Writers’ Mistakes: A Handbook of Common Blunders and Ways to Mend Them

Writers want readers to understand what they’re writing. Too often our writings can leave readers baffled or misled as to what we want them to know. Writers’ Mistakes: A Handbook of Common Blunders and Ways to Mend Them is a comprehensive guide that shows how confusing examples from literature, newspapers, and other writings could be made easier to understand. It offers hints on how to avoid words, phrases, usages, and common mistakes that obscure intended meanings. It shows how to keep from distracting or annoying readers with what they see as grammatical lapses. This book teaches what to weed out so that our writings cannot be misunderstood.

Franklin Olmsted, a successful criminal defense attorney, served on Maryland’s Commission to Revise the Annotated Code for many years and was instrumental in modernizing and making the statutes more understandable. The vast majority of the Commission’s recommendations were voted into law and Mr. Olmsted, for his expert editorial review work, was named an ＂Admiral of the Chesapeake Bay＂ by Governor Harry Hughes.