Description

The Little, Brown Essential Handbook , Eighth Edition, is a brief and accessible pocket-sized handbook that answers questions about writing in the disciplines, the writing process, grammar and usage, research writing, and documentation.

Features

• Makes contents accessible, with examples replacing or supplementing terms in headings.
• Checklists on academic writing, effective sentences, grammatical sentences, punctuation, mechanics, and research writing
• Distill the text to accessible conventions or steps.
• Overview of writing in the disciplines
• Helps students make choices about features such as subject, audience, purpose, thesis, evidence, synthesis, organization, language, and document design.
• Thorough chapters on research writing
• Cover strategy, Internet searches, synthesis and evaluation of sources, paraphrase, summary, quoting, avoiding plagiarism, and integration of sources across the disciplines.
• Chapters on MLA, APA, CMS, and CSE documentation
• Four-colour design
  

New to this Edition

· A revised Chapter 4 on presenting writing covers designing for print and electronic documents, creating and using visuals and other media, and making oral presentations.

· A new Chapter 36 on tracking sources emphasizes accurate record keeping and offers practical tips for handling sources responsibly.

· A revised Chapter 40 on avoiding plagiarism gives more examples of deliberate and careless plagiarism, new examples of material that must be cited, and updated advice about avoiding plagiarism with online sources.

· A new Chapter 41 on documenting sources discusses principles of documentation as well as bibliography software.

· New coverage of genre in Chapter 1 joins subject, purpose, and audience as a key element in every writing situation.

· Expanded coverage of revising in Chapter 1 emphasizes whole-essay concerns.

· Academic integrity, including responsible use of sources, receives stress as a feature of general academic writing in Chapter 1, as well as in research writing.

· A new student paper in Chapter 2, a proposal argument, provides an example of academic writing documented in MLA style.

· Updated advice on using the library’s Web portal in Chapter 37 covers research guides and centralized search engines and also updates the material on databases.

· Expanded discussions of finding and evaluating Web sources in Chapters 37 and 38—Web sites, social-networking sites, blogs, wikis, multimedia—help students discern purposes and distinguish reliable from unreliable sources.

· Updated and extensive Chapters 42-45 cover documentation in MLA, APA, Chicago, and CSE styles, with new models for how to cite posts on social-networking sites, tweets, and electronic books.

· Updated, annotated samples of key source types in Chapters 42 and 43 show students how to find the bibliographical information to cite each type.

· “Essential” learning objectives opening each of the handbook’s six parts give students an overview of key content.

Table of Contents

Finding What You Need  00

Preface  0

 

PART 1  WRITING

Essentials

1  Academic Writing 

a  The writing situation

b  Thesis and organization

c  Evidence and research

d  Synthesis

e  Responsible use of sources

f  Language

g  Revision

h  Editing and proofreading

2  Writing Arguments 

a  Elements of argument

b  Balance in argument

c  Organization of argument

d  Visual arguments

e  Sample argument

3  Writing in the Disciplines 

a  Literature

b  Other humanities

c  Social sciences

d  Natural and applied sciences

 

4  Presenting Writing 

a  Formats for academic papers

b  Visuals and other media

c  Oral presentations

d  Readers with vision loss

PART 2  EFFECTIVE SENTENCES

Essentials

5  Emphasis 

a  Subjects and verbs

b  Sentence beginnings and endings

c   Coordination

d  Subordination

6  Conciseness 

a  Focusing on the subject and verb

b  Cutting empty words

c  Cutting unneeded repetition

d  Reducing clauses and phrases

e  Revising there is or it is

f  Combining sentences

7  Parallelism 

a  With and, but, or nor, yet

b  With both…and, either…or, etc.

c  With lists, headings, outlines

8  Variety and Detail 

a  Varied sentence lengths and structures

b  Details

 

9  Appropriate Words 

a  Nonstandard dialect

b  Slang

c  Colloquial language

d  Technical words

e  Indirect and pretentious writing

f  Sexist and other biased language

10 Exact Words 

a  Right word for meaning

b  Concrete and specific words

c  Idioms

d  Clichés

PART 3  GRAMMATICAL SENTENCES

Essentials
VERBS

11 Forms

a  Sing/sang/sung and other irregular verbs

b  Helping verbs

c  Verb + gerund or infinitive

d  Verb + participle

12 Tenses 

a  Present tense (sing)

b  Perfect tenses (have/had/will have sung)

c  Consistency

d  Sequence

 

13 Mood

a  Subjunctive (I wish I were)

b  Consistency

14 Voice

a  She wrote it (active) vs. It was written (passive)

b  Consistency

15 Subject-Verb Agreement

a  -s ending for noun or verb

b  Words between subject and verb

c  Subjects with and

d  Subjects with or or nor

e  Everyone and other indefinite pronouns

f  Team and other collective nouns

g  Who, which, that

h  News and other singular nouns ending in –s

i  Inverted word order

j  Is, are, and other linking verbs

PRONOUNS

16 Forms 

a  She and I vs. her and me

b  It was she vs. It was her

c  Who vs. whom

d  Other constructions

17 Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement 

a  Antecedents with and

b  Antecedents wi