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.

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.

With grace and insight, celebrated writer bell hooks untangles the complex personae of women writers. Born and raised in the rural South, hooks learned early the power of the written word and the importance of speaking her mind. Her passion for words is the heartbeat of this collection of essays. Remembered Rapture celebrates literacy, the joys of reading and writing, and the lasting power of the book. Once again, these essays reveal bell hooks's wide-ranging intellectual scope; she is a universal writer addressing readers and writers everywhere.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. . .

"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.

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.

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.

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.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, English literature, composition, and rhetoric were introduced almost simultaneously into colleges throughout the British cultural provinces. Professorships of rhetoric and belles lettres were established just as print was reaching a growing reading public and efforts were being made to standardize educated taste and usage. The provinces saw English studies as a means to upward social mobility through cultural assimilation. In the educational centers of England, however, the introduction of English represented a literacy crisis brought on by provincial institutions that had failed to maintain classical texts and learned languages.

Today, as rhetoric and composition have become reestablished in the humanities in American colleges, English studies are being broadly transformed by cultural studies, community literacies, and political controversies. Once again, English departments that are primarily departments of literature see these basic writing courses as a sign of a literacy crisis that is undermining the classics of literature. "The Formation of College English" reexamines the civic concerns of rhetoric and the politics that have shaped and continue to shape college English.

The author, a prodigious writer himself, leads the reader through technical writing with one towering underlying assumption -- technical writing need not be ponderous! Much of this book applies to most writing, for the mechanics of good writing remain the same, whether for fiction or non-fiction.

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.

Levin shows beginning as well as experienced novelists what makes the juiciest conflicts, how to use point of view, and how to get to know the characters. Levin also divdes topics into "The Basics" and "The Finer Points," offering writers two levels of instruction.

"How to Edit Technical DocumentS" is the most concise and clearly presented discussion of the editor's role and responsibilities to the writer, the reader, and the publishing process--including changes that result from technological advances in editing. The authors describe the demands of communicating complicated information, in print and on screen, without diminishing the expressive power of language. As a result, users learn the skills necessary to become contributing members of any organization that requires informed and imaginative editors.

The stories we tell about ourselves are guided by cultural patterns and enduring elements. The current interest in mythology has made evident how the classic hero's journey represents a theme not only common to all the world's myths, but also our own lives today. The Gift of Stories offers a clear concise basis for understanding the nature and potential of sharing our stories. It provides specific, practical, instructional details for telling our own stories and gives the necessary guidelines for assisting others in telling their life stories. Its basic framework enables individuals with little experience to begin writing about the really important aspects of their lives and understanding how and why the universal elements of the stories we tell contribute to our continuing growth.

An essential guide to the inside language of fiction, this book dusts off the traditional concept of "dictionary" by giving full, vivid descriptions and by using lively examples from classic and contemporary fiction to show theories in play,

This book is a history composed of histories. Its particular focus is the way in which computers entered and changed the field of composition studies, a field that defines itself both as a research community and as a community of teachers. This may have a somewhat sinister suggestion that technology alone has agency, but this history (made of histories) is not principally about computers. It is about people-the teachers and scholars who have adapted the computer to their personal and professional purposes. From the authors' perspectives, change in technology drives changes in the ways we live and work, and we, agents to a degree in control of our own lives, use technology to achieve our human purposes. REVIEW: . . . This book reminds those of us now using computers to teach writing where we have been, and it brings those who are just entering the field up to date. More important, it will inform administrators, curriculum specialists, and others responsible for implementing the future uses of technology in writing instruction. - Computers and Composition