Reading for Writing

First, thanks to Jim for inviting me to be a contributing editor for this blog. I would like to strongly encourage our readers to make comments to our posts.

My dean at Alabama, Ken Randall, once told me that the most important thing to do to improve your writing is to read. This is very good advice. Beethoven listened to a lot of music before he started to compose his symphonies, and the great painters carefully studied the works of earlier masters. However, as one of the posts below notes, students today are not reading as much as they have in the past. Maybe, as e-books catch on more, students will start to do more reading. In any case, if you want to improve your writing, study the writings of those in your field.

(esf)