Legendary writing coach Jack Hart spent twenty-six years at the Oregonian and has taught students and professionals of all stripes, including bloggers, podcasters, and more than one Pulitzer Prize winner. Good writing, he says, has the same basic attributes regardless of genre or medium. Wordcraft shares Hart’s techniques for achieving those attributes in one of the most broadly useful writing books ever written. Originally published in 2006 as A Writer’s Coach, the book has been updated to address the needs of writers well beyond print journalists. Hart breaks the writing process into a series of manageable steps, from idea to polishing. Filled with real-world examples, both good and bad, Wordcraft shows how to bring such characteristics as force, brevity, clarity, rhythm, and color to any kind of writing. Wordcraft now functions as a set with the second edition of Hart’s book Storycraft, on the art of storytelling, also available from Chicago.

In Wordcraft, Alex Frankel, a business writer who once briefly worked as a namer, tells the story of how five major brands got their names: BlackBerry, Accenture, Viagra, the Porsche Cayenne, and IBM’s “e-business.” Behind each name is an account of how words and language infuse the products we use every day with meaning, and how great words actually succeed in changing people’s behavior. The book is filled with stories about words that come from every corner of our world: technology, health, sports, food, business, and more.

This dictionary and thesaurus makes accessible the core vocabulary relating to Anglo-Saxon life and culture. Words in the dictionary are encoded for easy cross-reference to the thesaurus which has over fifty headings, such as art, church, evil, kin, time, warfare, wealth and so on.

America's most influential writing teacher offers an engaging and practical guide to effective short-form writing. In How to Write Short, Roy Peter Clark turns his attention to the art of painting a thousand pictures with just a few words. Short forms of writing have always existed-from ship logs and telegrams to prayers and haikus. But in this ever-changing Internet age, short-form writing has become an essential skill. Clark covers how to write effective and powerful titles, headlines, essays, sales pitches, Tweets, letters, and even self-descriptions for online dating services. With examples from the long tradition of short-form writing in Western culture, How to Write Short guides writers to crafting brilliant prose, even in 140 characters.

Jack Hart, master writing coach and former managing editor of the Oregonian, has guided several Pulitzer Prize–winning narratives to publication. Since its publication in 2011, his book Storycraft has become the definitive guide to crafting narrative nonfiction. This is the book to read to learn the art of storytelling as embodied in the work of writers such as David Grann, Mary Roach, Tracy Kidder, and John McPhee. In this new edition, Hart has expanded the book’s range to delve into podcasting and has incorporated new insights from recent research into storytelling and the brain. He has also added dozens of new examples that illustrate effective narrative nonfiction. This edition of Storycraft is also paired with Wordcraft, a new incarnation of Hart’s earlier book A Writer’s Coach, now also available from Chicago.

(Limelight). Written for readers who have a passion for Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Wordcraft takes a comprehensive look at Shakespeare's stellar use of language devices throughout his plays, devices he used to ink memorable lines like these: * I must be cruel only to be kind * Fair is foul, and foul is fair * Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more! * Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears! In a clear, accessible, non-academic style using plain terms, modern quotes, and several thousand examples Shakespeare's Wordcraft deftly reveals how these lasting lines were not accidental or coincidental, but designed and crafted by a master of the word.

Animals. They are our friends, our teachers, our companions, our family. However, living life in a household where various species interact moment by moment is not always easy.Long-time professional animal communicator, Gayle Nastasi, helps people to overcome problems with their animal friends every day. In Through Their Eyes, she presents common problems that pet owners face, from a different perspective -- the animal's own.Follow specific situations, real-life examples, and excerpts from Gayle's free email newsletter, as you learn to see pet problems from the pet's point of view. As you learn to view things from your animal's viewpoint, you will not only understand them better, you will deepen the wonderful relationship you already have with them.As a bonus, readers will enjoy some of the author's own animal photography, interspersed between the pages.