The Broadview Pocket Guide to Writing is a concise volume presenting essential material from the fourth edition of the full Broadview Guide to Writing. Included are summaries of key grammatical points and a reference guide to basic grammar; a glossary of usage; tips on writing style; a guide to bias-free writing; coverage of punctuation and writing mechanics; helpful advice on Internet research; and much more. For the third edition the section on citation and documentation (in four commonly-used styles—MLA, APA, Chicago, and CSE) has been extensively revised and updated.

Comments on The Broadview Guide to Writing:

"By far the most readable writing guide available—at any price." – Jacky Bolding, University of the Fraser Valley

"The Broadview Guide to Writing (4/e) registers the seriousness of academic writing yet reads like an amiable conversation with writers." – Robyn Fowler, University of Alberta

"Impressive, especially when compared to more costly yet comparable texts." – Anne Maxham, Antioch University

"It's very good—clear without being condescending." – Jonathan Sadow, State University of New York at Oneonta

"The time is right for an inexpensive, no-frills composition text, and The Broadview Guide (4/e) is exactly that." – Richard Spacek, University of New Brunswick

Doug Babington is Director of the Writing Centre at Queen’s University, and the author of articles both on writing and on literature. Don LePan's most recent book is a novel, Animals (Véhicule, 2009). Maureen Okun is a professor in the departments of English and of Liberal Studies at Vancouver Island University.

Supplementary Materials: [Back to Top]

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Table of Contents: [Back to Top]

CLEAR WRITING: A CHECKLIST

Choosing the Best Words

Be as Clear and Specific as Possible

Watch for Redundancy

Avoid Wordiness

Watch for Missing Parts

Choose the Best Verb

Order and Connect Your Ideas

Paragraphing

Joining Words

Order and Weight Your Ideas According to Their Importance

Watch for Ambiguity

Making Your Writing Consistent

Agreement among the Grammatical Parts of Your Writing

Watch for Mixed Metaphors

Rhythm and Variety

Tone, Voice, and Special Writing Situations

Academic Writing

Writing About Literature

Writing in Other Academic Disciplines

Business Writing

Slang and Informal English

Bias-Free Usage

Gender

Race, Culture, and Sexual Orientation

Bias-free Vocabulary: A Short List

GRAMMAR

Verbs and Verb Tense Difficulties

The Infinitive

The Simple Present Tense

Subject-Verb Agreement

Survey of Verb Tenses

Voice

Combining Verb Tenses

The Past Perfect Tense

Combining Tenses—Quoted Material

Irregular Verbs

Dangling Constructions

Nouns and Pronouns

Singular and Plural Nouns

Singular Pronouns

Unreferenced or Wrongly Referenced Pronouns

Subject and Object Pronouns

Adjectives and Adverbs

Comparatives and Superlatives

Sentence Fragments/Incomplete Sentences

Run-On Sentences/Comma Splices

For Those Whose Native Language Is Not English

Articles

Frequently Used Non-count Nouns

Continuous Verb Tenses

Omission or Repetition of the Subject

The Conditional

PUNCTUATION

The Period

The Comma

Extra Comma

Commas and Lists

Commas and Non-restrictive Elements

That and Which

The Question Mark

The Exclamation Mark

The Semi-Colon

The Colon

The Hyphen

The Dash

Parentheses

Square Brackets

The Apostrophe

Contractions

Possession

Quotation Marks

Other Uses of Quotation Marks

Misuse of Quotation Marks to Indicate Emphasis

Single Quotation Marks

Ellipses

FORMAT AND SPELLING

Capitalization

Abbreviations

Titles

Academic and Business Terms

Latin Abbreviations

Numbers

Italics

Spelling

Spell-Check

Spelling and Sound

American Spelling, British Spelling, Canadian Spelling

Other Spelling Mistakes

DOCUMENTATION

Citation And Documentation

Citation and Plagiarism

Signal Phrases

MLA Style

About Parenthetical Referencing

About Works Cited

MLA Style Sample

APA Style

About In-text Citations

About References

APA Style Sample

Chicago Style

Chicago Style Sample

CSE Style

CSE Style Sample

Research in Various Disciplines

Anthropology

Art History

Biology

Business and Commerce

Chemistry

Economics

English Studies

History

Philosophy

Physics

Political Science

Psychology

Sociology

WRITING BY COMPUTER

Computers and The Writing Process

What Computers Can and Can’t Do

A Note on Spell-Check

The Internet

Research Using the Internet

Observing Netiquette

Point-form Netiquette

Plagiarism, Copyright, and the Web

GLOSSARY OF USAGE

APPENDIX 1: A REFERENCE GUIDE TO BASIC GRAMMAR

APPENDIX 2: CORRECTION KEY

INDEX