Do you dream of -

Crossing the galaxies?

Living in the far future?

Entertaining millions with your imagination?

This book can help make those dreams come true!

Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy brings you expert advice on how to craft and market tales of the fantastic. Award-winning writers such as John Barnes, James Patrick Kelly, Norman Spinrad, Connie Willis, and Jane Yolen reveal some of their secrets of crafting believable stories, while Grand Masters Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein provide timeless advice for beginners and veterans alike. The editors also provide valuable insights into the process by which stories get published and they offer helpful hints on getting your story out of the slush pile and into print.

No writer's or editor's desk is complete without a battered, page-bent copy of the "AP Stylebook." However, this not-so-easy-to-use reference of journalistic style is often not up-to-date and leaves reporters and copyeditors unsatisfied. Bill Walsh, copy chief for the "Washington Post's" business desk, addresses these shortcomings in "Lapsing into a Comma." In an opinionated, humorous, and yes, curmudgeonly way, he shows how to apply the basic rules to unique, modern grammar issues. Walsh explains how to deal with perplexing situations such as trendy words, foreign terms, and web speak.

An illuminating guide to finding one's most powerful writing tool, "Finding Your Writer's Voice "helps writers learn to hear the voices that are uniquely their own. Mixing creative inspiration with practical advice about craft, the book includes chapters on:
Accessing raw voice
Listening to voices of childhood, public and private voices, and colloquial voices
Working in first and third person: discovering a narrative persona
Using voice to create characters
Shaping one's voice into the form of a story
Reigniting the energy of voice during revision

Willis treats the writing of fiction as a natural process that anyone can do with pleasure. The book includes over 400 helpful writing assignments for all age levels. In addition, teachers will appreciate the appendixes on writing ideas according to age level, other books on writing, and magazines that publish student writing. "A terrific resource for the classroom as well as the novice writer."-Harvard Educational Review.

Get into the College of Your Dreams
An original and creative essay is one of the keys to getting into the college you've always dreamed of, as well as to getting the financial aid you deserve. This book gives you everything you need to make your own unique talents shine in your college application essay. Even if writing is not your strong point, author Michael James Mason shows you:
·Exactly what admissions officers look for
·What works—and what doesn't, using actual student essays
·Proven techniques for writing your best essay
·Special tips for SAT and scholarship essays
·A last-minute checklist before you submit your essay
·And much more!
"Well written, very useful, and highly recommended." —Hunter's Guide to the College Guides
"Demystifies one of the most important and challenging parts of the college application process—the personal essay. . . . An invaluable resource!" —Gail Devine, director of college counseling, Louisville High School, Woodland Hills, California
"This book taught me what colleges look for in an essay and showed me how to effectively communicate my thoughts in writing." —Ryan Miller, University of Virginia graduate

One of the most popular and respected style guides ever written, this handbook by a seasoned writer with more than forty years of experience offers ten principles and seven axioms that professional writers use to express their thoughts clearly and effectively. This latest edition is expanded to include an extensive glossary of American idiomatic expressions, developed to assist users from other backgrounds and cultures; new chapters with tips on little-known facts of usage, such as compound words, hyphenation, numeration, and capitalization; and explanations of technical problems encountered in writing and editing with tips and exercises to help solve them. For anyone faced with the challenges of written English, Writing with Precision can help readers write more clearly, more effectively, and more precisely than they ever have.

The first volume of the serial is dedicated to writing, merely for the reason that writing can still be considered in language education to be a skill to which little attention is paid, where as discourses on listening, reading, and especially speaking experienced major advances over the last two decades. With the intention to question this rather international tendency from as many as possible different perspectives, this book unifies articles from Switzerland and Italy, Denmark, Germany, and the US, dealing with French, Italian, German, and English as foreign or second languages in all levels of instruction. The aim of this first volume is mainly to encourage the understanding of an expanded function of writing in the field of language education, in theoretical terms and within the framework of classroom practice. Writing is understood here not only as a tool for recording knowledge but also as a means of developing it. Writing seen as such reaches beyond the realm of a foreign language, connecting the learners expertise of his/her native language and culture with the ones to be studied. When we acknowledge language as a social phenomenon, the potential uses of writing for learning across the curriculum are revealed.

With an emphasis on key individuals and key movements, this book is the first attempt to provide a collection of critical essays on the history of technical communication designed to help guide future research. This collection consists of the classic; essays in the field that have made a major contribution to the development of the field, and the new; essays that contribute to our historical understanding of a specific element or period of technical communication. This, combined with an up-to-date bibliography of research in the area, make Three Keys to the Past as valuable to the experienced researcher in the field as to those just entering it.

Critical Reading and Writing is a fully introductory, interactive textbook that explores the power relations at work in and behind the texts we encounter in our everyday lives.
Using examples from numerous genres - such as popular fiction, advertisements and newspapers - this textbook examines the language choices a writer must make in structuring texts, representing the world and positioning the reader. Assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics, Critical Reading and Writing offers guidance on how to read texts critically and how to develop effective writing skills.
Features include:
* activities in analysis, writing and rewriting
* an appendix of comments on activities
* further reading sections at the end of each unit
* a glossary of linguistics terms
* suggestions for five extended writing projects.
Written by an experienced teacher, Critical Reading and Writing has multidisciplinary appeal but will be particularly relevant for use on introductory English and Communications courses.

Offers more than 100 model sentence types in a catalog format, giving writers many interesting and provocative ways to say what they mean. Writers looking for a more striking way to open a sentence will find these options: the announcement, the editorial opening, the opening appositive, the opening absolute, and the conjunction opening, among others. Examples of each sentence type ensure the reader's understanding of the concepts.

Covers everything from the first spark of inspiration to the final draft. Writers will see how a series of careful questions will lead them to the messages of their reports, and will learn how to let those messages drive the structure of the piece. From this foundation they will be able to create a paragraph-by-paragraph plan of their entire report. A final chapter explains the author's techniques for editing reports of any length.

An analysis of the rhetoric of science in the evolution of American ornithological discourse. It covers: the emergence of American ornithological discourse; discourse models for natural history and experimental science; diachronic changes; and more.

Daugherty provides an insider's perspective on how magazines work and where freelancers fit in, so you can learn how to generate saleable ideas. Even if you've never written before, he makes it easy, using hands-on exercises and easy-to-achieve assignments to get you started right away. From short fillers and sidebars to interviews and how-to articles, you'll get an overview of the kinds of pieces magazines are seeking, and you'll learn how to write manuscripts and query letters that will sell your work. Daugherty also shares effective ways to manage the "writing life," from dealing with rejection to finding time to write undisturbed. There's even a special section on how to speak "magazine" so you can act like a pro when dealing with editors.

Explores the essentials of solid, point-based paragraphs, with chapters on unifying each paragraph around one point, developing paragraphs in a variety of interesting ways, binding sentences within the paragraph, and creating smooth transitions. A catalog of exemplary paragraph patterns, supported with clear diagrams, gives readers models to follow and options to consider.

Here's how to find inspiration from neighbors and strangers, reshape classic tales, cull current events and use other tricks of the writing trade so effectively you'll soon find yourself brimming with ideas, your imagination revved to its full potential. Begin with a snippet of overheard conversation, an unexpected event, a simple character trait, a place, a problem--Ms. Stanek teaches you to get past "what really happened" and reinvent reality in ways that will astound and delight you, and hold a reader's attention.

Here too are hundreds of "what-ifs," simple situations you can guide to endlessly different conclusions--and use to learn new ways to fashion plot, describe character, develop conflict, paint with language, create a setting, employ flashbacks, build suspense, and much, much more. For every writer who could use a jump-start, from novice to pro, here is a book that will help you keep the faith and. . .

Substance, Style, and Strategy grows out of the author's experience teaching advanced composition and incorporates his belief that an advanced writing course offers refinement of the mind. It makes vague thoughts explicit and examinable. The first chapter discusses issues of subject, audience, style, and the writing process. In the following five chapters, the student acquires proficiency in writing the personal essay, the biographical essay, the argumentative essay, the familiar essay, and the critical essay. Each essay form is demonstarted through examples that are analysed in depth. The many 'tips' boxes throughout the text expand the content of each chapter with detailed practical advice.

"Writing is a second chance at life," writes Jane McDonnell. "I think all writing constitutes an effort to establish our own meaningfulness, even in the midst of sadness and disappointment." In Living to Tell the Tale, McDonnell draws on this impulse, as well as her own experiences as a writer and teacher of memoir, to give us what should become the definitive book on writing "crisis memoirs" and other kinds of personal narrative. She provides specific techniques and advice to help the writer discover his or her inner voice, recognize and then silence the inner censor, begin a narrative, and develop it with such aids as photographs and documents. Citing many landmark works such as Maxine Hong Kingston?s The Woman Warrior and Frank McCourt's Angela?s Ashes, as well as unpublished writings, McDonnell shows how writers can recreate past experiences through memories, and imaginatively reshape material into the story that needs to be told. Each chapter concludes with exercises to help the writer grapple with particular problems, such as trying to write about experiences that are only partly recalled. McDonnell also offers a list of recommended reading.

• Memoirs such as Mary Karr's The Liars Club (Penguin)?have hit bestseller lists nationwide during the past year, and are of great interest to aspiring writers.

Customizable pre-written business communications Business communication is often tricky; the line between professional and impersonal is difficult to parse, and arriving at the perfect tone can take more time than many of us have to spare. To the Letter: A Handbook of Model Letters for the Busy Executive is the solution. With pre-written letters and over 1,500 customizable phrases for nearly any occasion, this book is a major time saver! Copy a letter exactly or use it as a starting point for your own to make professional communication quick and easy.

This work describes and analyzes the authors' study of collaborative technical writing in an institutional setting - that of a group of nurses composing the writing of a hospital-based nursing project. This study seeks to provide the context for the authors to draw conclusions on: writing in a collaborative group; the role of discourse in constructing the social dynamics of community groups; and on institutional authorship for virtual audiences.

In this timesaving reference book, respected author and historian Kristine Hughes brings 19th century England to life as she leads you through the details that characterize this fascinating era. From slice-of-life facts, anecdotes and firsthand accounts, to sweeping timelines and major historical events, this guide presents the delightful and often surprising daily realities of Regency and Victorian England. With it, you'll craft a vibrant story as you learn what people ate, from pigeon pie and turtle dinners to syllabub and milk punch, where a prisoner would go if he were remanded to the "hulks; " the four coats a gentleman must have in his wardrobe, and other fashion requirements of the era; the rules honored by decent society, from the proper way to promenade to the polite hours to "call; " how couples married and divorced, through churching, wife-selling and other practices; what people did for work, from cottagers and climbing boys to milkmaids and manservants; the meaning of common slang words like mawleys and moleskins; what Cook's Tours were life and where they could take the adventurous; and trends in entertainment, such as dandies, panoramas and more.

Today's business prose has to be done yesterday. And it has to cut through gigabytes of other information. Can your memos and marketing material compete? do you spend so much time agonizing over words that you have no time for other work?With Words at Work you can make your writing faster, more foreceful, and more fun. Susan Benjamin's six-step process can turn your next business documnet into the best you've ever written. Learn to: Raise a "writing umbrella" to make your message memorable; exorcise the demons of past criticism and bad advice; strengthen your style at a glance with "no-read" editing.Words at Work gives you quick-and-easy recipes for the most important letters, reports, and proposals. It steers you around the potholes of punctuation, usage, and grammar. Soon all your business documents, from press releases to e-mail, will reflect your best work--and leave you enough time to do that work!

"Writing at Work" is for people who do or will write while on the job whether the writing be an interoffice memo, e-mail, a status report, a lab report, marketing materials, or a letter to a customer. The philosophy behind "Writing at Work" is that such writing needn't be stale and unoriginal but can instead be a sophisticated piece of work that positively reflects the competence of its composer to all who read it. Rather than dwell on picky, little "rules" that you must adhere to when writing, "Writing at Work" focuses on the real rules of grammar and aspects of style that you really need to know in order to write with confidence. Using examples realistically drawn from work settings, "Writing at Work" presents each topic in a manner that is at once accessible and inviting. Spread throughout the text are exercises that provide you with ample opportunity to write, revise, and correct the kinds of written tasks typically encountered at work. You can immediately gauge your progress by checking your work against the answers listed at the end of each chapter.

Uniquely fusing practical advice on writing with his own insights into the craft, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes constructs beautiful prose about the issues would-be writers are most afraid to articulate: How do I dare write? Where do I begin? What do I do with this story I have to tell that fills and breaks my heart? Rich with personal vignettes about Rhode's sources of inspiration, How to Write is also a memoir of one of the most original and celebrated writers of our day.