It took four months to debate and to draft, including two weeks to polish the prose, neat work done by a committee of style.
It could have been but, wisely, the tales haven't been tweaked or primped into neater, more "written", prose.
Early this year, Zadel filled out a questionnaire for his class records, in neat handwriting and thoughtful prose.
But the prose is neat, the pages fly by and, if the language is not always stirring, there are lines that shine out.
This is not just a matter of Kasser's straightforward prose and neat, short chapters, which come with handy summaries and prefaces which, somehow, do not seem otiose or repetitive.
Sly, bawdy and a touch too long, "Jem (and Sam)" nevertheless pulls off a neat trick: finding a prose style that suggests the language of Jem's day while remaining accessible to an ordinary reader of this one.
Mitchell's prose is very clean and very neat; clarity always trumps artfulness.
Unsurprisingly for an award-winning poet, Foulds's prose frequently verges on poetry – with its intensity and neat turn of phrase.
In Clark's prose, even the inanimate can acquire a new dimension: a row of neat terrace houses exudes respectability as they "bore themselves with the prim self-effacement of maiden aunts".
Burke's warm-hued paintings evoke a stolid but industrious family, while Yolen's conversational prose-poem conveys details that differentiate the brothers ("Orv was the neat one...
