Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences: A Writer's Guide to Avoiding the Most Common Errors in Grammar and Punctuation | 
 enlarge | Author: Janis Bell
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
Buy New: $13.08
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Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 6992
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 128
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.6 x 0.8
ISBN: 0393067718
Dewey Decimal Number: 428.2
EAN: 9780393067712
ASIN: 0393067718
Publication Date: September 2, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 4 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20090107232017T
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Product Description
Long overdue: a clear, good-humored discussion targeting only the most common errors in American sentences—nothing more.
This is a focused, respectful, entertaining guide to getting our sentences into good shape. After thirty-five years of teaching writing, Janis Bell knows which sentences those are and precisely what ails them. She describes grammar and usage problems in ways that make immediate sense. She explains precisely what our punctuation marks do and won't do. She also answers the very questions that readers are likely to have. Besides being extremely readable and relevant, each chapter offers a challenging quiz followed by answers that leave no doubt. This small, engaging book is for people who know what they want to write and who know English—all they need to hear is what Bell has to say about the gaffes that have crept into their sentences. Equally useful to a ninth-grader and a senior-level manager, Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences is a sweet and timely find.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 Harmonious Use of Words January 2, 2009
I didn't think I would find a grammar and punctuation book too interesting, but I was surprised and pleased to find Janis Bell's book, Clean Well-Lighted Sentences, to be very much so and intriguing too, as well as humorous a long the way. Her confidence on page xiv that she has "seen" my (and your) sentences and "knows where" my (and your) "gaffes live" is well founded. She is the true reader over our shoulders. Some things that I have debated and gone back and forth on for years, she has clarified very simply -- such as when there are two nouns (e.g., people) that own something jointly, "make only the second noun possessive."
Janis Bell's advice is flexible, where, in my opinion, it is appropriate, such as whether to add apostrophe s or just the apostrophe sign to form the possessive of a name ending in "s" (Thomas's or Thomas'). But she is firm where I believe it is important to stand our ground. She has such firmness even where I have just about given up on the usage, such as in her discussion on page 44 of the use of "lend," as follows: "When you allow someone to borrow something, you lend it (not loan it; loan is a noun that refers to what you lent)."
Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences is loosely dense, with lots of rules but with clear explanations for them and room to think about and apply them. There is much in this book that I might have thought about with a foreign language but never with English, such as: "The only time you have to think about singular and plural verb forms is when you're using present tense...." It is new and refreshing to have English explained in these ways, followed by clear examples.
As Janis Bell says, usage is "not always easy to diagnose." An intriguing example is her discussion of the use of "have or has" as present perfect tense versus the use of "had" as past perfect tense. I have used these words all my life but never thought about the choice I was making. I now know that sometimes I get it right based on habit and sound, but in my ignorance I am erratic and careless (but lacking in the proverbial bliss).
I didn't know if people would enjoy receiving a grammar book. But Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences has been popular with those, in all walks of life, to whom I have given it. My daughter Lisa is getting a PhD in Literature at UC San Diego, enjoys teaching English Writing to first and second year college students, and writes poetry and novels. She said she enjoyed this book and learned things from it she was never taught, which will help her in her own teaching. My cousin Mark, who has been a journalist in The U.S. and Lebanon and both a business and government executive in California and Vermont, found Janis Bell's book to be "the best book on the subject that has ever come my way." My brother, Tony, who retired as a letter carrier from the Post Office and lives and reads a lot in Nevada, loved the book, especially the "humor in the quizzes."
I have found the book very helpful in my corporate law practice in Dallas, where I am always looking for ways to make my language more consistently clear, logical, and precise. The book also has helped me in my volunteer work at the library of the new Dallas homeless assistance center, The Bridge. This book is the most taken out of any of the hundreds of books we have at the library, and I will need to provide more copies. Those who are looking for work and hoping for a better year in 2009 need what this book has to offer them, including help for letter and resume writing and help for keeping their minds active and sharp.
I have found that there are many in business and other parts of society who write all the time and yet don't know how to write well. For a lot of us, email seems to have made writing worse. However, I think ultimately email will increase not only the amount of writing but the need and demand for its improved quality in order to allow us to read and understand our mail and function in society. This change is part of the world becoming increasingly complex and more than ever in need of open and clear communication among all people. Language, like other forms of art, can be an equalizing and unifying force. Janis Bell states on page 28: "To ensure both agreement and logic in all your sentences, think of your words as musical notes. They may be clear and beautiful on their own, but are they in harmony with the others? Keep your ears open."
Those in all walks of life have ears. If we keep them open and listen to what we say to each other, including what we say in writing, we may attain harmony that has been escaping us. This change will, however, require that people think about writing. And to accomplish that, we need grammar and punctuation explained clearly, and we need to enjoy the subject. Janis Bell has made a wonderful contribution to meeting these needs.
For all these reasons, I recommend you buy Clean Well-Lighted Sentences for yourself and those you care about.
Jeff Thomas
1803 S. Ervay St.
Dallas, TX 75215
214-533-0114
Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences: A Writer's Guide to Avoiding the Most Common Errors in Grammar and Punctuation
Useful December 28, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a great book for getting answers to all the grammar and usage questions that arise in ordinary writing. (If you think no such questions come up in your own writing, you're almost certainly wrong, and this book will set you straight!) Ms. Bell writes with a gentle flair, using entertaining examples and light humor, so the book is never boring. If, like most people, you can't just sit down with a grammar guide and read it like a novel, you might simply resolve to read a few pages every day. No matter how you take it in, this book will make your writing more pleasant to read.
 Disappointed December 15, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is not as simple as advertised. To me it is a difficult textbook. No help where I wanted it.
 A "lighted" sentence? November 15, 2008
3 out of 14 found this review helpful
The past tense of "to light" is "lit", otherwise it jars the ear as much as "bringed" or "bited" would do. Has American English really declined to that level? "I lighted the fire" sounds like English was not the speaker's mother tongue.
And when I see the author's devotees writing sentences like "I took Janis' class", using a mangled pseudo-possessive form which makes no logical sense at all, I think something has gone horribly wrong. Janis'? How are you supposed to pronounce that?
By the way, for anyone who read what I just wrote and who thinks the commas after "lit" and "class" should have been tucked INSIDE the quotation marks, ask yourself if it really makes sense for the punctuation for the sentence to be treated as part of a quote when it is NOT.
Very good and an easy read October 30, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is a nice book, pleasure reading and learning something that I can use on almost a daily basis. I haven't been in an English class for A LONG TIME but I need to write for work every day. This book has truly helped me to write more clearly and stop making some of the common mistakes a lot of us make and don't even realize we're making. I'm glad I bought it, it has become my desk reference also.
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