Verb Your Enthusiasm
How to Master the Art of the Verb and Transform Your Writing
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Verb Your Enthusiasm
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Narrated by:
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By:
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Sarah L. Kaufman
About this listen
“An almost shockingly adroit guide to how to make every word count.” —Benjamin Dreyer, author of the New York Times bestseller Dreyer's English
An elegant guide to the promise, power, and poetry of verbs, from Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Sarah L. Kaufman
Verbs are the underrated stars of the English language. They hold it all together. A complete sentence cannot exist without one, yet a single verb can create complete meaning. (See?) In this brilliant exploration of language, grammar, and style, Sarah L. Kaufman illuminates how all of us, professional writers and novices alike, can master the art of the verb and unlock the infinite potential of written expression.
When she was the dance critic at The Washington Post, Kaufman was challenged to translate the dynamic language of movement into words. Verbs showed her the way. Good verbs power great storytelling; they leap off the page, fire our senses, and transform our perceptions.
Verb Your Enthusiasm is a clarion call for all of us to get back to basics: to mean what we say, and say what we mean. Across eleven chapters, Kaufman proves how strong verbs can make your own writing—be it an email, a text, a report, or an ad—more efficient and effective, and investigates theories of language that will change how you read and write. But this isn’t a grammar guide, and it surely isn’t a set of rules. Great writing comes from a mix of inspiration, passion, and intelligence—from your unique discernment and imagination. Searching for the right verb might even reveal something true about yourself. All that in a word. So go. Write. Verb.
Critic reviews
“Well, yes: Sarah L. Kaufman's Verb Your Enthusiasm is, at first glance, a primer on the effective use of what we were raised as young folk to think of as action words, but like all first-rate writing on language, it's also a meditation on existence. This particular meditation is, as well, a call to arms to sharpen the way we think and thus the way we express ourselves (and vice versa) and an almost shockingly adroit guide to how to make every word count. Kaufman excels at illuminating the visceral power of verbs (and, OK, adjectives and adverbs and nouns and all the rest of our word arsenal too; one can't thrive on verbs alone), both with her own elegant and thoughtful sentences and with the myriad extremely well chosen examples she's plucked up from others' writing. Writers—fledgling and expert—will find much here that's practically useful, stimulating, and enlightening; all readers, I think, will benefit from Kaufman's graceful exhortation to wield language effectively and—in an era of confounding obfuscation—honestly.” —Benjamin Dreyer, author of the New York Times bestseller Dreyer's English
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