"Admirably clear, concise, down-to-earth, and powerful-all too often, legal writing embodies none of these qualities. Its reputation for obscurity and needless legalese is widespread. Since 2001, Bryan A. Garner's Legal Writing in Plain English has helped address this problem by providing lawyers, judges, paralegals, law students, and legal scholars with sound advice and practical tools for improving their written work. Now the leading guide to clear...

Thousands of students have turned to veteran teacher Charles Lipson for no-nonsense advice on how to cite sources properly--and avoid plagiarism--when writing their research papers. This new edition of "Cite Right," the popular overview of all major systems of citation, has been updated to reflect the most current versions of Chicago, MLA, APA, and other styles, and to discuss citation methods in the rapidly changing context of the Internet, digital...

For all the anxiety that surrounds the college admissions process, one part of the application lies completely within a student s control: the essay. In this book, Rachel Toor writing instructor and coach at all levels from high school to senior faculty, and former admissions officer at Duke University shows that the key to writing a successful application essay is learning to present an honest portrait of yourself.

Spark your creativity, hone your writing, and improve your scripts with the self-contained character, scene, and story exercises found in this classic guide. Having spent decades working with dramatists to refine and expand their existing plays and screenplays, Dunne effortlessly blends condensed dramatic theory with specific action steps-over sixty workshop-tested exercises that can be adapted to virtually any individual writing process and dramatic...

The author of The Chicago Manual of Style's popular "Grammar and Usage" chapter, Bryan A. Garner is renowned for explaining the vagaries of English with absolute precision and utmost clarity. With The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation, he has written the definitive guide for writers who want their prose to be both memorable and correct. Garner describes standard literary English-the forms that mark writers and speakers as educated...

"[This book] gathers essays from twenty-seven leading figures in book publishing about their work. Representing both large houses and small, and encompassing trade, textbook, academic, and children's publishing, the contributors make the case for why editing remains a vital function to writers--and readers--everywhere. Ironically for an industry built on words, there has been a scarcity of written guidance on how to actually approach the work of editing....

Each year, tens of thousands of students who are interested in politics go through a rite of passage: they take a course in research methods. Many find the subject to be boring or confusing, and with good reason. Most of the standard books on research methods fail to highlight the most important concepts and questions. Instead, they brim with dry technical definitions and focus heavily on statistical analysis, slighting other valuable methods. This...

Today's researchers have access to more information than ever before. Yet the new material is both overwhelming in quantity and variable in quality. How can scholars survive these twin problems and produce groundbreaking research using the physical and electronic resources available in the modern university research library? In “Digital Paper”, Andrew Abbott provides some much-needed answers to that question. Abbott tells what every senior researcher...

Do your sentences sag? Could your paragraphs use a pick-me-up? If so, “The Writer's Diet” is for you! It's a short, sharp introduction to great writing that will help you energize your prose and boost your verbal fitness. Helen Sword dispenses with excessive explanations and overwrought analysis. Instead, she offers an easy-to-follow set of writing principles: use active verbs whenever possible; favor concrete language over vague abstractions;...

Editing is an invisible art in which the very best work goes undetected. Editors strive to create books that are enlightening, seamless, and pleasurable to read, all while giving credit to the author. This makes it all the more difficult to truly understand the range of roles they have while shepherding a project from concept to publication. “What Editors Do” gathers essays from twenty-seven leading figures in book publishing about their work....