With characteristic vigor and iconoclasm, Pound illustrates his precepts with exhibits meticulously chosen from the classics, and the concluding “Treatise on Meter” provides an illuminating essay for anyone aspiring to read and write poetry. The ABC of Reading emphasizes Pound's ability to discover neglected and unknown genius, distinguish originals from imitations, and open new avenues in literature for our time.

    Its message is, simply put: you can do this, and it's worthwhile to try. Heather Sellers, who writes in multiple genres herself, has developed an approach that focuses on the habits and strategies that produce good writing in any genre. These habits and strategies make it possible for students to focus, to generate lots of writing, and to get to the good stuff -- the powerful imagery and the stories they really want to tell. She makes creative writing fun by providing opportunities to be playful and to experiment at the same time she teaches students the importance of discipline and craft.

    Useful for those interested in understanding and utilizing American Sign Language (ASL), this phrase book serves as a reference tool and a study guide.

    Although the structure of the parent volume has been preserved so that reference to it can easily be made, this grammar has been especially written to take into account the needs of advanced students of grammar in colleges and universities.

    That place is called Fantasyland. The Tough Guide to Fantasyland is your travel guide, a handbook to everything you might find: Evil, the Dark Lord, Stew, Boots (but not Socks), and what passes for Economics and Ecology. Both a hilarious send-up of the cliches of the genre and an indispensable guide for writers, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland has been nearly impossible to find for years. Now this cult classic is back, and readers can experience Diana Wynne Jones at her very best: incisive, funny, and wildly imaginative. This is the definitive edition of The Tough Guide, featuring a new map, an entirely new design, and additional material written for it by Diana Wynne Jones.World Fantasy Award FinalistA Hugo Award Finalist (Nonfiction)

    Need to know how to format your résumé for that job application? How do you write a cover letter that will stand out? Wondering how to request a letter of recommendation for graduate school? Trying to craft a get-well note that will really help? How informal is too informal when instant messaging in the office? What do you write on the website for your small business? What should you say in a wedding invitation? Or a divorce announcement?With over 200 how-to entries and easy-to-use models organized into three comprehensive sections on work, school, and personal life, How to Write Anything covers a wide range of topics that make it an essential guide for the whole family.

    With both humor and reverence, Room to Write playfully prevails on us to experience the world through a writer's eyes, and respond to the creative sparks that charge good writing.In two hundred daily essays, the author invites the reader--whether an experienced writer or someone just starting out--into the crucibles from which creative writing erupts: emotion, imagination, intellect, and soul. Once there, she urges the reader to grab a pen, grasp a keyboard, and seize the moment when perception fires revelation and language becomes art.Each page features an essay exploring an aspect of the writing process, an exercise to get the reader writing, and a quotation to tickle the mind and keep the writing going. Ultimately, readers learn about how they write, and how to trust their intuition. Room to Write is a collection of beguiling provocations, an irresistible invitation to all those who believe that writing, like any creative endeavor, is a way of life.

    Murray's A WRITER TEACHES WRITING has had a profound influence on composition theory and practice.

    In this book you will find: Words You Absolutely Should Know (covert, exonerate, perimeter); Words You Should Know But Probably Don't (dour, incendiary, scintilla); Words Most People Don't Know (schlimazel, thaumaturgy, epergne); Words You Should Know to Sound Overeducated (ad infinitum, nugatory, garrulity); Words You Probably Shouldn't Know (priapic, damnatory, labia majora); and more.Whether writing an essay, studying for a test, or trying to impress friends, family, and fellow cocktail party guests with their prolixity, you will achieve magniloquence, ebullience, and flights of rhetorical brilliance.

    She believes that anyone can be a writer and has set out to prove it. For the past decade, Barry has run a highly popular writing workshop for nonwriters called Writing the Unthinkable, which was featured in The New York Times Magazine. Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor is the first book to make her innovative lesson plans and writing exercises available to the public for home or classroom use. Barry teaches a method of writing that focuses on the relationship between the hand, the brain, and spontaneous images, both written and visual. It has been embraced by people across North America—prison inmates, postal workers, university students, high-school teachers, and hairdressers—for opening pathways to creativity.Syllabus's takes the course plan for Barry’s workshop and runs wild with it in her densely detailed signature style. Collaged texts, ballpoint-pen doodles, and watercolor washes adorn Syllabus’s yellow lined pages, which offer advice on finding a creative voice and using memories to inspire the writing process. Throughout it all, Barry’s voice (as an author and as a teacher-mentor) rings clear, inspiring, and honest.

    Delving deep into the creative process, Bret Lott reveals truths we scarcely realized we needed to know but without which we as writers will soon lose our way. In ten intimate essays based on his own experiences and on the seasoned wisdom of writers including Eudora Welty, E. B. White, Henry David Thoreau, Henry James, and John Gardner, Lott explores such topics as• why write? why keep writing?• the importance of simple words• the finer points of character detail• narrative and the passage of time• the pitfalls of technique• making a plan–and letting it go• risking failure–and reaping the benefits• Accepting rejectionWriters travel alone, but Bret Lott’s book makes the journey less lonely and infinitely more rewarding. Before We Get Started will help you make your work as good as it can be: “Pay attention recklessly. Strain to see through the window of your own artistic consciousness in the exhilarating knowledge that there is no path to the waterfall, and there are a million paths to the waterfall, and there is, too, only one path: yours.”

    Writing with marvelous brio, Winchester first serves up a lightning history of the English language--"so vast, so sprawling, so wonderfully unwieldy"--and pays homage to the great dictionary makers, from "the irredeemably famous" Samuel Johnson to the "short, pale, smug and boastful" schoolmaster from New Hartford, Noah Webster. He then turns his unmatched talent for story-telling to the making of this most venerable of dictionaries. In this fast-paced narrative, the reader will discover lively portraits of such key figures as the brilliant but tubercular first editor Herbert Coleridge (grandson of the poet), the colorful, boisterous Frederick Furnivall (who left the project in a shambles), and James Augustus Henry Murray, who spent a half-century bringing the project to fruition. Winchester lovingly describes the nuts-and-bolts of dictionary making--how unexpectedly tricky the dictionary entry for marzipan was, or how fraternity turned out so much longer and monkey so much more ancient than anticipated--and how bondmaid was left out completely, its slips found lurking under a pile of books long after the B-volume had gone to press. We visit the ugly corrugated iron structure that Murray grandly dubbed the Scriptorium--the Scrippy or the Shed, as locals called it--and meet some of the legion of volunteers, from Fitzedward Hall, a bitter hermit obsessively devoted to the OED, to W.C. Minor, whose story is one of dangerous madness, ineluctable sadness, and ultimate redemption. The Meaning of Everything is a scintillating account of the creation of the greatest monument ever erected to a living language. Simon Winchester's supple, vigorous prose illuminates this dauntingly ambitious project--a seventy-year odyssey to create the grandfather of all word-books, the world's unrivalled uber-dictionary.

    It is offered in the conviction that God in His common grace bestowed a great deal of practical wisdom about public discourse on the ancient practitioners of rhetoric, and that we must hold what they taught up against the final standard of Scripture.Definitions of rhetoric vary in the classical writers, but adapting one of them, with a peculiarly Christian backdrop and understanding, provides us with our working definition of rhetoric: "the art of a good man speaking well." And in this "art," you want three things to line up. You want convergence of ethos, pathos, and logos.Logos: Logic is the foundation for logos. Logic deals with statements and their relationships with one another. For diligent speakers, and especially for those diligent students who are not all that confident, the inclination is to put all your eggs in the basket of content preparation. Logos is a great place to begin, but ethos and pathos are just as important.Ethos: Give yourself to the cultivation of your character, but beware of the dangers of affectation. The problems attendant to this will be avoided if your first concern is that of worship, study, helping, giving, and so forth. If someone goes off to a good liberal arts college and comes back home with a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows, a pipe, and faux accent, and is twice as much of a snot as when he left home, the problem is ethos. Remember, a person cannot be a good speaker without being a good person, and this means that in the Christian worldview, ethos is holiness.Pathos: We do not play with words, we work with them. And because we live in a fallen world, we fight dragons with them. Believe what you say, and say what you believe. And if you do not feel it at any level, this means you do not really believe it. This means there should be a correspondence between the content of what you are saying and how you are affected by it. If you shed false tears, then you are a manipulative, deceitful, treacherous hazard to the republic. Do not try to affect a group of hearers by anything that does not affect you first.As a stand-alone text, this book can be used over the course of a term or semester. As a supplement or companion, it can be used in conjunction with some of the historic texts for the study of classic rhetoric, extended over the course of a year. Besides ethos, pathos, and logos, this book also covers the five canons of rhetoric, fallacies, the composition of arguments, copiousness, and presentation, among other things. Each of the thirty-one chapters contains a lesson, exercises, and review questions, along with suggested reading material and excerpts from the classical masters of the art of rhetoric.

    Over one hundred years ago, Charlotte Mason methodized narration and implemented it in scores of schools in Great Britain. Over the past few decades, educators in the US, mostly in home schools, have followed her guidelines with outstanding results.This book discusses the theory behind the use of narration and then walks through the process from beginning to end, to show how simply "telling" is the foundation for higher-level thinking and writing.While narration has grown popular among homeschoolers, it also works well in the classroom. In this book, you will find sample narrations and many resources to help you use narration with your students in any setting. If you've been wanting to try narration, but haven't felt confident enough to rely on an unfamiliar method, this book will give you the tools that you need to make the process easier.People are narrating every day, and this book will show you how to make that natural activity a vital part of education that enhances children's relationship with knowledge and allows them to grow into skilled communicators.

    Cappon, to create your own compelling and clear writing style. Designed to help writers at any level improve the quality and flow of their writing.Former long-time Associated Press (AP) General News Editor, Rene J. Cappon offers timeless, practical advice and lively commentary on writing like a pro for novices and seasoned professionals alike.Cappon covers all the essential methodologies of researching and generating the written word in this guide. Learn how to develop a hook, choose the most effective words, construct a good lead, and implement more strategies for success.Here's a preview of what you'll find in this valuable writer's resource:How to write in a clear, knowledgeable and compelling way The nuances of news writing How to start from "square one" Understand the role of punctuation in journalism How to use detail to add color and depth to your writing What you must avoid in your writing How to uncover new angles on old stories and develop new stories The magic of "angle" to the written wordWhether you plan to become a journalist or just want to markedly improve your writing ability, The Associated Press Guide to News Writing offers tried and proven advice and techniques to take your writing to the next level.