DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?

By Harold Evans

(Little, Brown £12.99, 448 pp) ‘IT’S old news that words can kill,’ writes the veteran editor Sir Harold Evans, arguing that ‘today we’re vulnerable to a fusillade of digital bullets, reckless words unmonitored, unchecked, unverified, but with their credibility enhanced by travelling at the speed of light to the screen of your phone’.

As a former editor of The Sunday Times and a publisher who worked with authors such as William Styron, Norman Mailer and Maya Angelou, Evans has a lifetime’s experience of the power of words to enlighten, inspire or harm.

His trenchant and entertaining guide to clear expression includes a helpful ‘sentence clinic’ and a handy list of ten short cuts to making yourself clear, including ‘ Be Specific’, ‘Ration Adjectives’, ‘Put People First’ and, at number seven, the cardinal rule: ‘Don’t Be A Bore’.