GUIDES TO LITERARY CORRECTNESS
Treatises on the craft & guides by which to write and read by.

How To (and How Not To) Write Poetry
by Wisława Szymborska, from her poetry columns in Literary Life

I SUGGEST
by Basil Bunting, from Tamar Yoseloff's blog

How Not to Write Novel
by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman

Nineteen Theses on Literature
by Roger Shattuck, as as appeared in Essays in Criticism, Vol. XLV, No. 3

On Writing
by Jorge Luis Borges, as collected and published by Penguin in 2010

The Name and Nature of Poetry
by A. E. Housman, 1933

Rules for Writing Fiction
advice from Elmore Leonard, Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, P.D. James, and A.L. Kennedy, compiled by the Guardian

Writing Better
by Susan Snively, 1982, revised in 1983 and 1994, posted online in 2008

Chapter 2: Simplicity
by William Zinsser, 1995, from On Writing Well (BU community only -- Kerberos password required)

Practical Tips on Writing a Book from 23 Brilliant Authors
by Steve Silberman, for the NeuroTribes blog, on June 2, 2011

How to Write a Sentence, and How to Read One
by Stanley Fish, 2011

The Study of Poetry
by Matthew Arnold, 1880

Exercises in Style (offsite, in French)
by Raymond Queneau, 1947

Nineteen rules governing literary art
by Mark Twain, 1895

Observations on magazine fiction
by Colin Fleming, 2010

Hippocratic Oath for the Pluralist
by Wayne Booth, 1979

Hints for Writing Philosophy Papers (offsite)
by Peter Bokulich, 2007

Write It Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults
by Ambrose Bierce, 1909

The Underground Grammarian (offsite)
by Richard Mitchell, 1972-1992

On copia of words and ideas (offsite)
Latin: " De Utraque Verborum ac Rerum Copia. A handbook for those who value variety, especially Chapter 33 where Erasmus famously demonstrates the variability of any expression by giving 195 variations on the sentence, "Your letter pleased me greatly."
by Desiderius Erasmus, 1512

Sage advice on writing
compiled by Citizendium editors between 2007-2009 (original)

How To Deconstruct Almost Anything:
My Postmodern Adventure (offsite)
by Chip Morningstar, 1993

The Sheet of 26
by Robert Levine, this version 2007, original c.1985

Where to Put the F in Comma (offsite)
by F.J. Bergmann, 2005

Tom's Glossary of Book Publishing Terms (offsite)
e.g., "LITERATURE: Designation applied to titles judged unsaleable."
by Thomas Christensen, 2008

Certayne Notes of Instruction
by George Gascoigne, 2005

The Rationale of Verse (offsite)
by Edgar Allan Poe, 1848

The Poetic Principle (offsite)
by Edgar Allan Poe, 1850

The Philosophy of Composition (offsite)
by Edgar Allan Poe, 1846

Thirteen Writing Prompts (offsite)
by Dan Wiencek, 2006