Write Tight: Say Exactly What You Mean with Precision and Power [Paperback]

Foreword
Introduction: A Tight Fit Into Today’s World

1. The Four Levels of Wordiness and How to Tackle Them: Learn the secrets of idea selection, manuscript planning, writing to feed into the manuscript’s focus, and trimming and revising.

2. Sixteen Types of Wordiness and How to Trim Them: Specific advice on identifying and eliminating common wordweeds, including the affected, the circuitous, the empty, the evasive, and many others.

3. Prewriting Tight: Tips on keeping your writing concise even at the
first-draft stage.

4. Testing Your Writing for Flab: Verbal aerobics to trim your writing into shape.

5. The Danger Signs of Wordiness: Keys to verbal vigilance-how to spot little problems in your writing that could signal bigger problems.

6. Exercises for Developing Your Awareness of Concision: A variety of methods for loosening and tightening your prose.

7. Reducing the Mental Length of Your Manuscript: What to do when your writing is slow (or just seems to be).

8. Nonverbal Streamlining: Physical elements such as sidebars, subheads, and checklists can trim your prose to improve readability.

9. How Tight Is Too Tight?: How and when to loosen up to preserve clarity, emphasis, and flow without risking wordiness.

10. Putting It All Together: Writing Light: Pulling triggers in your reader’s brain. Learn how to rely on what your reader already knows.

11. Tips for Trimming During Manuscript Revision:Recollection in tranquility can help you spot the wordiness that creeps in during the early writing stages.

12. Shave and a Haircut and a Few Bits:A potpourri of do’s and don’ts to keep your writing at fighting weight.

Bibliography and Sources
Appendix: A Baedeker of the Redundant
Apologia
Index
About the Author