Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, 11th Edition

1. A new coauthor,  Joe Bizup of Boston University, created the revision for the 11^th edition.  Joe’s intimate knowledge of Williams’s Style, and the linguistic and rhetorical traditions in which it is grounded, makes him the ideal person to revise the new edition and carry on the book’s unique voice." 

2. The lesson on “Motivating Coherence” and the lesson on  “Global Coherence”  have been moved to become Lessons 7 and 8 respectively. This move continues the trajectory of the last few editions where the importance of global or document-level features of texts was increasingly emphasized. Now, rather than moving from sentence-level to document-level issues, the book follows the logic of its subtitle and proceeds from clarity to grace.

3. Many exercises have been revised--trimming or eliminating some and adding others. Most significantly, Lessons 3 through 12 now end with new exercises, grouped under the heading “In Your Own Words,” that invite writers to work with their own prose, first alone and then with help from readers.

4. In response to readers’ suggestions, some explanations have been streamlined, examples have been updated, and the book’s hallmark “fixed/variable” diagrams are now found in the “Summing Up” section at the end of each lesson. 

5. Throughout the text, there has been careful attention to detail including meticulous line editing to adhere to Joe Williams’ original adage that he  “would never forgive even the smallest infelicity . . . intentionally left behind.”