The ability to communicate effectively is the most valuable skill any employee can bring to the job. That's even more true for planners, who must frequently convey an abundance of very complex, technical information to people who don't share their planning background or vocabulary. Unfortunately, the language in planning documents frequently is so convoluted, bureaucratic, and padded that its meaning is lost or completely misunderstood. Here is help for planners who write. In Planning in Plain English: Writing Tips for Urban and Environmental Planners, Natalie Macris draws from more than a decade of editing experience to explain how to craft clear, understandable, and highly readable planning documents. She suggests ways to overcome planners' most common writing foibles: acronymns, jargon, and overuse of the passive voice. And she provides handy lists to transform mushy nouns into powerful verbs, pare down bloated sentences, and translate "bureaucratese" into everyday language. She even includes practice exercises designed to help you recognize and overcome bad writing habits. But even the best writing skills won't help if your document is organized poorly and aimed at the wrong audience. Macris also explains why it's essential to know who your readers are before you start writing and how to organize your work so that it will be easy to understand and use.

In New Dramaturgies: Strategies and Exercises for 21st Century Playwriting, Mark Bly offers a new playwriting book with nine unique play-generating exercises. These exercises offer dramaturgical strategies and tools for confronting and overcoming obstacles that all playwrights face. Each of the chapters features lively commentary and participation from Bly's former students. They are now acclaimed writers and producers for media such as House of Cards, Weeds, Friday Night Lights, Warrior, and The Affair, and their plays appear onstage in major venues such as the Roundabout Theatre, Yale Rep, and the Royal National Theatre. They share thoughts about their original response to an exercise and why it continues to have a major impact on their writing and mentoring today. Each chapter concludes with their original, inventive, and provocative scene generated in response to Bly's exercise, providing a vivid real-life example of what the exercises can create. Suitable for both students of playwriting and screenwriting, as well as professionals in the field, New Dramaturgies gives readers a rare combination of practical provocation and creative discussion.

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 W&A Guide to Getting Published provides the would-be published author with expert knowledge on securing a book deal - from preparing a manuscript for submission, to finding an agent, from working with an Editor, to effective self-promotion. It considers all stages in the 'selling' of your idea, script and self and gives up-to-date information on how the publishing industry functions and how authors can best navigate its mysteries and complexities.

Each chapter provides practical, how-to advice on what to do, where to seek additional help, what costs might be involved, cautionary dos and don'ts, and useful case studies.

With expert input from writers, agents and publishing professionals, the new W&A Guide to Getting Published is the perfect toolkit for all aspiring writers.

'The most compelling, original, charismatic and poetic guide to poetry that I can remember. A handbook written from the heart by one of the true modern masters of the craft.' Simon Armitage A collection of short essays and reflections on poetry from the acclaimed British poet Glyn Maxwell. These essays illustrate Maxwell's poetic philosophy, that the greatest verse arises from a harmony of mind and body, and that poetic forms originate in human necessities - breath, heartbeat, footstep, posture. He speaks of his inspirations, his models, and takes us inside the strange world of the Creative Writing Class, where four young hopefuls grapple with love, sex, cheap wine and hard work. With examples from canonical poets, this is a beautiful, accessible guide to the most ancient and sublime of the realms of literature.

What does it mean to be an academic in today's rapidly changing world? As a modern academic, you're expected to wear many hats. It's not enough to be outstanding in your chosen field. You also need to be able to connect with audiences, speak with wit and flair, write knock-out articles, attract media attention, and share it all with your huge social media following. But how do you do all of that? In The New Academic, Simon Clews offers a wealth of practical advice on how to write and speak in an entertaining, informative, and-above all else-accessible way. Aimed at researchers at all levels of experience, this book will set you up with the basics of writing and speaking for wide audiences, then teach you how to develop a public profile and gain traction online. In a rapidly changing world, The New Academic shows scholars how to be front and center in the public conversation, allowing more people to benefit from their knowledge and research. Funny, lively, and insightful, this is your hands-on guide for sharing your research with the world.

Quick answers to questions about punctuation, capitalization, plurals, and quotations.
- A guide to copyediting and proofreading
- Special sections on word usage and grammar
- Instructions for preparing notes and bibliographies

Originally published in 2005, To Be A Playwright is an insightful and detailed guide to the craft of playwriting. Part memoir and part how-to guide, this useful book outlines the tools and techniques necessary to the aspiring playwright. Comprised of a collection of memoirs and lectures which blend seamlessly to deliver a practical hands-on guide to playwriting, this book illuminates the elusive challenges confronting creators of dynamic expression and offers a roadmap to craft of playwrighting.

The Craft of Editing offers a rare insight into the unique dynamic between author and editor. In this illuminating book, Adnan Mahmutovic and Lucy Durneen lead a cohort of industry experts to bring transparency to the mystique that often surrounds the craft and practice of editing. Using genuine case studies from published works - including annotated manuscripts - this book prepares writers for potential dialogue and critique from editors. The Craft of Editing follows the journey from rough draft to publication, an essential part of any writing experience, while showing the singular and authentic approach each editor takes. Using original pitches, debates, emails, and instant messages to shed light on the collaboration between authors and editors, The Craft of Editing is an indispensable tool to creative writers and students alike.

Academic Writing Now: A Brief Guide for Busy Students is a rhetoric designed to cover the basics of a college writing course in a concise, student-friendly format. Anything inessential to the business of college writing has been excluded. Each chapter concentrates on a crucial element of composing an academic essay and is capable of being read in a single sitting. The book is loaded with "timesaver tips," ideas for making the most of the student's time, along with occasional warnings to avoid common errors made by student writers. Each short chapter concludes with questions and suggestions designed to trigger class discussion. The second edition has been updated throughout, with special attention to making the book even better suited to accelerated and co-requisite composition courses.

Executive Writing Skills for Managers deals with the English business writing you need at the top of your career. It focuses on writing English as a key business tool in international business which may have to be tailored for a multicultural readership. The invaluable guidance includes how to harmonize the English you and your teams use (for example, for performance evaluation, sales pitch etc) and introduces the notion of Word Power Skills 2.0 for unified writing that keeps everyone in the loop. The book is for anyone who has to excel in their English business writing and the guidance helps you understand how to write successfully for both a native or non-native English readership, avoiding the misunderstandings and other impediments to performance that can so easily arise.

Global Writing for Public Relations: Connecting in English with Stakeholders and Publics Worldwide provides multiple resources to help students and public relations practitioners learn best practices for writing in English to communicate and connect with a global marketplace. Author Arhlene Flowers has created a new approach on writing for public relations by combining intercultural communication, international public relations, and effective public relations writing techniques. Global Writing for Public Relations offers the following features: Insight into the evolution of English-language communication in business and public relations, as well as theoretical and political debates on global English and globalization; An understanding of both a global thematic and customized local approach in creating public relations campaigns and written materials; Strategic questions to help writers develop critical thinking skills and understand how to create meaningful communications materials for specific audiences; Storytelling skills that help writers craft compelling content; Real-world global examples from diverse industries that illustrate creative solutions; Step-by-step guidance on writing public relations materials with easy-to-follow templates to reach traditional and online media, consumers, and businesses; Self-evaluation and creative thinking exercises to improve cultural literacy, grammar, punctuation, and editing skills for enhanced clarity; and Supplemental online resources for educators and students. English is the go-to business language across the world, and this book combines the author's experience training students and seasoned professionals in crafting public relations materials that resonate with global English-language audiences. It will help public relations students and practitioners become proficient and sophisticated writers with the ability to connect with diverse audiences worldwide.

With growing academic responsibilities, family commitments, and inboxes, scholars are struggling to fulfill their writing goals. A finished book or even steady journal articles may seem like an impossible dream. But, as Joli Jensen proves, it really is possible to write happily and productively in academe. Jensen begins by busting the myth that universities are supportive writing environments. She points out that academia, an arena dedicated to scholarship, offers pressures that actually prevent scholarly writing. She shows how to acknowledge these less-than-ideal conditions, and how to keep these circumstances from draining writing time and energy. Jensen introduces tools and techniques that encourage frequent, low-stress writing. She points out common ways writers stall and offers workarounds that maintain productivity. Her focus is not on content, but on how to overcome whatever stands in the way of academic writing.Write No Matter What draws on popular and scholarly insights into the writing process and stems from Jensen's experience designing and directing a faculty writing program. With more than three decades as an academic writer, Jensen knows what really helps and hinders the scholarly writing process for scholars in the humanities, social sciences,and sciences. Cut down the academic sword of Damocles, Jensen advises. Learn how to write often and effectively, without pressure or shame. With her encouragement, writers of all levels will find ways to create the writing support they need and deserve.

Talk about Writing: The Tutoring Strategies of Experienced Writing Center Tutors offers a book-length empirical study of the discourse between experienced tutors and student writers in satisfactory conferences. It analyzes writing center talk, focusing on tutors' verbal strategies, at the macro- and microlevels. The study details tutors' use of three categories of tutoring strategies-instruction, cognitive scaffolding, and motivational scaffolding-with each chapter of the analysis ending in practical advice about tutor training. The second edition adds to the discussion of research provided in the first edition, maintaining the two previous goals: to provide a theory-based coding scheme for analyzing tutoring strategies according to their potential for instructing and scaffolding student writers' learning, and to demonstrate that analysis on 10 satisfactory conferences conducted by experienced writing center tutors. New to this edition, the authors expand the previous discussion of the coding scheme with additional details about its development. Along with the expanded Chapter 3 about research methods, this edition features new examples from the corpus of conferences and updates the literature review.

This book emerges from within the everyday knowledge practices of International Relations (IR) scholarship and explores the potential of experimental writing as an alternative source of 'knowledge' and political imagination within the modern university and the contemporary structures of neoliberal government. It unlocks and foregrounds the power of writing as a site of resistance and a vehicle of transformation that is fundamentally grounded in reflexivity, self-crafting and an ethos of care. In an attempt to cultivate new sensibilities to habitual academic practice the project re-appropriates the skill of writing for envisioning and enacting what it might mean to be working in the discipline of IR and inhabiting the usual spaces and scenes of academic life differently. The practice of experimental writing that intuitively unfolds and develops in the book makes an important methodological intervention into conventional social scientific inquiry both regarding the politics of writing and knowledge production as well as the role and position of the researcher. The formal innovations of the book include the actualization and creative remaking of the Foucaultian genre of the 'experience book,' which seeks to challenge scholarly routine and offers new experiences and modes of perception as to what it might mean to 'know' and to be a 'knowing subject' in our times. The book will be of interest to researchers engaged in critical and creative research methods (particularly narrative writing, autobiography, storytelling, experimental and transformational research), Foucault studies and philosophy, as well as critical approaches to contemporary government and studies of resistance.

Writing with Clarity and Style, 2nd Edition, will help you to improve your writing dramatically. The book shows you how to use dozens of classical rhetorical devices to bring power, clarity, and effectiveness to your writing. You will also learn about writing styles, authorial personas, and sentence syntax as tools to make your writing interesting and persuasive. If you want to improve the appeal and persuasion of your speeches, this is also the book for you. From strategic techniques for keeping your readers engaged as you change focus, down to the choice of just the right words and phrases for maximum impact, this book will help you develop a flexible, adaptable style for all the audiences you need to address. Each chapter now includes these sections: Style Check, discussing many elements of style, including some enhanced and revised sections Define Your Terms, asking students to use their own words and examples in their definitions. It's in the Cloud, directing students to the Web to locate and respond to various rhetorically focused items, including biographies and speeches. Salt and Pepper, spicing up the study of rhetoric by stretching students' thinking about how their writing can be improved, sometimes by attending to details such as punctuation, and sometimes by exploring the use of unusual techniques such as stylistic fragments. Review Questions, providing an end-of-chapter quiz to help cement the chapter ideas in long-term memory. Questions for Thought and Discussion, a set of questions designed for either in-class discussion or personal response. New to the Second Edition Additional examples of each device, including from world personalities and the captains of industry More and longer exercises, with a range of difficulty Advice from classical rhetoricians including Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Cicero, and Quintilian.

This book will inspire you to write, even if you have only a few minutes to spare. It may also change the way you think about writing. Drawing on a mix of disciplines, including psychology, art, linguistics, and advertising, each chapter offers you a writing-related discussion, followed by a five-minute exercise. Whether you are a beginner writer, an experienced writer looking for new ideas, or you simply want to use writing to gain self-awareness, the book will help you to: * Access your inner self, the personal memories that reflect universal patterns of the total human narrative. * Gain fresh insight into the nature of stories and storytelling. * Recognise your own life as an inexhaustible source of story ideas. * Stimulate creative thought, including right-brain techniques for 'stepping outside the box'. * Escape writing blocks. * Establish an enjoyable writing routine. Just pick a page and begin your writer's journey.

This book provides undergraduates with a step-by-step guide to successfully carrying out an independent research project or dissertation. The book addresses each stage of the project by answering the questions that a student is likely to ask as the work progresses from choosing the subject area and planning the data collection through to producing illustrations and writing the final report. Most undergraduates in geography and related disciplines are required to undertake individual projects as part of their degree course; this book is a source of constructive, practical advice. This new third edition continues the tradition of friendly, well-informed but informal support, and continues to focus on answering the specific questions that students typically ask at each stage of the project. The new edition brings the text completely up to date by taking into account changes within the discipline and changes in the ways that students work. New digital media, social networking, mobile technology, e-journals, anti-plagiarism software, ethics approval rules and risk assessments are among the issues that this new edition takes into account. The new edition also broadens the book's appeal by extending its coverage of the wide range of different approaches to geographical research, with expanded coverage of qualitative research, Geographic Information Systems, and new approaches to research design in both physical and human geographies

In the words of novelist Harlan Ellison, "The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer. New York Times bestselling author and British Academy Award nominee J. Michael Straczynski knew he wanted to be a writer ever since he was a child. What he didn't know was how to actually become, or stay, a writer. Now, he's giving fellow writers the comprehensive guide he wishes he had all along, personalized tips and techniques that can't be found in any other book on writing. Becoming a Writer, Staying a Writer culls from Straczynski's more than thirty years of experience writing for film, television, books, and comics. Designed for writers in any stage of their career, this quirky, insightful and often humorous book provides an inside look at these industries with advice and wisdom covering such topics such as: What fledgling writers need to know to improve and sell their work-and avoid wasting valuable time Tips for experienced writers who want to get to the next level Staying disciplined when writing is your day job Why writers should never wait for inspiration Story-planning strategies that don't kill your spontaneity Expert techniques for effective, memorable world-building How to get an agent and survive the writer's journey in more personal relationships Revising and editing with precision When and how to reinvent yourself as an artist

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.

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

You ain't gonna like it: bad grammar's not so bad. - The Times Remember all those grammar rules from school? No? Most of us don't. Mike McCarthy, renowned corpus linguist and co-author of the 900-page Cambridge Grammar of English answers the awkward questions that regularly bother us about English grammar. In this helpful A-Z field guide, McCarthy tells us what the conventional rules are as well as shows us what people are writing or saying now and gives simple reasons why you might choose one or the other so that you can speak and write with confidence. Through witty and entertaining examples pulled from 50 years of teaching, 40 years of field notes picked from books, newspapers, letters, radio and TV, etc., and shamelessly eavesdropping on people's conversations in public spaces, and a British and American English computer database, McCarthy has created a book to browse and enjoy, as well as a useful reference to keep on your bookshelf. Why a Field Guide to grammar? - A to Z format makes it easy to access and to find what you're looking for - Presents solutions to a host of common, everyday grammatical problems - References current events to bring relevance to the grammar (fronted adverbials anyone?) - Looks at historical usage to illustrate how the English language has evolved, and continues to evolve - Gives guidance on appropriate usage where more than one way of saying something exists - Distinguishes between spoken and written grammar where appropriate - includes advice on vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation, punctuation and style - Compares North American and British grammar, and includes Englishes from around the world - Charming drawings to illustrate the playfulness in the English language - Grammar guide backed by data and research True to the Chambers name, this field guide is as much quirky as it is informative. It is the perfect gift for any language lover, student, teacher, struggling parent or carer supporting their child's schooling, the grammar purist or the grammar descriptivist.