Words fail me: What everyone who writes should know about writing by Patricia T O'Conner

O'Connor writes in an entertaining and light style about fairly heavy matters, such as the activation of verbs, the pruning of modifiers, splitting infinitives, capturing emotion and the passive voice. I found her chapters on preparing for the writing process more useful than the chapters on the mechanics of writing itself, but this is an entirely subjective view and both parts of the process are covered in a decent amount of detail. This book is not for those who are already decent writers. If you know that your writing is failing, O'Connor will be useful but only if you have the ability to self-assess which errors you are committing. Use her as a resource book while writing or editing, rather than a cover-to-cover read.