong. This book is, quite simply, great fun for the intellectually curious.
From the professor who invented literary forensics--and fingered Joe Klein as the author of Primary Colors--comes the inside story of how he solves his most challenging cases
Don Foster is the world's first literary detective. Realizing that everyone's use of language is as distinctive as his or her DNA, Foster developed a revolutionary methodology for identifying the writer behind almost any anonymous document. Now, in this enthralling book, he explains his techniques and invites readers to sit by his side as he searches a mysterious text for the clues that whisper the author's name. Foster's unique skills first came to…
I am passionate about this book list because it helped me get where I am today, a multiple-times bestselling author and an award-winning senior reporter. I began working as an overnight police round reporter before moving into sports, where I became one of Australia's best news-breaking rugby league journalists. I was then appointed News Corp Australia's Chief National Motorsports Writer and traveled the world chasing Formula 1 story, as well as covering Australia's V8 Supercar races. Everyone has to start somewhere, and for me, this list of books helped me begin and continue to grow to reach the level of success that I have.
A builder has a tool belt. In that belt, he has a hammer, a drill, a level, a tape measure, and so on. He needs those tools to build whatever he is going to build.
A writer has a tool belt tool. In that belt, the writer has words. The writer uses those words to build, too–not houses but stories. And unless you are planning on building a shabby shack, you need to fill that tool belt of yours with as many words as you can find.
I’ve been writing for 23 years, but I still try to add at least five new words to my tool belt every day. Builders go to Bunnings to find their tools. I go to Rogets.
The ultimate tool for writers! Whether you're crafting the next great American novel or pounding away at a last-minute blog entry, there will come a time in the process when you struggle to find just the perfect word or phrase. Under the time-tested banner of Roget's Thesaurus, this collection will quickly become the most essential tool on your desk when you're working on your next piece. Far from an ordinary word list, each entry in this book is organized by meaning and offers a list of compelling word choices that relate to the ideas you'd like to use. It also…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I am passionate about this topic because I have known far too many dedicated scholars who struggle to write and publish their work. When I ran into trouble writing my dissertation, I didn’t have any help. I was ashamed and embarrassed and found only a handful of books to guide me. That began a lifetime of exploring how and why academic writing can be so challenging for me and for so many others. Today there is much more advice available to struggling academics, in books and online, including individual (and usually too expensive!) writing coaching. But the challenge of actually getting writing done in a demanding and often unsupportive academic environment continues.
This book is most helpful for scholars who worry that they “don’t know the rules” for scholarly writing. The fear of being a clueless newbie can stymie us, especially because there really are unspoken rules in academic writing.
The authors make the structure and norms of scholarly writing clear and accessible, so that hesitant newcomers can recognize them, and then learn how to use them in their own work.
Used and loved by millions of students for its lively and practical advice, this is the book that demystifies academic writing and shows how to engage with the views of others. Extensively revised in response to feedback from our community of adopters, this edition of "They Say / I Say" is an even more practical companion for students, featuring a new chapter on research, new exercises, expanded support for reading and an expanded chapter on Revising.
