Table of Contents
1. The Point of It All.
Write For Your Share.
Attitude.
The Written Voice.
The Point: Argumentation.
Aiming For A Style Of Your Own.
Readings
[The Popular Disease], Walter S. Ross.
*[Down Under], Tom Gorman.
*My Feet Are Killing Me, The New Yorker.
[How Writing Improves Speech], Marcus Tullius Cicero.
Suggestions For Discussion And Writing. 2. Making a Beginning: From Subject to Thesis.
Getting Set.
What Shall I Write?
From Subject To Thesis.
Where Essays Fail.
The Argumentative Edge.
Sample: From Subject To Thesis.
Using The Thesis In Other Ways.
Suggestions For Exercise.
Readings
[The Human Habitat], Thomas A. Sancton.
*High Heels, Margaret Visser.
*Relinquishing Oz: Every Girl's Anti-Adventure Story, Bonnie Friedman.
Shooting An Elephant, George Orwell.
The Death Of The Moth, Virginia Woolf. 3. Your Paper's Basic Structure.
Argument: Beginning, Middle, End.
Argumentative Tactics.
Acknowledging And Disposing Of The Opposition.
Running Comparisons Point By Point.
Suggestions For Exercise.
Readings
*Legalizing Drugs: Just Say Yes. An Interview With Michael S. Gazzaniga, National Review.
The Second Wave Of Cocaine Addiction, Peter Flanigan.
*Switzerland's Heroin Experiment, Ethan Nadelmann.
*Can We Afford To Give Up The Drug War?, Rachel Ehrenfeld.
Death And Justice: How Capital Punishment Affirms Life, Edward I. Koch.
*Aim Higher, Barbara Lerner. 4. Paragraphs: Beginning, Middle, End.
The Standard Paragraph.
Beginning Paragraphs: The Funnel.
Middle Paragraphs.
End Paragraphs: The InvertedFunnel.
The Whole Essay.
Suggestions For Exercise.
Readings
*First Fine Careless Raptor, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas.
*Renaissance In Red Beans With Rice, Stanley Crouch.
The Uses Of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim.
Los Angeles Notebook, Joan Didion.
*She Had It All, Alison Lurie. 5. Middle Tactics: Description, Narration, Exposition.
Description.
Narration.
Exposition.
Suggestions For Exercise.
Readings
Description.
The Spider And The Wasp, Alexander Petrunkevitch.
Paris: A Little Incident In The Rue De L'odéon, Katherine Anne Porter.
Recollections Of Lincoln, Henry Villard.
Narration.
The Teacher Who Changed My Life, Nicholas Gage.
Aria, Richard Rodriguez.
[Surviving Graduation], Maya Angelou.
Exposition-Setting Forth.
*The Measure Of The Oklahoma Kid, Stanley Crouch.
*The Museum Of Slavery? Lance Morrow.
Exposition-Comparison.
*Good Life Lost, David Asman.
Grant And Lee: A Study In Contrasts, Bruce Catton.
American Space, Chinese Place, Yi-Fu Tuan.
[Growing Up In America], Margaret Mead.
Exposition - Classification and Definition.
A Primer Of Existentialism, Gordon E. Bigelow.
What Is An Idea? Wayne C. Booth and Marshall Gregory. 6. Straight and Crooked Thinking: Working with Evidence.
Degrees Of Evidence.
Assessing The Evidence.
Some Inductive Traps.
Suggestions For Exercise.
Readings
*Fifty Ways To Lose Your Fertility, Theo Colborn et al.
Brains And Computers, Robert Jastrow.
Wide Hats And Narrow Minds, Stephen Jay Gould.
The Reach Of Imagination, Jacob Bronowski. 7. Writing Good Sentences.
The Simple Sentence.
Compound And Complex Sentences.
Parallel Construction.
The Long And Short Of It.
Suggestions For Exercise.
Readings
The Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln.
The Lion At Bay: Winston Spencer Churchill, William Manchester.
[Premature Burial], Michael Crichton.
Parting The Formaldehyde Curtain, Jessica Mitford.
On Natural Death, Lewis Thomas. 8. Correcting Wordy Sentences.
Count Your Words.
Shun The Passive Voice.
Check The Stretchers.
Beware The Of-And-Which Disease.
Avoid "The Use Of."
Break The Noun Habit.
Avoid Excessive Distinctions And Definitions.
Suggestions For Exercise. 9. Words.
Vocabulary.
Abstract And Concrete.
Denotation And Connotation.
Euphemism.
Metaphor.
Allusion.
Diction.
Suggestions For Exercise.
Readings
Clutter, William Zinsser.
*Santa Claus's Significant Other, Margaret Visser.
*God To The Serpent, Virginia Hamilton Adair.
The Art Of Surgery, Richard Selzer.
America's Master Songwriter, Michael Walsh.
The Man-Made Myth, Elaine Morgan.
[Reply To The White Chief], Chief Seattle. 10. Research.
Choosing Your Subject.
Using The Library.
Making Your Cards.
Your First Draft.
Your Final Draft.
The Details Of "Works Cited."
Sample Research Paper.
Suggestions For Exercise.
HANDBOOK.
I. The Trouble with Grammar.
II. Punctuation, Spelling, Capitalization.
III. A Glossary of Usage.
