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Books > Language & Literature > Literary & linguistic reference works > Usage guides
English profs cry themselves to sleep. Faced with the daily grind
of an incoming freshman class woefully unprepared to write on the
college level, they struggle to also impart some sense of the
majesty of the written word to students chiefly trained in the art
of taking tests. Indeed, the essay portion of SAT tests is no
longer required of high school students. Yet even students bent on
a course of studies leading to the proverbial well-paying job must
be able to communicate on a rudimentary level, in the least. How
can the well-intentioned instructor teach the basics of careful
writing and at the same time engage an undergraduate class
unsympathetic to literature-short of force-feeding them the
classics in the hope that something will stick? This manual,
derived from a stylebook created for 3rd Coast, the city magazine
of Austin, Texas (which twice made the finals of the National
Magazine Awards), represents an economical tool for exposing
students to the beauty of the written word while teaching them the
fundamentals of careful writing-punctuation. Quotations from some
of the great (and not-so-great) minds of the ages demonstrate
correct usage, with illustrations to retain student attention. This
handbook offers an easily digestible lesson in what constitutes
artful prose without saddling students with the high cost of yet
another textbook. Both professors of the written word and their
students find themselves increasingly faced with a Sisyphean task,
growing more so with each decade. Their burden will be
substantially lightened by Hattersley's manual.
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