From the invention of the alphabet to the explosion of the internet, Dominic Wyse takes us on a unique journey into the process of writing. Starting with seven extraordinary examples that serve as a backdrop to the themes explored, it pays particular attention to key developments in the history of language, including Aristotle's grammar through socio-cultural multimodality, to pragmatist philosophy of communication. Analogies with music are used as a comparator throughout the book, yielding radically new insights into composition processes. The book presents the first comprehensive analysis of the Paris Review interviews with the world's greatest writers such as Louise Erdrich, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ted Hughes, and Marilynne Robinson. It critically reviews the most influential guides to styles and standards of language, and presents new research on young people's creativity and writing. Drawing on over twenty years of findings, Wyse presents research-informed innovative practices to demonstrate powerfully how writing can be learned and taught.

Handwriting Today is a comprehensive cursive handwriting programme. It removes the need for teaching a pre cursive letter formation, as it introduces individual letters at Book A level, that have the identical shape and form of those used at later stages when joining letters and creating words. It starts with a cursive font and builds to joins and words quickly. It uses a flowing cursive font that combines the best of traditional and contemporary fonts to create an easy to write and easy on the eye writing style. Pupils find this an easy beginning. It focuses on the flow of letters and text, and avoids a start-stop writing style, which in turn leads to illegible writing in later years a smooth flowing style is the result of using Handwriting Today. It makes it easy for young children to build their skills, as in the early stages all lower case letters share the same starting point. Handwriting Today is available from Book A to Book D: Book A: letters are introduced in Book A, where young writers practice word shapes and formations before moving to joins in the following year; Book B: looks at creating joins and practicing various letter combinations leading to the writing of words; Book C: builds on joins, combining multiple joins into words, groups of words and sentences; and, Book D: provides opportunities for children to practice their writing in the context of every day usage and cross-curricular themes, providing for letter and join revision as appropriate. What will the teacher get with Handwriting Today? It contains over 72 activity pages in each level. It provides regular revision and consolidation. It offers teacher assessment framework. It features programme that provide a developmental approach to handwriting. It includes diversity of resources that allow for individual attention to pupil progress and a comprehensive approach to differentiation of the class handwriting programme. It is a comprehensive, photocopiable teacher's guide. It also offers a demonstration that can be download. It also provides handwriting software resource for teachers.