Book Review: Charitable Writing

Charitable Writing

Cultivating Virtue Through Our Words

by Richard Hughes Gibson; James Edward Beitler III

InterVarsity Press

IVP Academic

Christian

Pub Date 15 Dec 2020

I am reviewing a copy of Charitable Writing through InterVarsity Press in Netgalley:

Charitable Writing is a writing guide, but not in the typical sense; this book examines how we think about writing as well as how we go about it. In both respects, the conceptual and the practical, this book argues that our spiritual commitments can and should provide bearings for our academic and professional work.

This book reminds us that; Writing is a social and rhetorical activity • Writing involves making ethical choices • Writing speaks to situations through recognizable forms • Disciplinary and professional identities are constructed through writing • Writing enacts and creates identities and ideologies • All writers have more to learn.

We are reminded too that to recognize that writing not only can be but also should be a hospitable practice has profound implications for Christian writers. To write hospitably requires that we use words and genre conventions that our reader will recognize and understand…