A reference handbook for any course. Focused on the needs of contemporary college writers, the widely acclaimed Blair Handbook provides a practical, comprehensive handbook and extensive research manual. Organized around the writing process, it offers professional and student samples of the qualities of good writing, and teaches students how to effectively shape, organize, and develop a voice of their own as they write. It explains and illustrates issues of style, grammar, punctuation, usage, and mechanics as matters of writer choices that depend upon audience, purpose, and situation rather than static and absolute rules.