"Sentences and Paragraphs," by Charles Euchner, is the completely updated best-selling and most authoritative book available on the essential two units of writing. Get it and use it. You will write better than ever -- and spare yourself hundreds of hours of confusion and agony.

Hemingway one remarked that the ultimate challenge of writing is to produce "one true sentence." If you can write one great sentence, you can write more. If you can write great sentences, line after line, you can master any writing project from school paper to published book.

Building on the foundation of The Golden Rule of Writing, Charles Euchner shows you everything you need to write good sentences and paragraphs.

Strangely, few teachers or editors even define a paragraph. And so paragraphs become a hidge-podge collection of ideas, some related and some not. without a clear understanding of this basic unit of writing, we struggle to write well.

The definition of a paragraph in this work is simple: A cluster of sentences (usually) that states and develops just one idea. The development of this idea, ideally, takes the reader on a "journey" from one understanding of the world to another. Ideally, again, the paragraph "starts strong" and "finishes strong."

This concise how-to guide shows you, with clear examples, how to:

• Follow the Golden Rule for Sentences
• Give Every Sentence an Action Packet
• Make Every Sentence a Revolver
• Use the Verbs To Be and To Have Sparingly
• Make Some Sentences More Complicated
• Alternate Short and Long Sentences
• Follow the Golden Rule in Every Paragraph
• ‘Climb the Arc’ in Most Paragraphs
• Make Every Paragraph an “Idea Bucket”

"Sentences and Paragraphs" includes vivid case studies of The New York Times Coverage of National Crises, Stephen Crane’s "The Red Badge of Courage," Milan Kundera’s "Slowness," Stanley Fish’s "How to Write a Sentence," Ernest Hemingway’s journalism, James Van Tholen’s “Surprised By Death,” and Martin Luther King’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.”

Each chapter also includes exercises for you to put your new skills to work.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charles Euchner — the author or editor of a dozen books who has taught writing at Yale and directed a think tank at Harvard — is a case writer at the Yale School of Management and the creator and principal of The Writing Code.

In the past three years, Euchner has published a series of books on writing and civil rights. His three books on writing — The Writing Code Series (a 14-part series of ebooks that includes this work), "The One-Minute Writer," and "Write the Book" — offer a complete system for all genres. Now available only on Amazon, these and other works will be available on all book platforms and in pulp form by fall.

Euchner is also the author or editor of ten books. His latest book "Nobody Turn Me Around: A People’s History of the 1963 March on Washington" (Beacon Press, 2010), has been praised as a dramatic reinterpretation of the civil rights movement. Kirkus Reviews, in a starred review, called it “dynamic ... sharp, riveting.” Juan Williams, author of Eyes on the Prize, called it “compelling and dramatic.” Curtis Wilkie, a longtime chronicler of civil rights, says the book provides “a panorama of vivid characters.” Roger Wilkins, a former White House aide in the civil rights era, said it “brings it all back in vivid detail.” A short documentary based on the book, written by Euchner, won the award for best writing at the 2011 Re-Image Film Festival and will air on PBS stations.

Euchner’s other books include a trilogy on the state of sports in modern America ("Playing the Field," "The Last Nine Innings," and "Little League, Big Dreams"), grassroots politics ("Urban Policy Reconsidered" and "Extraordinary Politics"), presidential politics ("Selecting the President" and "The President and the Public"), and regional politics (the two-part "Governing Greater Boston" project).