A Way With Words: Style in the Age of Artificial Intelligence [Paperback]

A Way with Wordshelps readers learn the essentials of writing. Rather than lecturing about when to usewhoorwhom, this book focuses on writing clear, concise, and lively prose: eliminating wordiness, using active verbs, avoiding run-on sentences. John Marsh applies his experience grading over 5,000 essays over a quarter century as a teacher to take readers through the issues he most commonly sees. While Marsh teaches in the humanities, the advice applies to writing regardless of discipline. 
 
Using examples from papers students might actually write, the book invites readers to apply what they have learned to quizzes that mix and match issues—vague pronouns, sentence fragments, punctuating quotations—from previous chapters. The book includes a thoughtful discussion about balancing the competing demands of writing well and fighting linguistic discrimination. Finally,A Way with Wordsprompts readers to consider what artificial intelligence programs like ChatGPT and Bard will mean for student writing. It offers advice about how writers can distinguish their writing from the assembly-line writing that artificial intelligence tends to generate, and how they can develop their style to stand out to their teachers, employers, and clients.Guiding writers to improve their writing in the age of AIJohn Marshis Professor of English and Director of the Center for American Literary Studies at Pennsylvania State University.

A Way with Words frames the importance of style with effective and persuasive rationales. Not only does Marsh present these rationales, but he also follows his own advice about style throughoutmost importantly by focusing on the reader-writer relationship and cultivating that connection through his own approachable writing style. He addresses common and important topics in writing style from a current perspective and offers effective and relevant advice for writers across many disciplines.