Academic Writing in Context
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This volume explores a number of themes of current interest to those engaged in researching and teaching academic genres: the social and cultural context of academic writing; differences between the academic and non-academic text; the analysis of particular text types; variation within and across disciplines; and applications of theory in the teaching of writing. The contributors include many of today's most influential scholars in the area of academic literacy, working in a wide variety of tertiary academic contexts in Britain, Finland, Hong Kong, Zimbabwe, Australia and the United States. The implications will be of relevance to all those engaged in teaching academic writing to both native and non-native English speaking students in tertiary education around the world.
Better Writing: Beyond Periods and Commas
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Using casual language and a straightforward approach, Better Writing: Beyond Periods and Commas provides students with an easy-to-read and effective guide for developing their writing skills. Rather than intimidate and overwhelm novice writers with vast sets of rules, Travis Koll utilizes simple and relatable explanations and examples to demystify the writing process. Armed with this better understanding, one that reaches far beyond the mere mechanics of punctuation and grammar, students can begin to recognize the true nature and significance of writing, its potential impact on their readers, and the importance of their voices in their communities and the world.
The Handbook of Academic Writing: A Fresh Approach
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The Handbook of Academic Writing offers practical advice to busy academics who want, and are often required, to integrate writing into their working lives. It defines what academic writing is, and the process of getting started through to completion, covering topics such as: Gaining momentum Reviewing and revising Self-discipline Writing regularly Writers' groups and retreats Academic writing is one of the most demanding tasks that all academics and researchers face. In some disciplines there is guidance on what is needed to be productive, successful writers; but in other disciplines there is no training, support or mentoring of any kind. This book helps those in both groups not only to improve their writing skills and strategies, but, equally importantly, to find satisfaction in engaging in regular and productive writing. Underpinned by a diverse range of literature, this book addresses the different dimensions of writing. The fresh approach that Murray and Moore explore in this book includes developing rhetorical knowledge, focusing on writing behaviors and understanding writing contexts. This book will help writers in academic contexts to develop a productive writing strategy, not only for research monitoring exercises, but also for the long term.
How to Write
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How to Write is an introductory guide to writing, aimed at people who think they can't write, or for whom writing is an ordeal. Broken down into short topic-based chapters on everything from beginning to revising, it demystifies the writing process by taking the reader through each stage necessary to bring a piece of writing to a decent finish. The book also offers a wealth of invaluable practical considerations, including when and where to write, when to printout and when to edit onscreen, what type of pen works well for revisions, and the hazards of the paperclip.The author is a seasoned writer whose encouraging but uncompromising guidance will delight as well as instruct. Offering practical advice in a lucid, no-nonsense style, How to Write will be ideal for both students and professional people who need to write during the course of their work.
Lit from Within: Contemporary Masters on the Art and Craft of Writing
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Lit from Within offers creative writers a window into the minds of some of America's most celebrated contemporary authors. Witty, direct, and thought-provoking, these essays offer something to creative writers of all backgrounds and experience. With contributions from fiction writers, poets, and nonfiction writers, this is a collection of unusual breadth and quality.
Stylish Academic Writing
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Elegant data and ideas deserve elegant expression, argues Helen Sword in this lively guide to academic writing. For scholars frustrated with disciplinary conventions, and for specialists who want to write for a larger audience but are unsure where to begin, here are imaginative, practical, witty pointers that show how to make articles and books a pleasure to read-and to write. Dispelling the myth that you cannot get published without writing wordy, impersonal prose, Sword shows how much journal editors and readers welcome work that avoids excessive jargon and abstraction. Sword's analysis of more than a thousand peer-reviewed articles across a wide range of fields documents a startling gap between how academics typically describe good writing and the turgid prose they regularly produce. Stylish Academic Writing showcases a range of scholars from the sciences, humanities, and social sciences who write with vividness and panache. Individual chapters take up specific elements of style, such as titles and headings, chapter openings, and structure, and close with examples of transferable techniques that any writer can master.
The Elements of Style
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You know the authors' names. You recognize the title. You've probably used this book yourself. And now The Elements of Style--the most widely read and employed English style manual--is available in a specially bound 50th Anniversary Edition that offers the title's vast audience an opportunity to own a more durable and elegantly bound edition of this time-tested classic. Offering the same content as the Fourth Edition, revised in 1999, the new casebound 50th Anniversary Edition includes a brief overview of the book's illustrious history. Used extensively by individual writers as well as high school and college students of writing, it has conveyed the principles of English style to millions of readers. This new deluxe edition makes the perfect gift for writers of any age and ability level.
Good Essay Writing: A Social Sciences Guide
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`If only this book had been available when I was a student it is fair to say my life would have been a lot easier and I would have saved myself a lot of time, effort and grief. This is an easy book to read and contains all the relevant information for the student who has the onerous task of essay writing' - Accident and Emergency Nursing. Top marks cannot be guaranteed - but there are proven approaches and techniques which, when applied well, can help everyone to write good essays. The Second Edition of this `must have' guide builds on the success of the first with updated and expanded advice. Good Essay Writing provides answers to the key questions which need to be considered when preparing an essay. For example: What do tutors look for when marking essays? What kind of skills will be needed at different course levels? How can inadvertent plagiarism be avoided? What are the protocols for referencing? Good Essay Writing shows you how to approach different types of essay questions, provides detailed guidelines on the various ways of supporting and sustaining key arguments, addresses common worries, and provides concrete examples of good practice. Key points are encapsulated in easy to digest summaries. Good Essay Writing is highly recommended for everybody studying social sciences wishing to brush up on their essay writing skills.
Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction
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Good Prose is an inspiring book about writing--about the creation of good prose--and the record of a warm and productive literary friendship. The story begins in 1973, in the offices of The Atlantic Monthly, in Boston, where a young freelance writer named Tracy Kidder came looking for an assignment. Richard Todd was the editor who encouraged him. From that article grew a lifelong association. Before long, Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine, the first book the two worked on together, had won the Pulitzer Prize. It was a heady moment, but for Kidder and Todd it was only the beginning of an education in the art of nonfiction. Good Prose explores three major nonfiction forms: narratives, essays, and memoirs. Kidder and Todd draw candidly, sometimes comically, on their own experience--their mistakes as well as accomplishments--to demonstrate the pragmatic ways in which creative problems get solved. They also turn to the works of a wide range of writers, novelists as well as nonfiction writers, for models and instruction. They talk about narrative strategies (and about how to find a story, sometimes in surprising places), about the ethical challenges of nonfiction, and about the realities of making a living as a writer. They offer some tart and emphatic opinions on the current state of language. And they take a clear stand against playing loose with the facts. Their advice is always grounded in the practical world of writing and publishing. Good Prose--like Strunk and White's The Elements of Style--is a succinct, authoritative, and entertaining arbiter of standards in contemporary writing, offering guidance for the professional writer and the beginner alike. This wise and useful book is the perfect companion for anyone who loves to read good books and longs to write one.
How to Write Better Essays
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This book takes the reader carefully through each stage of essay writing from interpretation of the question, to the research, planning, writing, and revision. The book shows how to improve not just study skills like note-taking, reading, organization, and writing, but thinking skills as well. Readers will learn how to analyze difficult concepts, criticize and evaluate arguments, use evidence, and develop more of their own ideas. This book gives clear practical advice, with a troubleshooting section that deals with a range of common problems.
Ideas and Details: A Guide to College Writing
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Taking a no-frills approach to composition, IDEAS & DETAILS offers a strong focus on student writing with detailed writing strategies that empower student-writers with options instead of prescriptions. In this brief writing guide, students will discover over 40 sample student writings, a balance of short and long assignments, over 100 brain teasers that provide students with invention strategies to stimulate creativity, and integrated coverage of visual rhetoric with 50 new photographs and works of art.
Mastering the 5-Paragraph Essay
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A master teacher shares her meaningful, student-centered lessons and activities that have helped her meet national and state standards. Includes models and rubrics for teaching informational, narrative, persuasive essays. Perfect for engaging students and helping them succeed on the tests.
On Writing Well
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On Writing Well has been praised for its sound advice, its clarity and the warmth of its style. It is a book for everybody who wants to learn how to write or who needs to do some writing to get through the day, as almost everybody does in the age of e-mail and the Internet. Whether you want to write about people or places, science and technology, business, sports, the arts or about yourself in the increasingly popular memoir genre, On Writing Well offers you fundamental principles as well as the insights of a distinguished writer and teacher. With more than a million copies sole, this volume has stood the test of time and remains a valuable resource for writers and would-be writers.
Write Better Essays in Just 20 Minutes a Day
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Essay writing need not be daunting. Taking the reader step-by-step through the entire process, from the initial organization of ideas to the final stages of proofreading, Write Better Essays in Just 20 Minutes a Day covers all the essentials: how to understand essay questions, create a strong thesis, develop a captivating introduction, support ideas, and revise the work. Included are plenty of sample essays, strategies for planning and revising in-class essays, ways to overcome writer's block, and tips on achieving higher scores on essay exams.
102 Ways to Write a Novel: Indispensable Tips for the Writer of Fiction
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This title offers a blend of mundane, 'nuts-and-bolts' counsel (how to look for an agent; how to incorporate revision into your daily schedule; different ways to go about research), with more intellectually stimulating - yet always practical - discussions of the art of fiction.
The Creative Writer's Survival Guide
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Beginning with "The Writer's Wonderland--Or: A Warning" and ending with "You've Published a Book--Now What?" The Creative Writer's Survival Guide is a must-read for creative-writing students and teachers, conference participants, and aspiring writers of every stamp. Directed primarily at fiction writers but suitable for writers of all genres, John McNally's guide is a comprehensive, take-no-prisoners blunt, highly idiosyncratic, and delightfully subjective take on the writing life. McNally has earned the right to dispense advice on this subject. He has published three novels, two collections of short fiction, and hundreds of individual stories and essays. He has edited six anthologies and worked with editors at university presses, commercial houses, and small presses. He has earned three degrees, including an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and taught writing to thousands of students at nine different universities. But he has received far more rejections than acceptances, has endured years of underpaid adjunct work, and is presently hard at work on a novel for which he has no guarantee of publication. In other words, he's been at the writing game long enough to rack up plenty of the highs and lows that translate into an invaluable guide for anyone who wants to become a writer or anyone who is already a writer but doesn't know how to take the next step toward the writing life. In the sections The Decision to Become a Writer, Education and the Writer, Getting Published, Publicity, Employment for Writers, and The Writer's Life, McNally wrestles with writing degrees and graduate programs, the nuts and bolts of agents and query letters and critics, book signings and other ways to promote your book, alcohol and other home remedies, and jobs for writers from adjunct to tenure-track. Chapters such as "What Have You Ever Done That's Worth Writing About?" "Can Writing Be Taught?" "Rejection: Putting It in Perspective," "Writing as a Competitive Sport," "Seven Types of MLA Interview Committees," "Money and the Writer," and the all-important "Talking about Writing vs. Writing" cover a vast range of writerly topics from learning your craft to making a living at it. McNally acts as the writer's friendly drill sergeant, relentlessly honest but bracingly cheerful as he issues his curmudgeonly marching orders. Alternately cranky and philosophical, full of to-the-point anecdotes and honest advice instead of wonkish facts and figures, The Creative Writer's Survival Guide is a snarky, truthful, and immensely helpful map to being a writer in today's complex world.
Creative Writing Demystified
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Whether for high school, college or pleasure creative writing, you need to know the basic elements of the craft. Creative Writing DeMYSTiFieD gives you helpful suggestions for evaluating your work for freshness and originality and offers scores of exercises, techniques, samples and websites to access more. The book introduces you to general creative writing terms and craft as well as genre specific terms and craft elements. Creative Writing DeMYSTiFieD lets you work at your own pace and provides: -An overview of the creative writing field today and its history -Insights from top writers in the creative writing subgenres -Exercises by professionals in all the subgenres -Answers to questions creative writers have -Resources for revising and finishing your work
How to Be a Writer: Secrets from the Inside
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In this updated and expanded edition, Stewart Ferris uses his industry know-how to give you all the tips, tricks, and inside knowledge one needs to become a successful writer, covering all types of writing from books to scripts and beyond This accessible and informative guide is packed with advice to equip writers with the skills they need to launch a writing career including using their "voice" as their USP, learning to love criticism, surprising solutions to writer's block, avoiding submission blunders, and using e-publishing to sell work. This book tackles both problems: it gets one writing, easily and painlessly guiding them through the process and divulges industry secrets that will help raise the quality of one's work to a professional level.
True to Life: Fifty Steps to Help You Write Your Story
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In fifty informative and inspiring steps, Beth Kaplan shows you how to write your story by putting on your writer's hat, then your editor's hat, then digging down to bring out the vital details of the story, and finally living the writing life.
Vivid and Continuous: Essays and Exercises for Writing Fiction
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Vivid and Continuous takes its inspiration from John Gardner, whose essential truths in On Becoming a Novelist clarified McNally's goal of communicating a "vivid and continuous dream" with his own writing. In fifteen concise, energizing chapters, he dispenses advice gained from almost thirty years of studying, writing, and teaching. Just blunt enough to get your attention but not blunt enough to crush you, challenging but not discouraging, personal but not ego-ridden, snarky but not mean, John McNally will prompt you to think more deeply about a variety of issues that will push you toward writing more meaningful, more accomplished work.
A Companion to Creative Writing
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A Companion to Creative Writing comprehensively considerskey aspects of the practice, profession and culture of creativewriting in the contemporary world. The most comprehensive collection specifically relating to the practices and cultural and professional place of creative writing Covers not only the how of creative writing, but many more topics in and around the profession and cultural practices surrounding creative writing Features contributions from international writers, editors, publishers, critics, translators, specialists in public art and more. Covers the writing of poetry, fiction, new media, plays, films,radio works, and other literary genres and forms Explores creative writing?s engagement with culture, language, spirituality, politics, education, and heritage.
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