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Revising Prose
As its title implies, this book deals with revising, not with original composition. Stressing the importance of the single sentence, The Paramedic Method of revision provides an easily learned method of revision to combat the obscurities of meaning that plague The Official Style, and demonstrates how to revise this stilted, dense prose into plain English. This book has been used with success wherever extensive writing is required, and also at every level of higher education. Addresses the specific stylistic patterns that characterize most bad writing and gives an eight-step revision method called The Paramedic Method to break those patterns and improve writing. Helps with writing tasks in business, government, and the university, where The Official Style is rampant, and provides an indispensable guide to revising in every writing context. For anyone interested in revising, specifically at the sentence level.
85 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
May 12, 2023
A short book that should have been made shorter.
Honestly, if it wasn't assigned for class, I never would have given Revising Prose a glance. I could have gone blissfully unaware of its existence and felt like nothing was missing. Yes, there are a few good points, but I don't think it needed to be made into a book.
While it offered a few new ideas and suggestions that I hadn't come across before in other writing references, it isn't enough to make me feel like it's anything special.
Honestly, if it wasn't assigned for class, I never would have given Revising Prose a glance. I could have gone blissfully unaware of its existence and felt like nothing was missing. Yes, there are a few good points, but I don't think it needed to be made into a book.
While it offered a few new ideas and suggestions that I hadn't come across before in other writing references, it isn't enough to make me feel like it's anything special.
February 15, 2013
Brilliant and simple. At times it is extremely repetitive, but for a very strong reason. By thirty pages the reader begins to see the purpose of clear writing and the ambiguity and silliness of the Official Style. The Lard Factor is something I will use in my writing classes and workshops. Much advice also prevails throughout, as in the last chapter: "When we object to the prose, we are actually objecting to the habit of thought, the bureaucratic habits of thought and way of life. It is because, paradoxically enough, the style is so clear, so successfully communicates a style of life, that we so feel its emotional impoverishment" (5th edition, p 132). This book is a must for any writer at any level and should be taught in writing classes across the country. It also makes a great companion to The Elements of Style by Strunk and White.
October 5, 2019
Come for the concrete methods to improve your writing, stay for the exploration of prose style & the self.
“Writing, properly pursued, does not make you better. It makes you more alive.”
“Writing, properly pursued, does not make you better. It makes you more alive.”
February 27, 2024
Lots of the advice isn't so good, the examples not so egregious, the improvements not always unalloyed. But I liked the last chapter, and the ethos of the book. I don't know the edition I read.
November 3, 2007
I'm teaching a writing workshop at a tiny high school and am surprised at how much of the students' work is in 'Offical Style'(Lanham's term): passive, laden with needless words and thin on ideas. This book is offers ways to combat such writing.
September 10, 2008
This volume plus my 11th grade/College Comp teacher pretty much taught me all I know about writing well.
Any edition is highly recommended.
Any edition is highly recommended.
Read
September 17, 2024Revising Prose advises writers how to revise sentences and passages. Richard A. Lanham offers his Paramedic Method, an analogy to first responders, to guide writers through 8 steps to revise sentences:
1. Circle the prepositions.
2. Circle the "is" forms
3. Ask, "Where's the action?" "Who's kicking who?"
4. Put this central action in a simple active verb.
5. Start fast—no slow wind-ups.
6. Write out each sentence on a blank screen or sheet of paper and mark off its basic rhythmic units with a "/".
7. Mark off sentence lengths in the passage with a big "/" between sentences.
8. Read the passage aloud with emphasis and feeling
The method discourages the "is" construction and strings of prepositional phrases. Richard A. Lanham describes the "Official Style," which is the same kind of self conscious and wordy writing that Strunk and White's The Elements of Style warns against. He calculates a "Lard Factor" which is the percent reduction in words after revision, aiming to reduce your count by one third to one half. The final chapters address the shape of writing, the length of sentences and editing with computers.
The book shows you how to write sentences that readers can understand. Revising Prose boils down to eliminating propositional phrase strings, eliminating "is" forms, putting the subject and verb near the beginning of the sentence, varying sentence lengths to create rhythm. and reading what you have written out loud as a check on how it sounds. It's a short book, and I recommend it to anyone that wants to improve their writing.
1. Circle the prepositions.
2. Circle the "is" forms
3. Ask, "Where's the action?" "Who's kicking who?"
4. Put this central action in a simple active verb.
5. Start fast—no slow wind-ups.
6. Write out each sentence on a blank screen or sheet of paper and mark off its basic rhythmic units with a "/".
7. Mark off sentence lengths in the passage with a big "/" between sentences.
8. Read the passage aloud with emphasis and feeling
The method discourages the "is" construction and strings of prepositional phrases. Richard A. Lanham describes the "Official Style," which is the same kind of self conscious and wordy writing that Strunk and White's The Elements of Style warns against. He calculates a "Lard Factor" which is the percent reduction in words after revision, aiming to reduce your count by one third to one half. The final chapters address the shape of writing, the length of sentences and editing with computers.
The book shows you how to write sentences that readers can understand. Revising Prose boils down to eliminating propositional phrase strings, eliminating "is" forms, putting the subject and verb near the beginning of the sentence, varying sentence lengths to create rhythm. and reading what you have written out loud as a check on how it sounds. It's a short book, and I recommend it to anyone that wants to improve their writing.
August 17, 2021
This is a short book, and yet it could be even shorter. The author mostly spends his time, the last half of the book, trying to convince us to abandon, or revise away, what he calls the Official Style - that nouny, full-of-prepositional-phrases style used by bureaucrats and academics which ultimately hides or makes it difficult to understand what the author really wants to say. He's spot on, of course, and his instruction in the first half of the book should be followed as part of any revision process. Still, this could have been a pamphlet, or even a one- to two-page handout rather than a whole book (that is in its FOURTH edition - who is actually assigning this book? Just teach it!)
May 14, 2017
Writing is tough, reading can be tougher. Especially if it is official prose, defined by by being too long, and too hard to understand.
Revising Prose elegantly describes the importance of writong in a human voice.
Back in grammar classes at uni, this book would have been a blessing to have had, rather than the books we had.
If you do any writing in you life, do yourself a favor and read this book.
Revising Prose elegantly describes the importance of writong in a human voice.
Back in grammar classes at uni, this book would have been a blessing to have had, rather than the books we had.
If you do any writing in you life, do yourself a favor and read this book.
April 16, 2021
Lanham presents a clear and easy to follow guide on revising any writing. There are some drawbacks, however. He focuses on using the impersonal 'you' in almost any sentence that needs a general agent, a practice that can get grating after some time. Lanham is able to present his method with minimal high-level grammatical concepts, and in only ~130 pages. If you need a crash-course introduction, this is a great choice.
January 6, 2019
This is far and away one of the best books on writing you could ever hope to read. I find myself referring to it and recommending it frequently.
April 24, 2019
Powerful and useful ideas. Well worth the read-through for me.
Read
July 21, 2020didnt read the book yet but looks interesting
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 10, 2020
Very tedious at first if you have revised your own and others’ writing extensively already, but gets more useful and entertaining around 20% in.
Read
January 14, 2021Pragmatic writing advice with excellent examples
Read
January 3, 2024This book will ruin your academic reading at the expense of making you a better writer.
November 17, 2013
The fifth edition of Richard Lanham’s Revising Prose (Pearson, 2007) is animated by a single purpose: to demonstrate how to diagnose and revise the “Official Style.” By Official Style, Lanham refers to the obtuse, jargon-laden prose that animates writing in the business world and the academy. Lanham believes the ubiquity of the Official Style is a product of imitation rather than laziness. Writers communicate ineffectively because they mimic the patterns other writers employ. But Lanham is out to fix this.
Revising Prose offers readers eight steps (“The Paramedic Method”) to identify and amend Official Style. These steps are outlined in the text, and appear prominently on the final page of the book’s preface. (Lanham suggests you might, “Copy it and tack it above your desk for easy reference” [viii]). The steps of the Paramedic Method are as follows:
1. Circle the prepositions.
2. Circle the “is” forms.
3. Find the action.
4. Put this action in a simple (not compound) active verb.
5. Start fast—no slow windups.
6. Read the passage aloud with emphasis and feeling.
7. Write out each sentence on a blank screen or sheet of paper and mark off its basic rhythmic units with a “/.”
8. Mark off sentence length with a “/.” (x)
The first three chapters of Revising Prose walk readers through these steps, primarily through attention to individual sentences. (Indeed, only the step lends to looking at a unit longer than a sentence.) From here, Lanham focuses on examples of Official Style in various arenas: “Business Prose” (Chapter 5), “Professional Prose”—which covers both lawyers and academics—(Chapter 6), and “Electronic Prose” (Chapter 7). Of these chapters, it was the latter that felt most out of place. Lanham tries to illuminate how electronic prose transforms the capacity to revise things visually. However, his examples didn’t always persuade me, and his suggestion that digital environments hearken a world in which all prose might be transformed felt a bit determinist.
Nonetheless, in all of these chapters, Lanham provides plentiful examples alongside clear and concise revisions. Moreover, he narrates the thought process underlying his revisions in a way that is easy to follow. Lanham’s narration is both helpful and necessary. The Paramedic Method, clear as it might be, does far more to identify patterns than it offers solutions. However, when coupled with Lanham’s explicitly stated reasoning, readers not only understand how the Method operates, but also how they can use it to begin the revision process.
Lanham’s reasoning is equally clear and even more compelling in the book’s final chapter, “Why Bother?” Lanham takes seriously the implications of style. Of course, he offers pragmatic reasons for why we would want to write shorter, simpler sentences (i.e., saving paper, saving time). But he’s more interested in the theoretical implications of writing, generally, and style, in particular. As Lanham puts it:
Writing clarifies, strengthens, and energizes the self, renders individuality rich, full, and social. This does not mean writing that flows, as Terry Southern immortally put it, “right out of the old guts onto the goddamn paper.” Precisely the opposite. Only by taking the position of the reader toward one’s own prose, putting a reader’s pressure on it, can the self be made to grow into full sociability. Writing should enhance and expand the self, allow it to try out new possibilities, tentative selves. (129)
Given such an understanding of writing, style becomes a means of expressing a particular political attitude toward ourselves and toward society. In other words, Lanham understands his approach to style is evaluative. All approaches to style are. But when embraced, Lanham’s style values coherence over chaos, understanding over obfuscation. Will there be situations in which imitation or adoption of a different style might be called for? Yes. But I’m with Lanham when he suggests that we may as well have the facility to write both ways, and that writing more clearly will only become more valuable as attention becomes scarcer. Revising Prose presents excellent steps for beginning to write with such clarity, particularly at the sentence level. And as Lanham’s ubiquitous and far-ranging examples attest, it’s a volume that’s relevant to various professions and ages.
Revising Prose offers readers eight steps (“The Paramedic Method”) to identify and amend Official Style. These steps are outlined in the text, and appear prominently on the final page of the book’s preface. (Lanham suggests you might, “Copy it and tack it above your desk for easy reference” [viii]). The steps of the Paramedic Method are as follows:
1. Circle the prepositions.
2. Circle the “is” forms.
3. Find the action.
4. Put this action in a simple (not compound) active verb.
5. Start fast—no slow windups.
6. Read the passage aloud with emphasis and feeling.
7. Write out each sentence on a blank screen or sheet of paper and mark off its basic rhythmic units with a “/.”
8. Mark off sentence length with a “/.” (x)
The first three chapters of Revising Prose walk readers through these steps, primarily through attention to individual sentences. (Indeed, only the step lends to looking at a unit longer than a sentence.) From here, Lanham focuses on examples of Official Style in various arenas: “Business Prose” (Chapter 5), “Professional Prose”—which covers both lawyers and academics—(Chapter 6), and “Electronic Prose” (Chapter 7). Of these chapters, it was the latter that felt most out of place. Lanham tries to illuminate how electronic prose transforms the capacity to revise things visually. However, his examples didn’t always persuade me, and his suggestion that digital environments hearken a world in which all prose might be transformed felt a bit determinist.
Nonetheless, in all of these chapters, Lanham provides plentiful examples alongside clear and concise revisions. Moreover, he narrates the thought process underlying his revisions in a way that is easy to follow. Lanham’s narration is both helpful and necessary. The Paramedic Method, clear as it might be, does far more to identify patterns than it offers solutions. However, when coupled with Lanham’s explicitly stated reasoning, readers not only understand how the Method operates, but also how they can use it to begin the revision process.
Lanham’s reasoning is equally clear and even more compelling in the book’s final chapter, “Why Bother?” Lanham takes seriously the implications of style. Of course, he offers pragmatic reasons for why we would want to write shorter, simpler sentences (i.e., saving paper, saving time). But he’s more interested in the theoretical implications of writing, generally, and style, in particular. As Lanham puts it:
Writing clarifies, strengthens, and energizes the self, renders individuality rich, full, and social. This does not mean writing that flows, as Terry Southern immortally put it, “right out of the old guts onto the goddamn paper.” Precisely the opposite. Only by taking the position of the reader toward one’s own prose, putting a reader’s pressure on it, can the self be made to grow into full sociability. Writing should enhance and expand the self, allow it to try out new possibilities, tentative selves. (129)
Given such an understanding of writing, style becomes a means of expressing a particular political attitude toward ourselves and toward society. In other words, Lanham understands his approach to style is evaluative. All approaches to style are. But when embraced, Lanham’s style values coherence over chaos, understanding over obfuscation. Will there be situations in which imitation or adoption of a different style might be called for? Yes. But I’m with Lanham when he suggests that we may as well have the facility to write both ways, and that writing more clearly will only become more valuable as attention becomes scarcer. Revising Prose presents excellent steps for beginning to write with such clarity, particularly at the sentence level. And as Lanham’s ubiquitous and far-ranging examples attest, it’s a volume that’s relevant to various professions and ages.
January 5, 2011
I've been using Lanham's "Revising Prose" video (now available on DVD) in my university writing classes for years--it's a bit clunky, but entertaining and lucid. In a nutshell, it provides a concise, powerful method for evaluating and improving sentence clarity and structure, thereby remedying the "official style" (the convoluted and murky sentences typical of passive-voice constructions modified by strings of prepositional phrases). The book is essentially an extended and supplemented explanation of the revision strategy Lanham calls (in both his book and DVD) the 'Paramedic Method,' which entails the following 8 steps:
1. Identify the prepositions in a sentence, then eliminate as many as possible by replacing them with possessives, by avoiding redundancy, etc.
2. identify the passive verbs
3. Find the expressed or implied action
4. Restate the action with an active verb
5. Rewrite the sentence with a fast start, avoiding mindless introductions
6. Read the sentence aloud with emphasis and feeling
7. Mark off the sentence's basic rhythmic units, eliminating "laundry list" formulations and repeated sentence patterns
8. Count the words in the sentence and try to reduce them by half
The weakness of "Revising Prose" is a direct consequence of its strength--it is the very essence of simplicity. Its eight steps are easy to apply and easy to remember. It also limits itself to sentence revision, rather than paragraph or text revision. In fact, "Revising Prose" is more a concision rubric than a style handbook. Hence, it provides neither the detail nor the scope of books like Joseph Williams' "Style: A Lesson in Clarity and Grace" (which I highly recommend, by the way). Nevertheless, since Lanham's book performs its chosen task superbly, it constitutes a fine addition to any library of writing improvement materials and will no doubt prove helpful to any writer. My only reason for downgrading the rating from 5 to 4 stars is the ridiculous price of the 5th edition, which is unfortunately typical of Longman titles.
1. Identify the prepositions in a sentence, then eliminate as many as possible by replacing them with possessives, by avoiding redundancy, etc.
2. identify the passive verbs
3. Find the expressed or implied action
4. Restate the action with an active verb
5. Rewrite the sentence with a fast start, avoiding mindless introductions
6. Read the sentence aloud with emphasis and feeling
7. Mark off the sentence's basic rhythmic units, eliminating "laundry list" formulations and repeated sentence patterns
8. Count the words in the sentence and try to reduce them by half
The weakness of "Revising Prose" is a direct consequence of its strength--it is the very essence of simplicity. Its eight steps are easy to apply and easy to remember. It also limits itself to sentence revision, rather than paragraph or text revision. In fact, "Revising Prose" is more a concision rubric than a style handbook. Hence, it provides neither the detail nor the scope of books like Joseph Williams' "Style: A Lesson in Clarity and Grace" (which I highly recommend, by the way). Nevertheless, since Lanham's book performs its chosen task superbly, it constitutes a fine addition to any library of writing improvement materials and will no doubt prove helpful to any writer. My only reason for downgrading the rating from 5 to 4 stars is the ridiculous price of the 5th edition, which is unfortunately typical of Longman titles.
February 22, 2010
Lanham's Revising Prose is short and to the point. His method is clear and logical, and it's easy to see what he's trying to help readers avoid. The Official Style, as he styles it, is the way textbooks, school reports, and far too many academic works are written. It is noun-centered, and uses many prepositional phrases and passive constructions to mask its meaning. His analysis in the final chapter of why the Official Style has arisen and why it is bad is particularly well written. He seems to have had a very keen intellect.
I would recommend this for anyone uncomfortable with their prose, as I was. I feel like I don't make many of the more overt mistakes he discusses, although I'm sure my style leans more toward the Official Style than I'd like. But it has given me a place to start, a way to think about my writing that no previous tutor, class, or book has given me. It's short and worth its time.
"If you want to write well, you've got to read widely and with attention. It is just like life. If you don't pay attention, you'll give yourself away. The small mistakes are often the largest."
I would recommend this for anyone uncomfortable with their prose, as I was. I feel like I don't make many of the more overt mistakes he discusses, although I'm sure my style leans more toward the Official Style than I'd like. But it has given me a place to start, a way to think about my writing that no previous tutor, class, or book has given me. It's short and worth its time.
"If you want to write well, you've got to read widely and with attention. It is just like life. If you don't pay attention, you'll give yourself away. The small mistakes are often the largest."
July 28, 2011
Revising Prose is a handbook-cum-manifesto for clear yet carefully constructed prose, in opposition to 'Office Style' bureaucrat speak that has invaded academia. While Derrida and a handful of others have made a poetic virtue of a certain disorderly approach to prose, most such authors (including Derrida's imitators) are disastrous prose thinkers. I write 'thinker' rather than 'stylist' because Lanham argues for prose as an indication of one's thought, and indeed one of the effects of the 'Official Style' is the covering up of vapid thought with fluttery prose. The chapter on 'electronic literacy' seems a bit naive, but my edition is from 2000 so this is to be expected. The handbook section outlines Lanham's 'paramedic method' of prose revision, which is sound, simple, and artfully explained.
March 8, 2007
When I was first introduced to Richard Lanham's ideas about prose early on in college, my own ideas about writing were pretty adolescent. And he was like a lightbulb. Returning to it now, in a 2007 fifth edition, I find some nice interesting comments about writing in the electronic age, but basically think Lanham's saying the same main (and good) point, whether he's talking about business prose, academic prose, electronic prose, or anything else. And those ideas aren't all that revelatory (use active voice, avoid prepositions, vary your sentences--hello George Orwell!).
So this book is a good read for people who need their eyes opened to those sorts of things, and it has a few useful exercises for sentence revision, but not nearly as much as I expected.
So this book is a good read for people who need their eyes opened to those sorts of things, and it has a few useful exercises for sentence revision, but not nearly as much as I expected.
July 31, 2015
Каждый образованный человек в России владеет по крайней мере двумя языками: русским "домашним" и русским "официальным", "канцеляритом". Ученый и бизнесмен, полицейский и податель жалобы, стремясь выглядеть профессионально, подчиняют себя канонам официальной речи. Поначалу это сложно, но забавно: разговор про обыкновенные вещи необыкновенным языком. Затем легко, но скучно: торжественная речь, которую вместо тебя мог бы произнести кто угодно. "Взамодействие" вместо "беседы".
Тем, кто кроме двух русских языков, владеет еще и английским, книга Ричарда Лэнгема поможет говорить на работе своим собственным голосом. Подробный разбор того, как редактировать английский канцелярит, даст много идей тому, кто хотел бы разучиться говорить на канцелярите русском.
Тем, кто кроме двух русских языков, владеет еще и английским, книга Ричарда Лэнгема поможет говорить на работе своим собственным голосом. Подробный разбор того, как редактировать английский канцелярит, даст много идей тому, кто хотел бы разучиться говорить на канцелярите русском.
September 17, 2007
One of the most gratifying results of reading this book by Richard Lanham as to how to write better is that I feel that I now can write well, with a better understanding of rhythm and .... only kidding ;-)
I enjoyed this little book about revising prose. As the title indicates, it's not about writing prose, but about revision. It's rule based, at the sentence level, has plenty of examples, pummels the hazy "official style" and will help you produce prose with clear actions and rollicking rhythms.
I am hungry for more. I'd like a more expansive book on prose, written in this style with plenty of examples. Recommendations?
I enjoyed this little book about revising prose. As the title indicates, it's not about writing prose, but about revision. It's rule based, at the sentence level, has plenty of examples, pummels the hazy "official style" and will help you produce prose with clear actions and rollicking rhythms.
I am hungry for more. I'd like a more expansive book on prose, written in this style with plenty of examples. Recommendations?
September 25, 2008
Is there a fifth edition? WOW. It's still popular. It's kind of an old book: first edition published in 1979. But it's light reading; you can read within two hours. For me, it was very convinient since the public library has only one copy, and it was a reference book. However, this book provides a lot of excellent information for all kind of writers.
October 26, 2013
This is my favorite book on revision. Lanham pinpoints very common writing errors and provides easily understandable steps to fix them. I appreciate his many, many examples on how to implement his advice. His final chapter on the WHY of good writing is inspiring as much as the HOW described in the rest of the book. A concise powerhouse!
January 5, 2016
This was great. Not only did Lanham present good information (needed information) and techniques, he did so in a very entertaining manner. He makes some excellent points about writing and the majority of his book is on revising the Offical Style, and writing in plain English that is clear and understandable.
December 21, 2007
This too-often ignored book gives some surprisingly simple and straightforward ways to improve prose after it has been drafted. Anyone, even the ordinary non-writer, can benefit from reading this book and applying its insights to their own writing.
April 21, 2008
This too-often ignored book gives some surprisingly simple and straightforward ways to improve prose after it has been drafted. Anyone, even the ordinary non-writer, can benefit from reading this book and applying its insights to their own writing.
June 26, 2010
This book shows you how to take the "blah blah blah" out of your sentences and write with impact. So many people use longwinded prose to sound smart, but we all know it's boring as hell to read. Writing is about communication, so be kind to your readers.
Want to read
November 27, 2009For when 'someday' arrives..
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