Power Behind Your Writing: What Every Writer Needs to Know by Evelyn D. Klein illustrates that quality writing requires an understanding of word selection and sentence construction.

Understanding the basics of sentence construction is beneficial to the writing process because it provides the writer with a variety of types of sentences which makes the writing more interesting, thus keeping the reader's attention. Language is important, but understanding its nuances is imperative.

This book effectively demonstrates how this can be realized. The history of the English language section follows the evolution of English from its Proto-Indo-European origin to its current usage which assists one in understanding the complexity of the language, including derivatives, spelling, form and tenses because of the various influences on it from foreign languages, culture, science and technology.

Definition of each part of speech and how this knowledge can be utilized to create quality writing is presented in a well-organized and easy to understand fashion. First, a poem or paragraph is presented emphasizing the part of speech being studied, followed by the definition, detailed information about it, and its function.

Each chapter ends with a culminating activity applying the information given in the chapter by identifying the part of speech in the poem/paragraph written at the beginning of the chapter. .

. These exercises give the writer the opportunity to test their understanding of the part of speech.

This repetitive organization makes comprehension easier. Because sentence variety is so important, a number of chapters are devoted to sentence structure.

Each type of sentence has an appropriate place in writing. Explicit information is included on the types of sentences including phrases and clauses and punctuation.

The book itself is an excellent example of effectively applying the sentence structure principles. This book would have been an excellent resource when I taught junior high school writing classes and when I wrote my Ph.

D. dissertation.

~Lorraine Palkert, Ph. D.

, University of Minnesota in Futures Studies in Education, Adjunct Associate ProfessorRetired Media Specialist, Consultant to Turner Learning. .