The Gettysburg Approach to Writing and Speaking Like a Professional, by Philip Yaffe

There are simple guidelines to follow for effective and professional writing and speaking.  Philip Yaffe bases his guidelines on those outlined in the Gettysburg Address.  This book outlines the basic rules of professional and academic writing, and has a complete set of exercises to practice said rules, listed in appendices in the back.

If you are in college, particularly graduate school, this book will be extraordinarily helpful to you.  The focus on the book is expository writing, so for creative writing purposes, this tool may not be as important to you, but if you ever plan on writing an academic paper, or a professional report, this book is a must have for your library.

Philip Yaffe very clearly outlines, in simple terms, the real rules to professional writing.  A lot of these rules were familiar to me from my past academic pursuits, but I still was able to learn a lot from the book.  I think this would actually make a wonderful textbook for a writing course at the college level.  I believe if more students had textbooks like this one, there would be far more success in academia today.  I particularly liked the plethora of examples for the different rules.  There are over 100 pages of appendices just full of examples and exercises.

This is not the type of book you are likely to sit down and read cover to cover like I did, unless you have a real passion for grammar and professional writing.  That being said, like any mental health student has a copy of the APA guide book and the DSM on their bookshelves, so too should every college student and writer of professional materials have The Gettysburg Approach on their shelves.

I highly recommend this book to any serious scholar, regardless of subject matter, because its usefulness will know no bounds when you sit to do professional writing.

A copy of this book was provided for review purposes courtesy of the author.