"Getting the Words Right" is a good example of its subject matter. It has clear and engaging writing, logically linked chapters, and consistent and compelling style.

As Cheney explains, experienced editors use the techniques he describes simultaneously. For those of us less experienced, he presents the techniques in an order suitable for systematic application. Why unify your style before cutting out large chunks of your writing?

Removing large chunks, a paragraph or even a chapter, is difficult to illustrate in a book of this length. That section has only one example, occupying a full page, while all other sections have many well written examples, often taken from his students. Cheney comments that he has chosen such examples to allow us to focus on the problem under study without distraction.

The advice throughout the book rings true and provides a thoughtful look at "the rules." Many people either follow writing guidelines as if they were law, while others claim that rules were made to be broken then break them indiscriminately. Cheney does an admirable job of explaining the guidelines, and more importantly, he explains why they work the way they do. This lets you choose your balance between following and breaking the "rules" of writing based on knowledge.

The advice he presents applies to any type of writing; technical reports, business memos, fiction. This book can help anybody who ever writes anything intended for another person to read.

There are many excellent books available for writers, but most that I have seen focus on the creation aspects of writing. Creativity is important in fiction, less so in business or scientific writing. A problem arises when authors believe that raw creativity, so promoted in so many writing books, is a finished product.

Many authors write like amateur blacksmiths making their first horseshoe; the clank of the anvil, the stench of the scorched leather apron, the sparks and the cursing are palpable, and this appeals to those who rank "sincerity" very high. Nabokov is more like a master swordsmith making a fine blade; nothing is amiss, nothing is too much, there is no fuss, and the finished product must be handled with great care, or it will cut you badly.
-- Robertson Davies, in a review of Nabokov's Lolita

You can find Getting the Words Right: how to rewrite, edit, and revise, by Theodore A. Rees Cheney (ISBN 089879420X) at Chapters (Canada), Amazon.com (USA), and probably any other bookstore that has a selection of writing books.