What is composing?

What is rhetoric?

Purpose

Audience

Context

Strategies

Rhetoric and a process for composing

Understanding your project or assignment

Responding to a written assignment

Sample research paper assignment

Understanding other projects

Composing to learn and composing to communicate

A research process

Getting started with research

Sample research schedule

Finding a topic

Narrowing a general topic

How do you know when you have a narrowed topic?

Other strategies for narrowing a topic

Questions to guide research

Using research questions to guide your search for sources

Kinds of sources, kinds of research

Kinds of research

Determining where to research

Choosing sources

Choosing sources—periodicals

Choosing sources—books

Choosing sources—webpages

Finding sources

Searching online
Using your library’s resources

Archives and special collections

Field research sources

What if you can’t find anything on your narrowed topic?

Starting a paper

Sample research questions

HINTS & TIPS for finding ideas

Working with sources 84

Steps for working with sources 86

Evaluating sources 88

Evaluating sources for relevance 90

SAMPLE SOURCES 92

Evaluating sources for credibility: Print 94

SAMPLE PRINT SOURCES 96

Evaluating sources for credibility: Online 98

SAMPLE ONLINE SOURCES 100

Using sources ethically 102

Why cite and document sources? 104

There are five kinds of sources 108

Collecting citation information for books 110

No single person listed as author 112

Collecting citation information for

parts of books 114

Collecting citation information for

periodicals 116

Collecting citation information for

webpages 118

Collecting citation information for articles

you find in a database of journals 122

Collecting citation information for other

kinds of texts 124

Keeping track of sources: Starting a

running source list 126

SAMPLE RUNNING SOURCE LIST 127

Hints & tips for collecting citation

Engaging with sources 130

What is analysis? 132

Understanding and analyzing texts 134

Developing a sense of the author 136

Understanding appeals to the emotions 138

Understanding arrangement 140

SAMPLE ANALYSIS ESSAY 142

Analyzing arguments 144

Thesis statements 146

What counts as evidence 148

Further questions to guide critical reading 158

Critical reading 160

SAMPLE ANNOTATED ARGUMENT 161

SAMPLE RHETORICAL ANALYSIS 166

Questions to guide critical looking 170

SAMPLE ANALYSIS OF A VISUAL TEXT 172

Summarizing, quoting, and paraphrasing 174

Summarizing the words of others 176

Quoting the words of others 178

Paraphrasing the words of others 184

An annotated bibliography 186

SAMPLE ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY 187

Putting sources in dialogue with each other 188

SAMPLE SYNTHESIS OF SOURCES 189

Using analysis to compose a thesis statement 190

SAMPLE THESIS STATEMENTS 191

What is organization?

Conceptual frameworks and genres

Academic genres

Writing in the humanities

Writing in the sciences

Writing in the social sciences

Using a thesis statement to organize an academic paper

sample thesis statement organizing a paper

Online academic genres 208

Workplace genres 214

Memos 216

E-mail 217

Resumés 218

Cover letters 220

Shaping paragraphs for audience and

purpose 222

Unified and coherent paragraphs 224

Paragraphs that develop 228

Paragraphs that describe 229

Paragraphs that define 230

Paragraphs that narrate 231

Paragraphs that give examples 232

Paragraphs that use analogy 233

Paragraphs that divide 234

Paragraphs that blend organizations 235

Multimodal organization: Visual texts 236

Multimodal organization: Oral

presentations 242

HINTS & TIPS for organizing texts 244

Understanding your audience 246

What do people know about your topic? 248

Starting to write for an audience 250

How to write a statement of purpose 252

SAMPLE STATEMENT OF PURPOSE 253

A rough draft 254

SAMPLE ROUGH DRAFT 256

Receiving feedback to a draft 264

Responding to the writing of your peers 266

SAMPLE PEER RESPONSE 267

HINTS & TIPS for connecting with audiences 268

Revising your writing 270

Developing a revision plan 272

SAMPLE REVISION PLAN 273

Revising, style, and audience 274

Styles readers expect in different

settings 276

Style in writing 278

Styling paragraphs 280

Concluding paragraphs 282

Introductory paragraphs 284

Transitions between paragraphs 286

Passive voice 288

Styling sentences 290

Academic sentences 292

Sentences that are easy to read 294

Using coordination and subordination 296

Parallelism 298

Figurative language 300

Styling words 302

Dictionary definitions 303

The names we use 304

Action verbs 305

Concrete nouns 306

Clichés 307

Jargon 308

Too many words 309

Using inclusive language 310

Including all ethnicities 314

Including all genders 315

Including all abilities 316

Including all ages 317

Including all sexual orientations 318

Including all religions 319

Multimodal style: Visual texts 320

Multimodal stye: Oral presentations 324

Multimodal style: Slides to support

oral presentations 326

HINTS & TIPS for concluding paragraphs 328

A paper in MLA format                                                               

Sample research paper

For in-text citations                                                                   

Variations on the pattern

For works cited

Sample works cited page

For periodicals

For articles from databases

For webpages

For books

For parts of books

For other kinds of texts

Author’s name

Titles

Periodical volume, issue, number, and date

Page numbers for articles from periodicals

Place of publication

Year of publication

Website titles

Additional information

For other kinds of texts                                                                       

A paper in APA format

Sample research paper

A reference list page in APA format

Sample references page

In-text citations

Reference list entries

In text

References

In text

References

Editing and Proofreading

How to edit

How to proofread

Subject-verb agreement

Academic verb tenses

Shifts in verb tenses

Shifts in grammatical forms

Sentence fragments                                                                            

Run-on sentences

Pronoun reference and agreement

Misplaced and dangling modifiers

Varieties of English

Academic English

English as a global language

Writing English when English is not your home language

Using an ESL dictionary

Parts of speech

Nouns

Pronouns

Adjectives

Articles

Verbs

Adverbs

Prepositions

Conjunctions

Sentence functions                                                                                 

Sentence patterns

Simple sentences

Subjects and predicates

Independent clauses

Compound sentences

Complex sentences

Compound-complex sentences

Commas

With numbers, place names, and dates                                          

When you are quoting the words of others

To separate words in lists

To build sentences that contain multiple parts                                

When not to use commas

Semicolons

Colons

In conventional patterns

For information at the end of a sentence

To link two sentences

Parentheses

Dashes

Brackets

Hyphens

Slashes

Ellipses

Apostrophes

Quotation marks

For titles of short works

To indicate you are using a word as a word

To indicate technical terms

To show irony

To indicate direct quotation

To indicate speech

Periods

Question marks

Exclamation points

Using italics and underlining

Spelling

Capitalizing words

Abbreviations

Numbers

EXERCISES  

Glossary of grammatical terms and usage

Index

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