Synopsis

Engagingly written and illustrated with scores of telling examples, this plainspoken how-to book for college writers identifies those qualities that most typically distinguish good writing from bad and provides practical measures for avoiding pitfalls.

Included are do's and don'ts for achieving concision, clarity, and flow, as well as pointers on using punctuation, writing gracefully, citing sources, and structuring persuasive writing.

Championing "the plain style" with a keen appreciation for the uses to which language can be put-including abuses to which it is prone-The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing is a guide that never fails to remind readers why good writing matters so much in the first place, in college and beyond.

"Unusual for a style handbook, Nuts and Bolts embeds writing advice in essays that identify rhetorical structures as tools for 'shaping your ideas, questions, and convictions to share with others.' While it offers suggestions that will help writers fine-tune their sentences and paragraphs, it has a lot to say about the machinery of college writing on a grander scale-the switches, transformers, and fans which must function well before a unit can be bolted together. Thoughtful chapters cover concision, clarity, flow, punctuation, gracefulness, using sources, paragraphs, and beginnings and endings; the table of contents can help a writer pinpoint sections, but the context provided by the essays is what makes this guide shine. Examples are taken from a broad range of humanities disciplines, and an appendix summarizes documents and citation styles in Chicago, MLA, and APA formats. This worthy successor to Strunk and Whiteconcludes, 'When you write something worth reading it won't be because you followed the rules and conventions. . . . It will be because you had something real to say, and said it with clarity and grace.' Summing up: Highly recommended."
-P. Finley, CHOICE