For a while there I had a nice, one-chapter-a-night reading pace. As seems to be typical for me, such productive paces are short-lived. I finished the latest section of The Bedford Handbook over a week behind schedule but it proved to be a good read.Part III is subtitled Clear Sentences, and contains eight chapters about non-grammatical pitfalls to avoid when writing sentences. Some chapters cover concepts and skills that I consider writing basics, such as avoiding passive voice, maintaining proper point of view, and utilizing a variety of sentence structures. I did appreciate getting a refresher on parallelism, mixed constructions, and misplaced/dangling modifiers. Those chapters may be worth returning to when I set out to write more than just these update posts.
Part IV’s topic is word choice. Nothing in these three chapters served as a wake-up call to me. I already try to avoid wordy sentences, and I understand the need to adjust tone and language depending on the intended audience of a piece of writing. I did appreciate Chapter 18’s emphasis on using a dictionary for finding exact words, and an admonition against misusing a thesaurus.
I found the most meat to chew on in Part V. In 10 chapters focusing on grammatical sentences, I recognized a few personal growth areas as a writer. I struggled to correct a few of the example and exercise sentences dealing with comma splices, coordinating conjunctions, pronoun case, and subjunctive mood’s impact on verb tenses. While other chapters in Part V were easier for me to work through, I think that all 10 are worth reading again.
My biggest takeaway from this portion of The Bedford Handbook is also a qualm against it. During Part V, I found myself lost at times in a sea of grammatical terminology. Some of those terms I hadn’t seen since high school, while others may never have been taught to me by name. Later in the book, there are four chapters covering grammar basics. The chapters in Part V refer to this future section quite a bit. Considering the extensiveness of these references, why not put grammar basics earlier in the book? Perhaps I’ll find justification for this when I reach Part XI.
Page Count: 390/928 (42.03%)
Countdown to my next update: 132 pages
