How to Not Write Baduses this basic tenet - what Ben Yagoda calls "not-writing-badly" - to illustrate how we can all write better, clearer, and for a wider readership. Yagoda offers advice on crafting sentences that are correct in terms of spelling, diction, punctuation, and grammar and that display clarity, precision, and grace. He then moves on to the art of constructing whole paragraphs-focusing on cadence, consistency of tone, word repetition, sentence transitions, and length. In a fun, comprehensive guide, Yagoda lays out the simple steps that we all can take to make our writing more effective, more interesting-and just plain better. As "lolspeak" and texts take over our linguistic consciousness, Yagoda emphasizes the lost art of grammar and the well-constructed sentence. He provides clear grammatical rules to help students and writers everywhere write better; this is a book for anyone who wants to improve his or her writing.