Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences: A Guide to Avoiding the Most Common Errors in Grammar and Punctuation

I had the pleasure of reading this book in Professor Bell's advanced English class. She is a master in her own right. She loves to teach and truly cares for her students. She is contemporary in every way and her classes are superb! I took two English classes with her because I enjoyed her teaching style and my classmates loved her too! Her book is to the point and teaches grammar in a simple, straight manner. I work for three attorneys and they have every book one can imagine and the one that they consult and admire is this little gem, "clean, well-lighted, sentences." Thank you Professor Bell for caring for your students and for your love to teach what comes so natural to you. Love, Vanessa.

Some words are not what I needed and this book let me know what I needed know.

"Clean, Well-Lighted Sentences: A Guide to Avoiding the Most Common Errors in Grammar and Punctuation" by Janis Bell is a helpful book for me. Her years of teaching writing (since 1972) shows in her presentation throughout the book. After an introduction to a "common error," Janis give examples of mistakes and then the corrections. I like the layout of the book. Plenty of white space so the reader does not feel that information is being crammed onto the page. There are, indeed, some difficult areas of the English language (e.g., irregular verbs). [By the way, Janis covers the use of "e.g.") Janis does her best to simplify these difficult areas. My four-star instead of a five-star is for a couple of times when I thought Janis could have given a few more examples. I recommend this book for someone who would like to review grammar and punctuation. This book does not replace one of the several excellent style and usage books available.

How to write clearly involves using words and punctuation correctly. The author provides examples—both right and wrong—for most of the common word and punctuation structures used in writing English and does it with humor and clarity. A pleasure to read and an accurate guide to writing modern English.

I had to buy this for class. The author wrote the book for business people, so it is geared towards the office-world scenario (like writing emails). It is easy to read, and she provides some good examples. There are "quizzes" at the end of the chapter to test yourself if you feel inclined, and she provides the answers to the questions following the quiz.

The author of this book came to my daughter's college English class last year to speak about common grammar and punctuation errors, and how to avoid them. My daughter was very impressed with how simple yet informative this book was, so she kept checking it out from our local library, and used it for all of her classes. Rather than have her keep checking it out from the library every month, I decided to buy the book, so we would have a copy of our own. Now my other daughter is using it, too. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who needs a clear, concise book about proper grammar and punctuation usage.

I took Janis Bell's class at Golden Gate University 20 years ago. I have used Professor Bell's book as a primary source of reference ever since. My first language is Portuguese, which has a much harder grammar. Once I realized how easy English grammar is, it was easy to get perfect scores on all my college English courses. I have great appreciation for my professors at San Jose City College and Golden Gate University whose teaching satisfied my hunger for mastering English grammar. I believe most students just need to learn "how to learn" it. I am developing an app called Uben English, which includes a game "Wheel of Grammar" with the purpose of lifting the veil on the perceived difficulty of English grammar. (for more info search "ubenenglish" on Facebook)

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