Writing

Because Writing Matters examines the myths and realities surrounding the teaching of writing in schools. This important book reveals how kids learn to write, what schools need to do to teach writing effectively, and shows that effective writing teachers address more than content and skills. Sponsored by the National Writing Project, a nationally recognized organization for teachers, Because Writing Matters offers step-by-step recommendations for developing effective writing programs in all grades. Each of the book's action steps is prioritized from the easily achieved to the larger and longer term.

Congratulations Graduate! is a collection of 21 inspiring commencement addresses by notable achievers, including Tom Hanks, Arianna Huffington, David Sedaris, Anna Quindlen, Barbara Kingsolver, David McCullough, Anna Deavere Smith, Thomas L. Friedman, Wendell Berry, Muhammad Yunus, Kathryn Sullivan, Ian McEwan, Anne Lamott, and more! This book offers a diverse array of moving, uplifting, and wonderfully humorous commencement addresses that provide important life lessons and inspiration. Congratulations Graduate! is the perfect gift for graduates!

Writers and publishers depend on one another, but it often seems as if they speak two different languages. "Getting It Published" is a lively, insider's guide to academic publishing a book that will tell you not only how publishing works, but how you can make it work for you. Written by a veteran editor with experience in both the university press and commercial worlds, the book fields the big questions in a scholar's life. Why do editors choose some books and decline others? How does a writer decide where to submit a project? How does the review process work, and why is it necessary? What can an author expect from a publishing house before, during, and after publication? William Germano answers these questions and more, and along the way, offers encouragement, tips, and warnings.
This savvy guide unravels the mysteries of publishing and walks you through the process from start to finish. You'll learn how to think about your book before you submit it and what you need to know about your contract. With wit and humor, Germano also addresses some of the finer points of publishing etiquette, including how and how not to approach a busy editor and how to work with other publishing professionals on matters of design, marketing, and publicity. Graduate students, recent Ph.D.'s, and experienced authors alike will appreciate the chapters on "Quotations, Pictures, and Other Headaches" and on compiling and editing collections and anthologies.
"Scholarly publishing is a big, noisy, conversation about the ideas that shape our world," Germano writes, "Here's how to make your book part of that conversation.""

Each working day from January 29 to November 1, 1951, John Steinbeck warmed up to the work of writing East of Eden with a letter to the late Pascal Covici, his friend and editor at The Viking Press. It was his way, he said, of "getting my mental arm in shape to pitch a good game."

Steinbeck's letters were written on the left-hand pages of a notebook in which the facing pages would be filled with the test of East of Eden. They touched on many subjects--story arguments, trial flights of workmanship, concern for his sons.

Part autobiography, part writer's workshop, these letters offer an illuminating perspective on Steinbeck's creative process, and a fascinating glimpse of Steinbeck, the private man.

For nearly half a century, the style recommended by the Modern Language Association for scholarly manuscripts and student research papers has been widely adopted and required not only by journals and presses but also by schools, departments, and individual instructors. Since the publication of the first edition in 1977, the MLA Handbook has sold over five million copies worldwide.

The fifth edition of the MLA Handbook is revamped for the Internet age. A complete toolbox for online research, this edition offers guidance in
-- finding research materials online
-- judging the quality of information on the Internet
-- using expanded and updated MLA formats to document a wide variety of online sources
-- preparing texts in electronic form

The MLA Handbook's authoritative guidelines on research practices and MLA style are enhanced in other ways. New topics have been added, and citation examples, the list of suggested writing guides, and the appendix of reference works by field have been expanded and updated.

The fifth edition serves as both a classroom text and a reference book for students and writers to use independently. Teachers and students of writing, literature, languages, philosophy, and other humanities fields will find this guide indispensable.

When we open the gates to nonfiction inquiry, we open our thinking and expect the unexpected, making reading discoveries, research discoveries, and writing discoveries on our way. Nonfiction Matters offers teachers the tools to help students explore nonfiction and dig deep to reach more complete understanding of the real world and report these insights in a compelling manner.

Stephanie Harvey shows how students can read expository text, engage in research, and write authentic nonfiction that is captivating, visual, and full of voice. The inquiry projects she describes require in-depth learning: topic selection, question development, research exploration, reading for content, organization, synthesis, writing to convey meaning, and presenting findings--all skills that develop independent thinkers who know how to make decisions, solve problems, and apply their knowledge insightfully.

Full of practical suggestions to help you bring nonfiction into your curriculum, Nonfiction Matters: presents strategies for understanding expository text and conducting meaningful research;offers ideas for organizing and writing accurate, effective nonfiction from idea to finished presentation;advances the importance of teacher modeling and guided practice in instructional delivery;provides a list of inquiry tools and resources--both print and electronic;suggests ways to facilitate project-based learning and assess the projects as they develop;includes bibliographies of nonfiction children's books by subject and genre and lists of recommended magazines.

Why is nonfiction almost a guaranteed success? The key to teaching with nonfiction is passion, for children are passionate inquirers, and nonfiction fuels their curiosity and their demand for knowledge and understanding of the world.

In offices across America, the Masters of Gobbledygook are hard at work. They're bombarding in-boxes with those long, confusing memos that colleagues don't have the patience to read--and bosses don't have the time to rewrite. They use words like "commence" or "prior to" instead of "begin" or "before." They bury their main point somewhere in the last paragraph--and take two pages to get there. Everybody knows one of them; in fact, you may even be one of them. But now there's help for anyone who's ever fallen prey to businessese, academese, legalese, or any other "ese" when faced with a blank memo pad.
In The Plain English Approach to Business Writing, Edward Bailey--who spent twenty years working in the bastions of bureaucratese--offers readers a powerful new communications tool. Written for busy professionals who want to improve the quality and clarity of their own (or their staff's) writing style, this no-nonsense guide is an indispensable office companion. Bailey's approach is 5urprisingly straightforward: just write as you would talk. Plain English is not only easier to read; it's also easier to write. And it's so effective that many large organizations are endorsing, if not demanding, its use in the work place. Pithy and entertaining, Bailey points out all the dos and don'ts of plain English. He then illustrates them with examples drawn from a wide array of sources, including business documents, technical manuals, trade publications like Consumer Reports, and the works of writers such as Russell Baker and John D. MacDonald. From the basics to the fine tuning, he offers practical advice on clarity and precision, organization, layout, and a host of other important writing topics.
A delightful, down-to-earth guide, The Plain English Approach to Business Writing is for professionals of all backgrounds (government, military, legal, financial, technical, corporate) and staff at all levels (from the company CEO to the ambitious secretary). The Plain English Approach to Business Writing can be read in an hour--and used for the rest of one's life.

For author Gish Jen, the daughter of Chinese immigrant parents, books were once an Outsiders' Guide to the Universe. But they were something more, too. Through her eclectic childhood reading, Jen stumbled onto a cultural phenomenon that would fuel her writing for decades to come: the profound difference in self-narration that underlies the gap often perceived between East and West.

Drawing on a rich array of sources, from paintings to behavioral studies to her father's striking account of his childhood in China, this accessible book not only illuminates Jen's own development and celebrated work but also explores the aesthetic and psychic roots of the independent and interdependent self-each mode of selfhood yielding a distinct way of observing, remembering, and narrating the world. The novel, Jen writes, is fundamentally a Western form that values originality, authenticity, and the truth of individual experience. By contrast, Eastern narrative emphasizes morality, cultural continuity, the everyday, the recurrent. In its progress from a moving evocation of one writer's life to a convincing delineation of the forces that have shaped our experience for millennia, "Tiger Writing" radically shifts the way we understand ourselves and our art-making.

Inside The Wicked Wit of Charles Dickens, readers take a journey into the classically humorous and almost goofy side of one of the most famous writers in world history. readers will find a timeline of Charles Dickens's Life, several short stories, a whole chapter of Dickens's bumblings, and quotes from some of Dickens's most famous papers.

Dickens was a wonderfully smart child who excelled in school but became a victim of poverty. In his later years, this childhood of poverty would influence him greatly and a great deal of his material was based on this life. When his father was sent to prison, Dickens's mother and siblings accompanied his father and went to live inside the prison in one small room while Charles was sent into lodgings beside the prison and worked at a blacking factory.

The Wicked Wit of Charles Dickenstakes Dickens's lovers through a history of some of his lesser-known stories and introduces the reader to a side of Dickens that may not have been seen before, the wickedly entertaining and funny side. The beautifully bound hardcover will look incredible resting on anyone's coffee table or bookshelf and can be considered a collectible book. Researched and compiled by Shelley Klein, this book is a must-have for any Classic Literature fan who is a current or former fan of Dickens.