Book excerpt: Understanding Style: Practical Ways to Improve Your Writing, Third Edition, uses the findings of modern linguistics to explore the relationship between written and spoken voices and to uncover little-known ways to control rhythm and emphasis. With a focus on sound and voice, author Joe Glaser explains and illustrates measurable, non-subjective keys to good writing--an approach that yields practical writing techniques and advice rarely found elsewhere. An excellent choice for courses in advanced composition, this book also covers more standard topics such as economy, diction, coherence, and variety--along with abundant open-ended exercises drawn from business, history, popular science, and other areas.