The Writer's Faqs: A Pocket Handbook, MLA Update Edition

By Jennifer L. Kunka and Muriel Harris

Book Overview

For courses in First-Year Composition. This version of The Writer's FAQs: A Pocket Handbook has been updated to reflect the 8th Edition of the MLA Handbook (April 2016)*
Writing techniques, organized by student questions This pocket-sized handbook is an easy-to-use, go-to guide that answers questions students have about grammar, punctuation, and research. Clear explanations are supplemented with engaging visual aids. Its lucid instruction, visual design, and authentic examples make The Writer's FAQs a favorite among those instructors who want their students to have a useful handbook that fits (in) their pocket. The Sixth Edition engages students with new illustrations, explanations, and research aids that strengthen practical writing skills useful in any future career.
* The 8th Edition introduces sweeping changes to the philosophy and details of MLA works cited entries. Responding to the "increasing mobility of texts," MLA now encourages writers to focus on the process of crafting the citation, beginning with the same questions for any source. These changes, then, align with current best practices in the teaching of writing which privilege inquiry and critical thinking over rote recall and rule-following.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0134678842
• ISBN13: 9780134678849
• Release Date: January 2017
• Publisher: Pearson
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 4.8" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Ecrire toujours, vraiment cela m'interesse

Etre d'avis et justifier l'opinion, c'est ca la formation aux Etats-Unis. Ainsi ecrire bien veut-il dire s'engager aux buts, a l'audience, a l'organisation bien identifiees et bien liees. Depuis le commencement, jusqu'a la fin, tout se devoue a, s'appuie sur l'idee principale. Tout en y arrivant, il faut tout verifier, des renseignements et des statistiques, soit de l'Internet soit des bonnes sources. Et que le tout s'accorde avec le manuel du discipline, par exemple le Chicago Manual of Style, pour les anthropologistes.

A Writer's Tale

Get used to having an opinion and defending it: education in the United States wants to know what writers think, not how well they repeat the thinking of experts and great scholars. Muriel Harris says that good writing means being aware of and committed to purpose, audience and organization: everything between beginning and ending goes to support the main idea by passing judgment on each part of the thesis statement and on the sources. I like the way the author describes conclusions: looking backwards by summing up what went before and forward by giving advice or suggestions. THE WRITER'S FAQS reminds us that both Internet and nondigital sources need to be checked for reliability and that a particular course of study, such as anthropology, links with a particular handbook, such as CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE. Readers have no problems moving from this helpfully clear guide to specifics in Michael Alley's THE CRAFT OF SCIENTIFIC WRITING, Jan A. Pechenik's A SHORT GUIDE TO WRITING ABOUT BIOLOGY, Allan M. Siegal and William G. Connolly's THE NEW YORK TIMES MANUAL OF STYLE AND USAGE, and Joseph F. Trimmer's THE ESSENTIALS OF MLA STYLE.