semiprofessional magician, but whenhe found that he could fool all of the people all of the time the work became boring, and so he became a college professor. He taught composition and

English literature at Tufts University for thirty years, published scholarly articles on Shakespeare, and is the author and coauthor of several books about the art of writing.

Pat Bellanca was born in East Hanover, New Jersey; she holds degrees in English from Wellesley College (BA) and Rutgers University (MA, PhD). She teaches in the Harvard College Writing

Program and is Director of Writing Programs at the Harvard Extension School, the university’s open-enrollment evening division. Her research interests include composition studies and Gothic fiction,

fields that are not unrelated.

Marcia Stubbs was born in Newark, New Jersey, where she was drum majorette ofWeequahic High School’s band, and she was educated at Stanford University and the University

of Michigan. She has taught at Tufts University, Harvard University,and Wellesley College, where she has directed the Writing Program. In addition to annotations on students’

compositions, she has written poems and verse translations, and she is the coauthor of several books on writing.

How to Write: Writing as a Physical Act 2

Some Ideas About Ideas: Strategies for Invention 2

Critical Thinking: Subject, Topic, Thesis 9

CHECKLIST for a Thesis Sentence 13

Thinking About Audience and Purpose: The Reader

as Collaborator 14

Writing the Draft 15

Imagining Your Audience and Asking Questions 17

From Assignment to Essay: A Case History 21

CHECKLIST for Peer Review 24

Summary of Peer Group Discussion 26

CHECKLIST for Drafting And Revising 30

The Shape of a Paragraph 33

Examples of Topic Sentences at Beginning and at End,

and of Topic Ideas 34

Transitions 39

Repetition 40

The Use and Abuse of Short Paragraphs 45

CHECKLIST for Revising Paragraphs 56

How to Avoid Instant Prose 59

Weak Intensifiers 61

Circumlocutions 61

Wordy Beginnings 62

Empty Conclusions 63

Wordy Uses of the Verbs To Be, To Have , and To Make 63

Redundancy 64

Negative Constructions 65

EXTRA SENTENCES, EXTRA CLAUSES:

Who, Which, That 67

It Is, This Is, There Are 67

CHECKLIST for Revising For Conciseness 68

Denotation 72

Connotation 73

Avoiding Sexist Language 74

Quotation Marks as Apologies 75

Being Specific 76

Using Examples 77

Jargon and Technical Language 79

Clichés 80

Metaphors and Mixed Metaphors 81

Euphemisms 83

Passive or Active Voice? 84

The Writer’s “I” 86

Cats Are Dogs 88

Items in a Series 88

Modifiers 89

Reference of Pronouns 91

Agreement 93

Repetition and Variation 95

CHECKLIST for Revising for Clarity 98

CHAPTER 6 Writing with Style 99

Clarity and Texture 106

Originality and Imitation 106

Writing a Summary 109

Using Sources without Plagiarizing 122

Fair Use of Common Knowledge 128

“But How Else Can I Put It?” 128

CHECKLIST for Avoiding Plagiarism 129

Section 1: Plagiarism and Academic

Dishonesty 130

Section 2: Common Knowledge 131

Section 3: Quoting, Paraphrasing, and

Summarizing Texts 132

Section 1: Plagiarism and Academic Dishonesty 134

Section 2: Common Knowledge 134

Section 3: Quoting, Paraphrasing,

and Summarizing Texts 135

CHECKLIST for Analyzing Advertisements 141

Examples of Classifying 142

Description at Work in the Analytic Essay 149

Organizing Short Comparisons 151

Longer Comparisons 154

Ways of Organizing an Essay Devoted to a Comparison 155

CHECKLIST for Revising Comparisons 158

Claims of Fact 165

Claims of Value 166

Claims of Policy 167

Examples 168

Testimony 169

Statistics 170

A NOTE ON DEFINITION IN THE PERSUASIVE ESSAY 171

Avoiding Sarcasm 177

CHECKLIST for Revising Drafts

of Persuasive Essays 181

An Analysis of Rotella’s Argument 184

An Analysis of Choy’s Argument 189

Finding Sources 194

CHECKLIST for Evaluating Web Sites 198

A Guide to Note-Taking 199

CHECKLIST for Revising Drafts of

Research Essays 205

A SAMPLE RESEARCH ESSAY (MLA FORMAT) 206

An Analysis of Cody’s Use of Sources 221

An Analysis of Alexander’s Use of Sources 238

A Word on Computer Grammar and Punctuation Checks 244

Fragments and How to Correct Them 244

How to Correct Comma Splices and Run-on Sentences 246

MLA FORMAT 295

Citations Within the Text 295

A Note on Footnotes in an Essay Using Parenthetic Citations 305

The List of Works Cited 306

Print Sources 307

An Encyclopedia or Other Alphabetically Arranged

Web Sources 317

Other Common Sources 321

Citations Within the Text 324

Published in a Given Year in the References 325

The List of References 325

Sample References 327

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