Sentence-by-sentence writing improvement:
- Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing, Claire Kehrwald Cook,Houghton Mifflin
- A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, William Fowler, Oxford Univ. Press
- The Careful Writer, Theodore M. Bernstein, Atheneum
- The Practical Stylist, Sheridan Baker, Harper & Row
- The Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed, Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Times Books (also The Well-Tempered Sentence by her)
- The Elements of Style, Strunk & White
Writing better fiction:
- Beginnings, Middles, and Ends, Nancy Kress, Writer’s Digest Books
- Creating Short Fiction, Damon Knight, St. Martin’s
- On Becoming a Novelist, John Gardner, Harper & Row
- The Art of Creative Writing, Lajos Egri (may be OOP)
- Techniques of the Selling Writer, Dwight V. Swain
- Science Fiction Writers Workshop I: An Introduction to Fiction Mechanics, Barry B. Longyear
- How to Write a Damn Good Novel II,James N. Frey. St. Martins 1994, ISBN 0-312-10478-2
- Characters and Viewpoint, Orson Scott Card
Writing better speculative fiction:
- The Craft of Science Fiction, Reginald Bretnor
- Those Who Can, ed. Robin Scott Wilson (recently reprinted)
- Paragons, ed. Robin Scott Wilson
- How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, Orson Scott Card, Writer’s Digest Books
- Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, editors of Analog and Asimov’s
- Aliens and Alien Societies, ed. Ben Bova, Writer’s Digest Books
- Creating the Heavens, Melissa Scott, Heinemann
Style manuals (cover grammar, punctuation, usage, treatment of names and terms, editing stages, book production):
- The Chicago Manual of Style, University of Chicago
- Words into Type, Prentice Hall
- A Manual of Style (U.S. Govt Printing Office), Gramercy
- The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage