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Books

Several Short Sentences About Writing

Verlyn Klinkenborg · Vintage · 2012
Several Short Sentences About Writing
Curator’s Note
This book broke every rule I knew about writing and rebuilt them from scratch. Klinkenborg’s thesis is simple: most writing problems are thinking problems, and most thinking problems come from writing sentences that are too long. The book itself practices what it preaches — every sentence is a revelation.

This is not a book about grammar. It is not a book about style. It is a book about paying attention to your own thoughts and learning to express them with precision and clarity. Klinkenborg argues that the sentence — not the paragraph, not the chapter, not the book — is the fundamental unit of writing. If your sentences are clear, everything else follows.

The book is structured as a series of short observations about writing, each one building on the last. There are no chapters. There are no exercises. There is only the steady accumulation of insight.

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