Bill Walsh (1) (1961–2017)

Bill Walsh makes it clear that he is a liberal copy editor for the Washington Post...and that's fine. I have no problem reading books written by liberals on how to write propr sentences. But, he won't get a 5 star rating from me because stating his political bias has nothing to do with writing proper sentences, and insulting the right-wing by calling them "kooks" (p. 26) has nothing to do with sentence structure. On the other hand he did use CNN as an example of lying journalists (p. 62). Something we all know but lefts won't ever admit. CNN came to the pinnacle of their lies in 2016 when Donald Trump became President, and they continue to this day.

Times have sure changed since the publishing of this book in 2000, or Bill Walsh was clueless of the facts that mainly left-wing politicians (Democrats) and some Republicans are the ones leading us to a one-world government, not the "right-wing-conspiracy-nut community", as he claims (p. 87). Today, in 2018, the media is following the left, along with the uninformed and the millennials who are attending college today are being indoctrinated with this socialist one-world propaganda. That's why there is such a division and escalating chaos here in America today. Walsh is no longer with us today to see that this transition in the U.S. is true and being lead by the left-wing-conspiracy-nut community. He died March 15, 2017.

Now, see? Wouldn't it have been better had he left out all the jabs towards the people on the right and kept the focus on the proper way of writing sentences? Bill Walsh was known as the "Grammar Geek" of the Washington Post. Regardless, there really are a lot of good writing tips in here. That...I can appreciate!

The Enlish language is forever evolving and sometimes there are no hard and fast rules for phrasing sentences and word use. Some of it is purely editor's preference.

Words are added or removed from dictionaries depending on how often they are used or not. Words can become so popular even if it's wrong. For example: Hacker is really a person who knows commuter programming very well. Cracker is one who looks for ways to criminally break into commuters to steal identities and such. But, somehow someone got away with using the word hacker and it became so popular and is now the word for criminals breaking into computers, and you might even be hard-pressed to even find the original meaning of cracker in today's dictionary because it is politically unacceptable.

Chapter 10, which is the last half of the book, is Bill Walsh's search-and-replace editing style guide of words and phrases he doesn't like to see in newsprint and he gives suggestions on the proper words and phrases to use in its place. A lot of this information can apply to other writings as well. He goes over the subtle play on words, hyphens and punctuations that could slightly change the meaning of a sentence ... some things I never would have thought about.… (mer)