Are you guilty of e-mail "trigger finger"? Do you constantly "cc" people you never even see? What are today's rules for conducting business over the Internet? Now, The Elements of Style meets "the Miss Manners of memos" in the ultimate writing guide for the digital age.

In an era when written communication in the workplace is more crucial than ever, at a time when many professionals all but completely eschew face-to-face dealings, E-writing is poised to become the new bible of business writing. Accessible and inviting, this Web-savvy "how-to" book promises to transform anxious e-mail hacks and mediocre memo writers into eloquent electronic scribes in no time at all.

Inside, you will learn how to:

• combat counterproductive e-mail habits
  
• write authoritatively and persuasively, with a clear message that generates quick action
  
• handle e-mail and letter correspondence efficiently and effectively
  
• select an appropriate style for the audience you're addressing
  
• heighten your professional image, self-confidence, and career prospects.
  

Practicing what she preaches, award-winning communicator and bestselling author Dianna Booher writes in a refreshingly straightforward style and has organized E-writing to make on-the-spot referencing a snap. Keep it handy; refer to it often -- and your online mailbox will never be the same again.

Flatter, more collaborative organizational structures, combined with the pressure to translate innovative ideas into action quickly, are increasing the need by technical professionals-such as computer programmers, design specialists, engineers, and R&D scientists-to expand their repertoire of communication and managerial skills. In this highly accessible and practical book, Harry Chambers offers a wealth of strategies and tactics for building these skills, to the benefit of individuals, teams, and companies. In his trademark shoot-from-the-hip style, Chambers identifies specific real-world challenges that technical professionals face in the workplace, and offers definitive guidelines for enhancing their communication skills-from making presentations to giving and receiving criticism to navigating office politics. Featuring interviews with people in the trenches, as well as self-assessment tools and exercises, "Effective Communication Skills" will become a valued resource for technical professionals and their colleagues, trainers, and HR departments in all industries.

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

"Writing Business: Genres, Media and Discourses" offers an analysis of the genres and functions of written discourse in the business context, involving a variety of modes of communication. The evolution of new forms of writing is a key focus of this collection and is only partly attributable to the ever increasing application of technology at work. Alongside machine-mediated texts such as electronic mail and computer-generated correspondence, the contextualised analyses of both traditional genres such as facsimiles and direct mailing, and of lesser studied texts such as invitations for bids, contracts, business magazines and ceremonial speeches, reveal a rich complexity in the forms of communication evolved by organisations and the individuals who work within them, in response to the demands of the social, organisational and cultural contexts in which they operate. This rich textual variation is matched by a discussion of a range of methodological approaches to the development of business writing skills, including rhetorical analysis, organisational communication analysis, social constructionism, genre analysis and survey and experimental methods. Using authentic data and benefiting from a fresh, interdisciplinary approach, the volume will be of interest to students and researchers of business communication, Language for Specific Purposes (LSP), English for Specific Purposes (ESP), and sociolinguistics.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Progressive reformers set up curricula in journalism, public relations, and creative writing to fulfill their own purposes: well-trained rhetors could convince the United States citizenry to accept Progressive thinking on monopolies and unions and to elect reform candidates. Although Progressive politicians and educators envisioned these courses and majors as forwarding their own goals, they could not control the intentions of the graduates thus trained or the employers who hired them. The period's vast panorama of rhetoric, including Theodore Roosevelt's publicity stunts, muckraker exposes, ad campaigns for patent medicines, and the selling of World War I, revealed the new national power of propaganda and the media, especially when wielded by college-trained experts imbued with the Progressive tradition of serving a cause and ensuring social betterment.
In this unique volume, Adams' chronicles the creation of this advanced curriculum in speaking and writing during the Progressive era and examines the impact of that curriculum on public discourse. Unlike other studies of writing instruction, which have concentrated on freshman curriculum or on a specific genre, this book provides a historical and cultural analysis of the advanced composition curriculum and of its impact on public persuasion. Adams surveys American instruction at state and private schools across the country, with special attention given to the influential Progressive universities of the Midwest. She draws on a wide variety of primary data sources including college catalogs, course assignments, departmental minutes, speeches, and journals, and includes an extensive bibliography of research sources concerning advanced composition instruction and American rhetoric before World War II. As a resource offering remarkable historical insights on the history of writing instruction in America, this volume is of great interest to scholars and students in rhetoric, communication, and technical writing.

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!

Does traditional argument still have a place in the composition classroom? How can the process of argument be used productively by students? In this edited volume, some of the leading composition scholars today consider the ways in which argumentation as an approach to teaching writing remains valuable, in spite of the postmodern theories of composition that have challenged its relevance. First, the contributors "revisit" and explain the traditional approaches to argument--enthymeme, evidence, Toulmian, Rogerian, and classical rhetoric--and show why they are more relevant today than ever. They then "redefine" argument by connecting it with theoretical movements that have been adverse to it--feminism, narratology, and reflexive reading. As a result, the book unites apparently conflicting approaches into a new definition of argument that emphasizes inquiry over discord and understanding over entrenched difference. Argument Revisited, Argument Redefined enables compositions scholars and teachers to incorporate argumentative inquiry more effectively into the classroom, and demonstrates that argument as a genre and as a process can still serve students well. This unparalleled volume will be of use to professors and researchers in written communication, rhetoric, linguistics and communication.

"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.

Comprised of a study spanning over five years, this text looks at four engineering co-op students as they write at work. Since the contributors have a foot in both worlds -- work and school -- the book should appeal to people who are interested in how students learn to write as well as people who are interested in what writing at work is like. Primarily concerned with whether engineers see their writing as rhetorical or persuasive, the study attempts to describe the students' changing understanding of what it is they do when they write.
Two features of engineering practice that have particular impact on the extent to which engineers recognize persuasion are identified:
* a reverence for data, and
* the hierarchical structure of the organizations in which engineering is most commonly done.
Both of these features discourage an open recognition of persuasion. Finally, the study shows that the four co-op students learned most of what they knew about writing at work by engaging in situated practice in the workplace, rather than by attending formal classes.

In this volume, methodological, cultural, technological, and political boundaries felt by writers are analyzed, translated, and challenged in a way that will appeal to researchers, theorists, graduate students, instructors, and managerial audiences. Instead of extracting rules from previous research, the contributors, working from multidisciplinary perspectives, describe and analyze the social and technological contexts surrounding nonacademic writing. Their essays present a formative rather than summative outlook toward future research on nonacademic writing.
Collectively, these chapters articulate a unique perspective toward nonacademic writing that considers:
* The centrality of emerging communications technologies in nonacademic writing research and the need for a socio-technological perspective. New technologies reshape the concept of text and significantly impact the writing process and written products in nonacademic settings.
* The relationship between the academy and the workplace. A number of chapters challenge us -- sometimes from opposing perspectives -- to scrutinize our role as writing educators in preparing students for the workplace. Should we support the interests of corporate employers, or should we resist those interests? Should we enculturate students in workplace writing practices by placing them in these environments, or should we examine the tacit knowledge gained by workplace professionals and deliver this via classroom instruction?
* New theory, new research agendas. Contributors from diverse fields offer new theoretical lenses or use established lenses in innovative ways, expanding the agenda for nonacademic writing research.
This volume represents the vision the social landscape demands for research and pedagogy in nonacademic writing.

The key to the classic "Greek Prose Composition" which has been in use throughout the world for over100 years. It features brief lesson overviews followed by English to Greek composition exercises. In the Appendix the student will find useful tables of verb stems, prepositions and particles. The book is suitable for both beginners and intermediate learners.

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

Memory has long been ignored by rhetoricians because the written word has made memorization virtually obsolete. Recently however, as part of a revival of interest in classical rhetoric, scholars have begun to realize that memory offers vast possibilities for today's writers. Synthesizing research from rhetoric, psychology, philosophy, and literary and composition studies, this volume brings together many historical and contemporary theories of memory. Yet its focus is clear: memory is a generator of knowledge and a creative force which deserves attention at the beginning of and throughout the writing process.
This volume emphasizes the importance of recognizing memory's powers in an age in which mass media influence us all and electronic communication changes the way we think and write. It also addresses the importance of the individual memory and voice in an age which promotes conformity. Written in a strong, lively personal manner, the book covers a great deal of scholarly material. It is never overbearing, and the extensive bibliography offers rich vistas for further study.

Writing about Business and Industry brings together timeless essays and readings that exemplify excellence in writing about the history, theory, and practice of business. Beverly Schneller, coeditor of Writing about Science, has gathered the works of an extraordinary range of talented minds--Adam Smith, Lewis and Clark, George Orwell, Henry Ford, Beatrice Webb, as well as many others--to instruct and encourage those seeking to become polished writers in business, technical, economic, and related fields. These colorful selections bring specialized composition to life for the student, showing how different styles work for different fields, and enlivening the learning process. Students will hone their writing skills while discovering the Walla Walla River, visiting Wales, pondering the inherent nature of competition, or examining the status of women in the workplace. From Max Weber to contemporary journalism, the historical development of business thought and practice unfolds for the student. For courses in business and technical writing, as well as writing for the social sciences, this engaging collection provides an opportunity to uncover the often surprising possibilities of technical and business prose.

Completely revised and updated in a second edition, this volume represents the only book ever written that analyzes sports writing and presents it as "exceptional" writing. Other books discuss sports writers as "beat reporters" in one area of journalism, whereas this book shows aspiring sports writers a myriad of techniques to make their writing stand out. It takes the reader through the entire process of sports writing: observation, interviewing techniques, and various structures of articles; types of "leads;" transitions within an article; types of endings; use of statistics; do's and don'ts of sports writing; and many other style and technique points. This text provides over 100 examples of leads drawn from newspapers and magazines throughout the country, and also offers up-to-date examples of sports jargon from virtually every major and minor sport played in the U.S.

This volume explores adult work-world writing issues from the perspectives of five seasoned professionals who have logged hundreds of hours working with adults on complicated written communication problems. It examines the gap between school-world instructional practices and real-world problems and situations. After describing the five major economic sectors which are writing intensive, the text suggests curricular reforms which might better prepare college-educated writers for these worlds. Because the volume is based on the extensive work-world experiences of the authors, it offers numerous examples of real-world writing problems and strategies which illustrate concretely what goes wrong and what needs to be done about it.

Designed for student of Russians at A Level and beyond, this book first provides guidance on the basics of writing Russian and then goes on to give practical assistance in writing essays and projects in Russian on a range of topics - ranging from climate to organized crime - included in area studies courses on post-Soviet Russia. Each topic is divided into sections on vocabulary, phraseology and useful background information adaptable for self-teaching and for oral conversation classes. Exercises are included on specific grammar points and related vocabulary, all Russian texts included as information source and as models for adaptation are translated, and an English-Russian vocabulary is provided.

Exhaustively illustrated and broad in scope, Editing Technical Writing is a comprehensive textbook and reference for students of technical editing and communication. It is also a training manual for working professionals in business and government who must revise documents to communicate technical information clearly and effectively.

It examines the broad role of the editor from the collaborative writing of a document through proofreading and on to production. It also looks at different documents and the different styles of editing required for these. All in all this an essential manual and reference for the technical editor and should enable them to vastly improve their editing skills.

Tracing the growth of ancient biography from the fifth century to the first century B.C., Arnaldo Momigliano asks fruitful questions about the origins and development of Greek biography. By clarifying the social and intellectual implications of the fact that the Greeks kept biography and autobiography distinct from historiography, he contributes to an understanding of a basic dichotomy in the Western tradition of historical writing. The Development of Greek Biography is fully annotated, and includes a bibliography designed to serve as an introduction to the study of biography in general. This classic study is now reissued with the addition of Momigliano's essay "Second Thoughts on Greek Biography" (1971).

Advancing the application of Carl Rogers' ideas, this book presents new theoretical and practical views of Rogerian influences on rhetorical theory, the teaching of writing, and pragmatic discourse. Practically, the contributors focus on the dynamics of Rogerian communication in real-world contexts, extending Rogers' person-centered principles into classroom interactions, peer response groups, and other collaborations. Theoretically, discussions situate Rogerian principles within the contexts of persuasive and dialogical rhetoric, and of psychoanalytic and philosophical intersubjectivity. Also included are transcripts of an interview with Rogers, and a forum discussion epitomizing Rogerian principles in action.

The essential guide for all writers. With over 700 examples of original and edited sentences, this book provides information about editing techniques, grammar, and usage for every writer from the student to the published author.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY "KIRKUS REVIEWS"
"Good Prose" is an inspiring book about writing--about the creation of good prose--and the record of a warm and productive literary friendship. The story begins in 1973, in the offices of "The Atlantic Monthly, " in Boston, where a young freelance writer named Tracy Kidder came looking for an assignment. Richard Todd was the editor who encouraged him. From that article grew a lifelong association. Before long, Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine, " the first book the two worked on together, had won the Pulitzer Prize. It was a heady moment, but for Kidder and Todd it was only the beginning of an education in the art of nonfiction.
"Good Prose "explores three major nonfiction forms: narratives, essays, and memoirs. Kidder and Todd draw candidly, sometimes comically, on their own experience--their mistakes as well as accomplishments--to demonstrate the pragmatic ways in which creative problems get solved. They also turn to the works of a wide range of writers, novelists as well as nonfiction writers, for models and instruction. They talk about narrative strategies (and about how to find a story, sometimes in surprising places), about the ethical challenges of nonfiction, and about the realities of making a living as a writer. They offer some tart and emphatic opinions on the current state of language. And they take a clear stand against playing loose with the facts. Their advice is always grounded in the practical world of writing and publishing.
"Good Prose"--like Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style--"is a succinct, authoritative, and entertaining arbiter of standards in contemporary writing, offering guidance for the professional writer and the beginner alike. This wise and useful book is the perfect companion for anyone who loves to read good books and longs to write one.
Praise for "Good Prose"
"Smart, lucid, and entertaining."--"The Boston Globe"
" "
"You are in such good company--congenial, ironic, a bit old-school--that you're happy to follow Kidder and Todd] where they lead you."--"The Wall Street Journal"
" A] well-structured, to-the-point, genuinely useful, and fun-to-read guide to writing narrative nonfiction, essays, and memoir . . . Crisp, informative, and mind-expanding."--"Booklist"" "
"A gem . . . The finer points of creative nonfiction are molded into an inspiring read that will affect the would-be writer as much as Anne Lamott's" Bird by Bird "or Stephen King's "On Writing. ." . . This is a must read for nonfiction writers."--"Library Journal"
" "
"As approachable and applicable as any writing manual available."--Associated Press

"From the Hardcover edition."

Master Japanese scripts with this straightforward guide from Teach Yourself - the No. 1 brand in language learning. Read and write Japanese scripts is a clear step-by-step guide to the written languages, with plenty of examples from real-life texts to show how they work in context and lots of exercises to reinforce your learning. This new edition has an easy-to-read page design. Now fully updated to make your language learning experience fun and interactive. You can still rely on the benefits of a top language teacher and our years of teaching experience, but now with added learning features within the course. Learn effortlessly with new, easy-to-read page design: AUTHOR INSIGHTS Lots of instant help with common problems and quick tips for success, based on the author's many years of experience. USEFUL VOCABULARY Easy to find and learn, to build a solid foundation for speaking. TEST YOURSELF Tests in the book to keep track of your progress. EXTEND YOUR KNOWLEDGE Extra online articles at: www.teachyourself.com to give you a richer understanding of the culture and history of Japan. TRY THIS Innovative exercises illustrate what you've learnt and how to use it.