LITTLE BROWN COMPACT HDBK

For courses in English Composition.

The platinum standard of handbooks¿¿ — unmatched in accuracy, currency, and reliability

The Little, Brown Compact Handbook maintains the authority of its best¿selling parent (The Little, Brown Handbook) in a briefer book with spiral binding, tabbed dividers, and plentiful exercise sets. It is an essential reference tool, designed to help readers find the answers they need quickly and easily.

While keeping pace with rapid changes in writing and its teaching, this meticulous compact handbook combines comprehensive research and documentation ¿¿with grammar coverage that is second to none. Incorporating detailed discussions of critical reading, media literacy, academic writing, argument, and much more, The Little, Brown Compact Handbook is an accurate, reliable, and accessible resource for writers of varying experience levels and in a variety of fields. The 10th Edition includes timely new student samples, new learning objectives, updates to MLA and Chicago style, a new chapter on writing about literature, and more.

The Little, Brown Compact Handbook is also available via Revel™, an interactive learning environment that enables students to read, practice, and study in one continuous experience. 

Jane E. Aaron has taught writing at New York University and several other schools. She is the author of eight successful and long-lived composition textbooks, including The Little, Brown Handbook and The Little, Brown Compact Handbook.

Michael Greer teaches writing, editing, and publishing in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He also teaches courses in multimedia, online course design, and assessment for the Graduate Certificate in Online Writing Instruction at UA, Little Rock. Michael edits the journal Research in Online Literacy Education and is a founding member of the Global Society of Online Literacy Educators. He publishes and presents on topics including user-centered design, interactive media, and digital publishing. Michael serves as a faculty advisor and author for Gadget Software, where he is helping to design and develop a mobile learning platform. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

I. The Writing Process

1. The Writing Situation

2. Invention

3. Thesis and Organization

4. Drafting  

5. Revising

6. Editing, Formatting, and Proofreading

7. Paragraphs

8. Presenting Writing

II. Writing in and out of College

9. Academic Writing

10. Critical Reading and Writing

11. Arguments

12. Essay Exams

13. Oral Presentations

14. Public Writing

III. Clarity and Style

15. Emphasis

16. Parallelism

17. Variety and Details

18. Appropriate and Exact Language

19. Completeness

20. Conciseness

IV. Sentence Parts and Patterns

BASIC GRAMMAR

21. Parts of Speech

22. The Sentence

23. Phrases and Subordinate Clauses

24. Sentence Types

VERBS

25. Forms

26. Tenses

27. Mood

28. Voice

29. Subject-Verb Agreement

PRONOUNS

30. Case

31. Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement

32. Pronoun Reference

MODIFIERS

33. Adjectives and Adverbs

34. Misplaced and Dangling Modifiers

35. Fragments

36. Comma Splices and Fused Sentences

37. Mixed Sentences

V. Punctuation

38. End Punctuation

39. The Comma

40. The Semicolon

41. The Colon

42. The Apostrophe

43. Quotation Marks

44. Other Marks

VI. Spelling and Mechanics

45. Spelling and the Hyphen

46. Capital Letters

47. Italics or Underlining

48. Abbreviations

49. Numbers

VII. Research Writing

50. Research Strategy

51. Finding Sources

52. Working with Sources

53. Avoiding Plagiarism

54. Writing the Paper

VIII. Writing in the Disciplines

55. Reading and Writing about Literature

56. Writing in Other Disciplines

57. MLA Documentation and Format

58. APA Documentation and Format

59. Chicago Documentation

60. CSE Documentation

Glossary of Usage

Glossary of Terms

Index