The Well-Crafted Sentence A Writer's Guide to Style

by Bacon, Nora

• ISBN13: 9781457606731
• ISBN10: 1457606739
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-11-02
• Publisher: Bedford/St. Martin's

Summary

Grounded in the art of writing, The Well-Crafted Sentence zeroes in on the building block of great prose: the sentence. With a friendly, approachable, and elegant tone, Nora Bacon shows the benefits of attention to style and offers a range of revision strategies that give students the tools to strengthen and develop their writing.

Giving students the opportunity to see successful rhetorical choices at work in writing they admire, the text includes a brief anthology of readings by ten accomplished stylists, five of them new to this edition. Examples throughout the text are drawn from these model pieces, as are integrated exercises that help students apply concepts to their own writing. Additionally, a new first chapter, Approaches to Style, introduces students to the concept of style.

Affordable and brief, The Well-Crafted Sentence works as a core classroom text or as a supplement.

Author Biography

Nora Bacon is a professor of English and writing program administrator at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Her research, begun at UC Berkeley in the 1990s, has examined service-learning pedagogy, the development of "writing agility," and the relationship between texts and the contexts in which they are written and read. Nora’s current research focuses on the stylistic choices preferred in different disciplines, uniting her interest in variation and her abiding fascination with sentences.

Table of Contents

A new first chapter, Approaches to Style, helps students understand that writing with style means making rhetorically effective choices. New lessons on developing voice as a writer and using style in academic writing show students the importance of the choices writers make.

Five new readings provide up-to-date models for students and showcase style in academic writing. A speech by presidential candidate Barack Obama, two academic articles by noted scholars Drew Gilpin Faust and Lily Wong Fillmore, a public argument by well-known litigator Theodore Olson, and a new case study from science writer Oliver Sacks show students how skilled stylists craft their writing.

• Drew Gilpin Faust, "We Should Grow Too Fond of It": Why We Love the Civil War
• Barack Obama, A More Perfect Union
• Theodore Olson, The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage
• Oliver Sacks, Papa Blows His Nose in G
• Lily Wong Fillmore, Loss of Family Languages: Should Educators Be Concerned

New and revised exercises, drawing from new model texts, offer increased focus on revising and editing as well as additional practice with style in academic writing. All exercises are reviewed by a panel of real student writers.

A new Web site, developed specifically for The Well-Crafted Sentence, gives students more opportunities to learn and practice their skills. The site will include a searchable glossary, a new parts of speech guide, and other free and premium online resources from Bedford/St. Martin's.