If you write legal documents for a nonlegal audience, you must have this book. It is written the way legal documents for consumers ought to be written: clearly, precisely, and succinctly. And it will teach you how to do it. The techniques and insights it offers are golden.

The one and only book I came across, which gives a good insight into the technique of accurate and precise writing.

Alas, another out-of-print gem by Rudolf Flesch! With pretentious, abstract writing cluttering so many scholarly journals today, writers (and readers) need Flesch's wisdom more than ever. He once wrote: "The secret of clear writing is not found in rules--where to put commas and periods, what words to use, how to make an outline. Things don't work that way. To write well, you must think well; you must have the itch for reality--for people, bicycles, sailing ships, beer mugs, Diesel engines, dolls, marbles, squirrels, and women's hats." Flesch's advice on how to gain mental flexibility is priceless. His criticism of senseless, abstract writing ("using words to make ideas conform") should be required reading in schools. This book has fascinating chapters about elementary statistics, Gestalt psychology, cultural anthropology, formal logic, and the mind/body dualism. And his writing is--as Flesch fans have come to expect--highly readable and entertaining.
If you are an aspiring writer, do yourself a favor: Track down a precious, used copy of this book; buy it; keep it by your bedside; read it slowly; and read it often.

Rudolf Flesch was a genius. And when he wrote this book--his masterpiece--he was, as writer and thinker, at the height of his powers. Perhaps we need Flesch more today, with gobbledygook and "bureaucrateese" infecting so much prose. Only a few other advocates of clear writing--William Zinnser, E. B. White--model clear writing as well, and with as much warmth and humor, as Flesch.
I have read no other document that has helped me more to improve my writing (and thinking). His chapter on punctuation is an outburst of genius--the most helpful introduction to the use of punctuation marks I have ever seen; the chapter on specificity is one I come back to again and again.
Perhaps this is his most personal book: we learn of his enthusiasm for information theory and the Socratic method of teaching; we also learn his controversial opinions about progressive education, "correct" grammar, the "great books" project, vocabulary building, and the uses (and misuses) of readability tests.
Flesch's stimulating, provocative ideas are as valid today as they were 50 years ago. The fact that this book is out of print is nothing less than a crime against the English language!

I read A New Guide to Better Writing when I was in college. It was a lifesaver. This is the best writing guide for students, period.

This is another of my favorite books that I found so useful, as a teacher. One on one I taught children who were poor readers learn how easy and fun reading really could be. Their reading, spelling, other schoolwork and their attitude towards themselves improved quickly. Flesch's attack on the Boston school district and the method reading was taught(kid sees picture of cow, associates it with "cow" and can now read the word cow without the need to learn the phonetic sounds of the letters and letter combinations first). At that time his views were concedered far from 'politically correct'. Many teachers, after reading his book, pushed for abandoning this new "revelation" in reading. This brought us back to phonics. I have also purchesed his later book, "Why Johnny Still Can't Read". I'm looking forward to reading it too,

"Why Johnny Can't Read" is the "bible" of the phonics movement -- the book that started the "reading wars." In this classic expose, Rudolph Flesch reveals that since the 1920's, phonics instruction (sounding out words) has been absent from most U.S. classrooms. Because students are taught to guess instead of sound out words, Johnny and millions of other children over the decades can't read. He includes a basic phonics primer in the book, which will help you teach your child to read.

I have an old copy of this book that I had to purchase many years ago for a college education class on reading. Although I sold or gave away most of my other textbooks, I hung onto this particular book because it made such a lasting impression on me. Now that I am beginning to homeschool my son I am very happy that the book showed me the pitfalls of "sight-learning" of words. Even before I had a child I knew that if I ever did I would want them to learn to read with the phonics-method. What I did not remember was that the book had a reading primer in the back. That money I spent nearly ten years ago was quite a great investment especially now that I could probably teach my child to read with its primer alone.

Flesch wrote this book after teaching a course on business writing for 25 years. As you might expect, he has a lot to say, and his tips on writing are always provocative and helpful. Unfortunately, this book is not as well-written as most of his other books. His punctuation marks are basically restricted to periods, commas, and an occasional question mark; I miss the brilliant, creative display of colons and semicolons--the rhythmic variety--so prevalent in his earlier books. And his sentences are often unnecessarily short and sometimes downright klutzy. My impression is that he was more interested in passing on useful information than on presenting a model of readable, elegant prose. The sparkle in his earlier books simply isn't present here. Still, Flesch's insights in this book--the distilation of his career as a writing teacher--are certainly worthy of study.

I consider this book the definative work on business writing. It tells you how to inform your reader of the facts without confusion or euphemisms. Delivering the message and keeping the point of the message in focus are the reasons this book succeeds where others fail.

``Why Johnny STILL can't read'' is even better than the original work, ``Why johnny can't read''.

The first book was mainly a primer on phonic reading, with enough about the phonics debate to justify following his program. The second book is devoted exclusively to the ongoing debate about phonics, and makes for fascinating reading--especially if you get steamed by incompetence, and are fascinated by conflict.

Some thirty years after the first book was written, Rudolph Flesch observes that things haven't improved in reading class. Kids still get through school functionally illiterate, and the perpetrators of this crime still claim that we need THEM to solve the problem.

Too bad it's out of print! Well worth reading.

The ABC's Of Style (despite its clever, funny subtitle--A word diet for the verbally overweight) is a rather dense work, overstuffed with examples of good and bad usage; Flesch often drowns the simple points he tries to make. Although this book is, perhaps, his most conservative work, the ideas in it are worth studying. If you like Strunk and White's The Elements of Style--another conservative book in which the authors try to uphold standard English usage--you will probably benefit from this book. On the other hand, you might want to read Flesch's How To Be Brief, which, in my opinion, is a more enjoyable and user-friendly style book.