A recent study revealed that the Number 1 thing that baby boomers want to do in retirement is write a book....about themselves. It's not that every person has lived such a unique or dramatic life, but we inherently understand that writing memoir-whether it's a book, blog, or just a letter to a child-is the single greatest portal to self-examination.
While there have been other writing books, there's been nothing like Marion Roach Smith's THE MEMOIR PROJECT. Marion has written four books and she's been teaching a sold-out memoir writing class for 13 years. Her new book is a disarmingly frank, but wildly fun, distillation of all the unsentimental lessons that WORK. Tired topics like writing exercises, morning pages and "writer's block" are replaced with quirky, provocative tactics that teach you to write with purpose.
Previously self-published in April 2010 (under the title Writing What You Know: Realia), the book has already proven hugely popular, and with its new title and updated content, it is sure to find an even bigger and even more enthusiastic audience.

The Routledge Student Guide to English Usage is an invaluable A-Z guide to the appropriate use of English in academic contexts. The first part of the book covers approximately 4000 carefully selected words, focusing on groups of confusable words that sound alike, look alike or are frequently mixed up. The authors help to solve academic dilemmas, such as correct usage of the apostrophe and the crucial difference between infer and imply. Examples of good usage are drawn from corpora such as the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English. The second part covers the key characteristics of formal English in a substantial reference section, comprising: * stylistic features * punctuation * English grammar * the use of numbers * email writing. This is the essential reference text for all students working on improving their academic writing skills. Visit the companion website for a range of supporting exercises: www.routledge.com/cw/clark.

There are a number of books which aim to help doctoral researchers write the PhD. This book offers something different - the scholarly detox. This is not a faddish alternative, it's not extreme. It's a moderate approach intended to gently interrupt old ways of doing things and establish new habits and orientations to writing the PhD. The book addresses the problems that most doctoral researchers experience at some time during their candidature - being unclear about their contribution, feeling lost in the literature, feeling like an imposter, not knowing how to write with authority, wanting to edit rather than revise. Each chapter addresses a problem, suggests an alternative framing, and then offers strategies designed to address the real issue. Detox Your Writing is intended to be a companionable work book - something doctoral researchers can use throughout their doctorate to ask questions about taken-for-granted ways of writing and reading, and to develop new and effective approaches. The authors' distinctive approach to doctoral writing mobilises the rich traditions of linguistic scholarship, as well as the literatures on scholarly identity formation. Building on years of expertise they place their emphasis both on tools and techniques as well as the discursive practices of becoming a scholar. The authors provide a wide repertoire of strategies that doctoral researchers can select from, rather than a linear lock step progression through a set of exercises. The book is a toolkit but a far from prescriptive one. It shows that there are many routes to developing a personal academic voice and identity and a well-crafted text. With points for reflection alongside examples from a broad range of disciplines, the book offers thinking tools, writing tools, linguistic tools, and reading tools which are relevant to all stages of doctoral research. This practical text can be used in all university doctoral training and composition and writing courses. However, it is not a dry how-to-do-it manual that ignores debates or focuses solely on the mechanical at the expense of the lived experience of doctoral research. It provides a practical, theorised, real-world, guide to postgraduate writing.

The beloved teacher and author of the million-and-a-half copy bestseller Writing Down the Bones reveals a new method of writing in "a priceless distillation of her accumulated wisdom and experience as a writer, coach, and instructor on mindfulness" (Abraham Verghese).Sit. Walk. Write. These are the barest bones of Natalie Goldberg's revolutionary writing and life practice, presented here in book form for the first time. The True Secret of Writing provides a whole new method of writing that Goldberg developed since the publication of her classic, Writing Down the Bones. The capstone to forty years of teaching, The True Secret of Writing is Gold-berg's Zen boot camp. Stories of her own search for truth and clarity as well as her students' breakthroughs and insights give moving testament to how brilliantly her unique, tough-love method works. As Goldberg says, "To write is to be empow-ered. . . . Writing is not just for someone who wants to write the great American novel." Learning "the true secret" allows you to mine the rich awareness in your mind and to ground and empower yourself in a way that leads to deep, eloquent self-expression. Goldberg's beautiful homages to the work of other great teachers and observers of mind, life, and love provide further secrets and inspiration to which you will return again and again. In her inimitable way, Goldberg will inspire you to pick up the pen, get writ-ing, and keep going. The True Secret of Writing helps you with your writing--and your life.

Steven Pinker, the bestselling author of The Language Instinct, deploys his gift for explaining big ideas in The Sense of Style - an entertaining writing guide for the 21st century What is the secret of good prose? Does writing well even matter in an age of instant communication? Should we care? In this funny, thoughtful book about the modern art of writing, Steven Pinker shows us why we all need a sense of style. More than ever before, the currency of our social and cultural lives is the written word, from Twitter and texting to blogs, e-readers and old-fashioned books. But most style guides fail to prepare people for the challenges of writing in the 21st century, portraying it as a minefield of grievous errors rather than a form of pleasurable mastery. They fail to deal with an inescapable fact about language: it changes over time, adapted by millions of writers and speakers to their needs. Confusing changes in the world with moral decline, every generation believes the kids today are degrading society and taking language with it. A guide for the new millennium, writes Steven Pinker, has to be different. Drawing on the latest research in linguistics and cognitive science, Steven Pinker replaces the recycled dogma of previous style guides with reason and evidence. This thinking person's guide to good writing shows why style still matters: in communicating effectively, in enhancing the spread of ideas, in earning a reader's trust and, not least, in adding beauty to the world. Eye-opening, mind-expanding and cheerful, The Sense of Style shows that good style is part of what it means to be human.

Do ever wish that you could write the perfect university essay? Are you left baffled about where to start? This easy-to-use guide walks you through the nuts and bolts of academic writing, helping you develop your essay-writing skills and achieve higher marks. From identifying the essay type and planning a structure, to honing your research skills, managing your time, finding an essay voice, and referencing correctly, Writing Essays For Dummies shows you how to stay on top of each stage of the essay-writing process, to help you produce a well-crafted and confident final document. Writing Essays For Dummies covers: Part I: Navigating a World of Information Chapter 1: Mapping Your Way: Starting to Write Essays Chapter 2: Identifying the essay type Part II: Researching, Recording and Reformulating Chapter 3: Eyes Down: Academic reading Chapter 4: Researching Online Chapter 5: Note-taking and Organising your Material Chapter 6: Avoiding Plagiarism Part III: Putting Pen to Paper Chapter 7: Writing as a process Chapter 8: Getting Going and Keeping Going Part IV: Mastering Language and Style Chapter 9: Writing with Confidence Chapter 10: Penning the Perfect Paragraph Chapter 11: Finding Your Voice Part V: Tightening Your Structure and Organisation Chapter 12: Preparing the Aperitif: The Introduction Chapter 13: Serving the Main Course: The Essay's Body Chapter 14: Dishing up Dessert: The Conclusion Chapter 15: Acknowledging Sources of Information Part VI: Finishing with a Flourish: The Final Touches Chapter 16: It's all in the detail Chapter 17: Perfecting Your Presentation Chapter 18: The afterglow Part VII: Part of Tens Chapter 19: Ten Tips to Avoid Things Going Wrong Chapter 20: Ten Ways to Make Your Essay Stand Out

The Educator's Guide to Writing a Book is for educators who dream of sharing their knowledge and skills with a broader audience. This exciting resource provides step-by-step guidance on how to set publishing goals, create well-written content and resource material, develop an informative yet accessible writing style, prepare professional level manuscripts, and anticipate each stage in the publishing process. Chapters include authentic writing examples, tips from veteran authors and publishing professionals, and supportive resources. The Educator's Guide to Writing a Book is an invaluable guide that helps aspiring and novice authors move publishing goals from dreams to reality. .

The Social and Cognitive Studies in Writing and Literacy Series, is devoted to books that bridge research, theory, and practice, exploring social and cognitive processes in writing and expanding our knowledge of literacy as an active constructive process--as students move from high school to college.
This descriptive study of reading-to-write examines a critical point in every college student's academic performance: when he or she is faced with the task of reading a source, integrating personal ideas, and creating an individual text with a self-defined purpose. Offering an unusually comprehensive view of this process, the authors chart a group of freshmen as they study and write in their dormitories, recording their "think-aloud" strategies for reading, writing, and revising, their interpretation of the task, and their broader social, cultural, and contextual understanding of college writing. Flower, Stein, and colleagues convincingly conclude that the legacy of schooling in general makes the transition to college difficult and, more important, that the assumptions students hold and the strategies they use in undertaking this task play a significant role in their academic performance. Embracing a broad range of perspectives from rhetoric, composition, literacy research, literary and cultural theory, and cognitive psychology, this rigorous analysis treats reading-to-write as both a cognitive and social process. It will interest researchers and theoreticians in rhetoric and writing, teachers working with students in transition from high school to college, and educators involved in the links between cognition and the social process.

This self-help guide is intended for scientists and medical professionals and students who wish to improve their scientific writing skills. Exercises invite the reader to practice the most important aspects of scientific writing. Although the book addresses certain issues more troublesome to scientific communicators of a non-English language origin, the guide will be of equal benefit to those whose first language is English. If you want not only to write but to write well, this book is for you.This second edition takes into account new developments in the area of scientific communication. In particular, the importance of authenticity is addressed, drawing attention to the sensitive issue of plagiarism in scientific texts.

The criminal justice process is dependent on accurate documentation. Criminal justice professionals can spend 50-75 percent of their time writing administrative and research reports. The information provided in these reports is crucial to the functioning of our system of justice. Report Writing for Criminal Justice Professionals, Sixth Edition, provides practical guidance-with specific writing samples and guidelines-for providing strong reports. Most law enforcement, security, corrections, and probation and parole officers have not had adequate training in how to provide well-written, accurate, brief, and complete reports. Report Writing for Criminal Justice Professionals covers everything officers need to learn-from basic English grammar to the difficult but often-ignored problem of creating documentation that will hold up in court. This new edition includes updates to reference materials and citations, as well as further supporting examples and new procedures in digital and electronic report writing.

High-quality and low-priced, A Short Guide to College Writing is a clear and authoritative brief rhetoric that emphasizes analysis, argument, and research in academic writing.

This book is a very concise introduction to the basic knowledge of scientific publishing. It starts with the basics of writing a scientific paper, and recalls the different types of scientific documents. In gives an overview on the major scientific publishing companies and different business models. The book also introduces to abstracting and indexing services and how they can be used for the evaluation of science, scientists, and institutions. Last but not least, this short book faces the problem of plagiarism and publication ethics.

With more than 65,000 copies sold in two editions and recommended by "Forbes "and "U.S. News & World Report, " this newly updated guide offers sound advice on every aspect of researching, writing, and delivering an effective speech. Filled with anecdotes, examples, and practical advice, this accessible guide makes one of the most daunting tasks manageable--and even fun.
Speaking coach Joan Detz covers everything from the basics to the finer points of writing and delivering a speech with persuasion, style, and humor.
Topics include:

• Assessing your audience
• Researching your subject--and deciding what to leave out
• Keeping it simple
• Using imagery, quotations, repetition, and humor
• Special-occasion speeches
• Speaking to international audiences
• Using Power Point and other visual aids
• And many more

Updated to include new examples and the latest technology, as well as a section on social media, this is a must-have for anyone who writes and delivers speeches, whether novices or experienced veterans at the podium.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

This book is dedicated to Anna Siewierska, who died, far too young, in 2011. It contains 15 contributions by 20 linguists who may be counted among the foremost scholars in the field of linguistic typology. All of these articles discuss a topic that is prominent in Anna's work, whose journal articles and monographs on the passive, on word order, and on the category of person are standard literature in these respective fields. Mindful of Anna's last monograph, Person, the majority of the contributions in this volume discuss free and bound person forms, argument indexing, reference tracking systems, impersonals, and related issues, such as suppletion and incompleteness in person paradigms, the origin of referential systems, dependent versus independent marking, and referential hierarchies. Other topics are grammatical alignment, grammatical voice, ditransitives, and word order. Most of the contributions take a broad, typological perspective. Others give a more in depth treatment, based on data from a specific language, notably Spanish, Russian, Mandinka, and Mohawk. The book contains a complete bibliography of Anna Siewierska's linguistic production.

This book contains a selection of annotated glosses and texts on the subject of language that were published in the Frankfurter Zeitung during the Nazi period in an attempt to bypass official censorship. An extensive introduction elucidatesthe position of the paper in the media landscape of the Third Reich, contemporary controversies concerning internal emigration, and the problematics of writing and reading between the lines. "

This volume is a collection of original essays focusing on the key pedagogical issues behind the teaching of stylistics. Featuring contributions from authors based in the UK, Europe and overseas, it offers an international overview of how stylistics is currently taught and how the teaching of the discipline might be developed in the future. The volume is divided into two main sections, dealing respectively with larger theoretical issues in the teaching of stylistics and examples of classroom practice and detailed text analysis. In addition, the appendices provide an overview of the history of stylistics in the form of a timeline, short biographies of significant figures in the field and substantial lists of further reading. Teaching Stylistics will be of value to postgraduates new to teaching as well as established teachers, particularly those working at the interface between language and literary studies.

Teaching fact checking and verification is an essential part of journalism education. When a confusing media environment makes it possible for interviewees to say things like "Truth is not truth" and "The president offered alternative facts,"students need to go beyond traditional reporting standards and be trained to consider the presentation of reality in deciding if a statement is misleading or patently false. Detecting Deception brings the concepts of logical argument taught in speech communication to supplement the verification techniques that are the stock and trade of any media professional. Pithy and practical, Sturgill draws from present day news examples to help students recognize the most common bad arguments people make. Detecting Deception is an essential tool for training future journalists how to build stories that recognize faulty arguments and hold their subjects to a higher standard. Features: -engagingly written by a reporter turned professor -classic and current examples of logical fallacies from speeches, press conferences and reports -each chapter will have two illustrations/cartoons to help students grasp concepts and easily remember faulty argument structures -short and flexible for use as a supplement in the classroom or on the resource shelves of the newsroom

Klick's book reveals the 120 minute-by-minute story genome that unites all successful films. In other words, it shows filmmakers what makes a great movie tick--like no other book has done before. 250 pp.

The written genre of the religious pamphlet stands out as a deeply characteristic form of public communication in the early modern period, not least on account of its inseparable combination of language and images. This study undertakes an analysis of semiotically complex religious pamphlets from the late 16th century, thereby making a contribution to research in linguistic history that is culturally oriented. In the process, it illustrates the opportunities for using frame semantics to analyze both verbal and visual texts.

University literary journals allow students to create their own venue for learning, have a hands-on part of their development in real-world skills and strive towards professional achievement. But producing an undergraduate literary magazine requires commitment, funding and knowledge of the industry. This practical guide assists students and faculty in choosing a workable structure for setting up, and then successfully running, their own literary publication. Whether the journal is print or online, in-house or international, Creating an Undergraduate Literary Journal is a step-by-step handbook, walking the reader through the process of literary journal production. Chapters focus on: defining the journal; the financial logistics; editing the journal; distribution; and what could come next for a student writer-editor after graduation. The first book of its kind to offer instruction directly to those running university-based literary magazines, this book includes insights from former editors, advisers, students and features an extensive list of active student-run literary magazines key literary organizations for writers/ editors who serve literary publications. From Audrey Colombe, faculty adviser on the award-winning Glass Mountain magazine from the University of Houston, this is a text for both newcomers and those more informed on the production process to help them navigate through a successful publishing experience.