Table of Contents
Clear Writing: A Checklist
1. Choosing the Best Words
a. Be as Clear and Specific as Possible
b. Watch for Redundancy
c. Avoid Wordiness
d. Watch for Missing Parts
e. Choose the Best Verb
2. Order and Connect Your Ideas
a. Paragraphing
b. Joining Words
c. Order and Weight your Ideas According to Their Importance
d. Watch for Ambiguity
3. Make Your Writing Consistent
a. Agreement Among the Grammatical Parts of your Writing
b. Watch for Mixed Metaphors
4. Rhythm and Variety
5. Tone, Voice, and Special Writing Situations
a. Academic Writing
b. Writing About Literature
c. Writing in Other Academic Disciplines
d. Business Writing
e. Slang and Informal English
6. Bias-free Usage
a. Gender
b. Race, Culture, and Sexual Orientation
Bias-free Vocabulary: A Short List
Grammar
7. Verbs and Verb Tense Difficulties
a. The Infinitive
b. The Simple Present Tense
c. Subject-Verb Agreement
d. Survey of Verb Tenses
e. Voice
8. Combining Verb Tenses
a. The Past Perfect Tense
b. Combining Tenses—Quoted Material
9. Irregular Verbs
10. Dangling Constructions
11. Nouns and Pronouns
a. Singular and Plural Nouns
b. Singular Pronouns
c. Unreferenced or Wrongly Referenced Pronouns
d. Subject and Object Pronouns
12. Adjectives and Adverbs
a. Comparatives and Superlatives
13. Sentence Fragments / Incomplete Sentences
14. Run-on Sentences / Comma Splices
15. For Those Whose Native Language Is Not English
a. Articles
b. Frequently Used Non-count Nouns
c. Continuous Verb Tenses
d. Omission or Repetition of the Subject
e. The Conditional
Punctuation
16. The Period
17. The Comma
a. Extra Comma
b. Commas and Lists
c. Commas and Non-restrictive Elements
d. That and Which
18. The Question Mark
19. The Exclamation Mark
20. The Semi-colon
21. The Colon
22. The Hyphen
23. The Dash
24. Parentheses
25. Square Brackets
26. The Apostrophe
a. Contractions
b. Possession
27. Quotation Marks
a. Other Uses of Quotation Marks
b. Misuse of Quotation Marks to Indicate Emphasis
c. Single Quotation Marks
28. Ellipses
Format and Spelling
29. Capitalization
30. Abbreviations
a. Titles
b. Academic and Business Terms
c. Latin Abbreviations
31. Numbers
32. Italics
33. Spelling
a. Spell Check
b. Spelling and Sound
c. American Spelling, British Spelling, Canadian Spelling
d. Other Spelling Mistakes
Documentation
34. Citation and Documentation—MLA
a. Citation and Plagiarism
b. Signal Phrases
35. MLA Style
a. About Parenthetical Referencing
b. About Works Cited
36. APA Style
a. About In-text Citations
b. About References
37. Chicago Style
38. CBE Style
39. Research in Various Disciplines
a. Anthropology
b. Art History
c. Biology
d. Business and Commerce
e. Chemistry
f. Economics
g. English Studies
h. History
i. Philosophy
j. Physics
k. Political Science
l. Psychology
m. Sociology
Writing By Computer
40. Computers and the Writing Process
a. What computers Can and Can’t Do
b. A Note on Spell Check
c. The Internet
d. Research Using the Internet
e. Observing Netiquette
f. Point-form Netiquette
g. Plagiarism, Copyright, and the Web
Glossary of Usage
Appendix 1: A Reference Guide to Basic Grammar
Appendix 2: Correction Key
Index