Table of Contents
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