The St. Martin's Guide to Writing

Book excerpt: This textbook provides instruction in college level rhetoric and writing. It offers readings, a research manual, a handbook and supports a range of approaches to teaching and learning, including collaboration, visual rhetoric, personal writing, writing about literature, writing in the community and the workplace, field research, portfolios, oral presentations, essay exams, and ESL. It contains step-by-step guides to writing specific kinds of essays -- remembering events, writing profiles, explaining a concept, finding common ground, arguing a position, proposing a solution, justifying an evaluation, speculating about causes, and interpreting stories. Because so much college writing requires strong argumentation skills, four of the assignment chapters focus on argumentative writing, and a separate strategies chapter covers theses, reasons and support, counterarguments, and logical fallacies. Three full chapters on research give students useful strategies not only for conducting field, library, and Internet research, but also for evaluating sources; deciding whether to quote, paraphrase, or summarize; avoiding plagiarism; and documenting sources. The authors have included 39 readings by well-known authors and various "fresh" voices, including 12 students, providing well-written examples of the different types of essays and papers that students might be asked to complete.