Book picks similar to
Painless Writing by Jeffrey Strausser
writing
reference
language
teaching
A Writer's Coach: An Editor's Guide to Words That Work
Jack R. Hart - 2006
He gives invaluable advice on gathering ideas, writing theme statements and outlines, and using the "ladder of abstraction" to add variety and texture to writing. He provides a lexicon of lead sentences. He shares his ideas for composing and sustaining powerful writing, and for ensuring that what you write will be accessible to your audience. Discussing the ways writers can trip themselves up-procrastination, writer's block, and excessive polishing, to name just a few-Hart demonstrates how to overcome each obstacle. Excerpts from writers such as Ernest Hemingway and Joan Didion, and from articles gathered from magazines and newspapers, provide inspiration and instructive examples of both inadequate and exemplary writing. Like a personal, portable writing coach, "A Writer's Coach" will be a boon to writers, editors, teachers, and students.
How to Speak and Write Correctly
Joseph Devlin - 1910
Poverty thrust them forward instead of keeping them back. Therefore, if you are poor make your circumstances a means to an end. Have ambition, keep a goal in sight and bend every energy to reach that goal. A story is told of Thomas Carlyle the day he attained the highest honor the literary world could confer upon him when he was elected Lord Rector of Edinburgh University. After his installation speech, in going through the halls, he met a student seemingly deep in study.
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
Scott McCloud - 1993
Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics is a seminal examination of comics art: its rich history, surprising technical components, and major cultural significance. Explore the secret world between the panels, through the lines, and within the hidden symbols of a powerful but misunderstood art form.
Invitation to Psychology
Carole Wade - 1998
In clear, lively, warm prose, this edition continues the title's integration of gender, culture, and ethnicity. By the end, readers will learn how to interpret research and to address and resolve controversies. MyPsychLab is an integral part of the Wade/Tavris/Garry program. Engaging activities and assessments provide a teaching and learning system that helps students think like a psychologist. With MyPsychLab, students can watch videos on psychological research and applications, participate in virtual classic experiments, and develop critical thinking skills through writing. "Invitation to Psychology, "5/e is available in a new DSM-5 Updated edition. To learn more, click here. This title is available in a variety of formats - digital and print. Pearson offers its titles on the devices students love through Pearson's MyLab products, CourseSmart, Amazon, and more.
Hairy, Scary, Ordinary: What Is an Adjective?
Brian P. Cleary - 1999
Simple, rhyming text and colorful cartoon cats help children expand their vocabularies and gain an appreciation for the rhythm of language in this lighthearted book of rhyming verse. Adjectives like frilly, silly, polka-dotted, fizzy, and spunky are printed in color, and all the words will tickle you pink!
Several Short Sentences About Writing
Verlyn Klinkenborg - 2012
It’s the harmful debris of your education—a mixture of half-truths, myths, and false assumptions that prevents you from writing well. Drawing on years of experience as a writer and teacher of writing, Verlyn Klinkenborg offers an approach to writing that will change the way you work and think. There is no gospel, no orthodoxy, no dogma in this book. What you’ll find here isn’t the way to write. Instead, you’ll find a way to clear your mind of illusions about writing and discover how you write. Several Short Sentences About Writing is a book of first steps and experiments. They will revolutionize the way you think and perceive, and they will change forever the sense of your own authority as a writer. This is a book full of learning, but it’s also a book full of unlearning—a way to recover the vivid, rhythmic, poetic sense of language you once possessed. An indispensable and unique book that will give you a clear understanding of how to think about what you do when you write and how to improve the quality of your writing.
The Grammar Bible: Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Grammar But Didn't Know Whom to Ask
Michael Strumpf - 2004
For over a quarter of a century, as creator and proprietor of the National Grammar Hot Line, he helped thousands of callers from every corner of the globe tackle the thorniest issues of English grammar. Now, in The Grammar Bible, he has created an eminently useful guide to better speaking and writing. Unlike other grammar manuals, The Grammar Bible is driven by the actual questions Professor Strumpf encountered during his years of teaching and fielding phone calls from anxious writers, conscientious students, and perplexed editors, including such perennial quandaries aso Where do I put this comma?o What case should this pronoun be in?o How do I form the possessive of Dickens? Professor Strumpf explains these and other language issues with wit and wisdom, showing how to speak more clearly and write more impressively by avoiding common errors and following the principles of good grammar. Whether you need a comprehensive review of the subjunctive mood or simply want to know which form of a verb to use, The Grammar Bible is a practical guide that will enlighten, educate, and entertain.
Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need
Blake Snyder - 2005
This ultimate insider's guide reveals the secrets that none dare admit, told by a show biz veteran who's proven that you can sell your script if you can save the cat!
The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School
Neil Postman - 1995
Instead, today's schools promote the false "gods" of economic utility, consumerism, or ethnic separatism and resentment. What alternative strategies can we use to instill our children with a sense of global citizenship, healthy intellectual skepticism, respect of America's traditions, and appreciation of its diversity? In answering this question, The End of Education restores meaning and common sense to the arena in which they are most urgently needed."Informal and clear...Postman's ideas about education are appealingly fresh."--New York Times Book Review
Becoming a Writer
Dorothea Brande - 1934
Brande believed passionately that although people have varying amounts of talent, anyone can write. It's just a question of finding the "writer's magic"--a degree of which is in us all. She also insists that writing can be both taught and learned. So she is enraged by the pessimistic authors of so many writing books who rejoice in trying to put off the aspiring writer by constantly stressing how difficult it all is.With close reference to the great writers of her day--Wolfe, Forster, Wharton and so on--Brande gives practical but inspirational advice about finding the right time of day to write and being very self disciplined about it--"You have decided to write at four o'clock, and at four o'clock you must write." She's strong on confidence building and there's a lot about cheating your unconscious which will constantly try to stop you writing by coming up with excuses. Then there are exercises to help you get into the right frame of mind and to build up writing stamina. She also shows how to harness the unconscious, how to fall into the "artistic coma," then how to re-emerge and be your own critic.This is Dorothea Brande's legacy to all those who have ever wanted to express their ideas in written form. A sound, practical, inspirational and charming approach to writing, it fulfills on finding "the writer's magic."
Literary Theory: An Anthology
Julie Rivkin - 1997
This anthology of classic and cutting-edge statements in literary theory has now been updated to include recent influential texts in the areas of Ethnic Studies, Postcolonialism and International StudiesA definitive collection of classic statements in criticism and new theoretical work from the past few decades All the major schools and methods that make up the dynamic field of literary theory are represented, from Formalism to Postcolonialism Enables students to familiarise themselves with the most recent developments in literary theory and with the traditions from which these new theories derive
Trigonometry For Dummies
Mary Jane Sterling - 2005
It also explains the "why" of trigonometry, using real-world examples that illustrate the value of trigonometry in a variety of careers. Mary Jane Sterling (Peoria, IL) has taught mathematics at Bradley University in Peoria for more than 20 years. She is also the author of the highly successful Algebra For Dummies (0-7645-5325-9).
Sexuality Now: Embracing Diversity
Janell L. Carroll - 2004
Janell Carroll clearly conveys foundational biological and health issues, extensively cites both current and classic research, and addresses all material in a fresh and fun way; her book helps teach students what they need, and want, to know about sexuality. Her focus takes into account the social, religious, ethnic, racial, and cultural contexts of today's students. Dr. Carroll has used feedback from the first edition to add even further value to this popular title-streamlining student pedagogy and providing dynamic learning opportunities through Active Summaries at the end of chapters, a new online student tutorial, new video components, and content for Classroom Response Systems. This continues to be the text most representative of today's students, incorporating new sexual position art, a new pronunciation guide, and (for instructors) a new cross-cultural Slang Guide.
Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting It Right
Bill Bryson - 1984
A revised and updated edition of a humorous primer on the English language, expanded for an American audience, contains entries on correct and questionable usage, a glossary, and a pronunciation guide.
Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide
Lois Tyson - 1998
It provides clear, simple explanations and concrete examples of complex concepts, making a wide variety of commonly used critical theories accessible to novices without sacrificing any theoretical rigor or thoroughness.This new edition provides in-depth coverage of the most common approaches to literary analysis today: feminism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, reader-response theory, new criticism, structuralism and semiotics, deconstruction, new historicism, cultural criticism, lesbian/gay/queer theory, African American criticism, and postcolonial criticism. The chapters provide an extended explanation of each theory, using examples from everyday life, popular culture, and literary texts; a list of specific questions critics who use that theory ask about literary texts; an interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby through the lens of each theory; a list of questions for further practice to guide readers in applying each theory to different literary works; and a bibliography of primary and secondary works for further reading.