From the author of "Why Johnny Can't Read" and other classic works on effective communication comes this handy volume, Compact enough for easy reading (in itself a hallmark to good writing) and large enough to cover the subject with sufficient depth.
Dr. Flesch has written on effective communication - reading, writing, and listening - long before it became fashionable, including his critique of how it is taught in our nation's schools. (In the latter respect, Dr. Flesch is roughly contemporary with John Holt and predates the Reagan Administration's politically motivated school bashing by a decade.)
I personally have used Dr. Flesch's commonsense approaches to effective communication in adult-education classes I have taught.
Starting with Pliny's famous apology for writing a long letter because he did not have time to make it shorter, Dr. Flesch shows, step-by-step, how to compose an effective letter, memo, or report, starting with overcoming writer's block and moving on to effective organization, on to how to avoid cliche's, overly long words, and unclear expressions (Hint: Never write something you would not put into words if you were speaking to the recipient were he or she next to you.), and onto effective editing and revising, a boring but very necessary final step. Most helpful to the reader are Dr. Flesch's many examples of effective and ineffective writing.
In the second part of this book, Dr. Flesch offers specific advice on the following: How to write for busy readers, how to say it with statistics, how to test readability, and how to raise readability. He concludes with a quick self-test; after all, this book is about reflecting on how you as a writer or speaker can convey your message so others will listen and act.