Rating: 
Summary: What a waste. Avoid it!
Review: I'm so disgusted with this book I probably cannot compose this review properly. Please bear with me.While the content of this book is appallingly poor the design of the book as a document overall is not without irritating faults, as she wastes too much time outlining what she's going to tell us without actually telling us. Frequently she refers us to figures that are so far removed from the text that you spend a ludicrous amount of time searching for them (no, she doesn't even always include page numbers). The entire book is in such a stilted style that I expected the book to have been written circa 1972, not 1997. Example (page 136): 'PacMan was an immeadiate "hit" with boys and girls...' I shall now examine Amazon's return policy to see if I can reclaim my money for this book. I wish I could reclaim the couple of hours it wasted.
Rating:
Summary: What a waste. Avoid it!
Review: I'm so disgusted with this book I probably cannot compose this review properly. Please bear with me. While the content of this book is appallingly poor the design of the book as a document overall is not without irritating faults, as she wastes too much time outlining what she's going to tell us without actually telling us. Frequently she refers us to figures that are so far removed from the text that you spend a ludicrous amount of time searching for them (no, she doesn't even always include page numbers). The entire book is in such a stilted style that I expected the book to have been written circa 1972, not 1997. Example (page 136): 'PacMan was an immeadiate "hit" with boys and girls...' I shall now examine Amazon's return policy to see if I can reclaim my money for this book. I wish I could reclaim the couple of hours it wasted.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: In addition to the glowing comments by the other reviewers, the history of document design included a history of the teaching of English (and technical writing) and how it was and is perceived by professionals. I found it a fascinating re-examination of our attitudes and priorities.
Rating:
Summary: Terribly wordy - lots of deadwood
Review: Sorry - I would not recommend this book to a TECHNICAL writer. This book has 559 pages and could be cut down to maybe 100 pages of useful information. Each chapter has a full page explaining the chapter... if you have to do that, you haven't planned and written the chapter well. A good product sells itself. It takes the author 5 pages in the preface to explain the book! It also has a lot of side head paragraphs explaining more... explaining the explanations. This book was painful reading for me... I kept thinking "bla bla bla bla bla" This book seems to have a lot of the author's opinions and theory, but not very much practical information.
Rating:
Summary: Imaginative, fascinating, detailed
Review: This book went far beyond my expectations and gave me a broad perspective on document design. Clearly this is one of the seminal books on writing and visual design. Schriver is imaginative in her content, fascinating with her examples, and detailed in her analysis. I found her writing to be excellent and I highly recommend this book.
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