Leaving aside the grammatical licence taken with the title, this is a good book to have in one's armoury. We writers are always being told to cut out superfluous detail and extraneous words, but it's not always easy to do so.

The reason is that we often don't even realise we're doing it. For example, I was going to start this article by saying:

"I was walking around a used book store when I came across this little gem that I think will be really useful."

But then I read this, from Write Tight:

"In today's newspaper... one story began: 'I remember the Friday afternoon I first made the acquaintance of Tony.' How nice. Is this a story about the author, a personal essay? No. It's a roundup article listing the various Cincinnati ethnic groceries, one of which Tony runs. So why is the first word we read I? Why is the first character we meet I? Why is I standing in the way of what readers want to see?"

Oops!

See what I mean?

With chapter titles like "Sixteen types of wordiness and how to trim them", "Testing your writing for flab" and "A Baedeker of the Redundant", the book tackles verbosity relentlessly. Fortunately, the author's writing style is jaunty enough to not make one feel an utter failure!

From what I've read so far, I recommend this book, but with one caveat. The version I bought is an older edition. There is a later edition, whose chapter headings are the same, but whose contents I haven't actually read. To buy the later edition, here's the link: Write Tight. (Amazon affiliate link.)