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This book is about writing, ordinary technical writing. In this context the injunction of the title is right on the mark. If you have never written before (or even if you have, but are yet to get glowing tributes about the clarity of your writing) this is a book that would be worth investing some time with before you write your next article, manual or book. Mind you, I am not happy with all the advice and examples in the book. For example the authors sometimes get so focused on one aspect of a piece of advice that they miss some other aspect. For example on page 10 concerning pronouns:

• l Do not use first person pronouns

Now I do not know about you, but the correct version would seem to be:Only install the custom components on

large systems.

The book covers all forms of writing including writing for the Web.

While I am happy to recommend this

book as being better than nothing I think that the book (now in its second edition) would benefit from having a genuinely fluent writer of English involved in its next edition.

Much of the language is unnecessarily

stilted and thereby gets between the reader

and the content. In other words the content

is fine but the book fails to teach by

example.