Lyn Dupre's _BUGS in Writing_ is a really nice book about developing your ``ear'' for good writing by providing lots of examples (classified as ``Bad'', ``Ugly'', ``Good'', or ``Splendid''; hence BUGS) instead of a bunch of abstract rules. It has a lot of short chapters covering different topics, making it the kind of book you might leave in your bathroom and read a chapter here and there, or read on a train while heading into work or back home.
Dupre is a technical editor with an enormous amount of experience; she's edited a number of the big CS book for Addison Wesley (e.g., the Stevens TCP/IP books). It's somewhat biased towards people working on their theses or dissertations (and includes chapters on motivation to finish the work), but it's also very applicable to any kind of technical or scientific writing, especially people working in CS or with computers. Its biggest flaw, I think, is that it's often hard to find some things after you've read them; it doesn't have a traditional index. But most of the material sticks pretty well in your head -- my frustration has come from trying to find things to cite to authors. As a reference, I tend to use the latest edition of _The Chicago Manual of Style_, which includes material on technical, scientific, and mathematical writing and typesetting. Claire *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Claire Connelly c...@math.hmc.edu Systems Administrator (909) 621-8754 Department of Mathematics Harvey Mudd College *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
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