Table of Contents

I. PREPARING TO WRITE. 1. Myths about Writing. 2. Purpose and Audience. 3. Gathering Ideas. II. WRITING GOOD PARAGRAPHS. 4. The Topic Sentence of a Paragraph. 5. Adding Details. 6. Sticking to the Point and Linking Sentences. III. PARAGRAPH STRATEGIES. 7. Narrating. 8. Describing. 9. Illustrating. 10. Explaining a Process. 11. Defining a Term. 12. Classifying. 13. Comparing and Contrasting. 14. Arguing. IV. WRITING GOOD ESSAYS. 15. What Is an Essay? 16. The Thesis Statement. 17. Organizing Your Essay, from Beginning to End. 18. Revising, Editing, and Proofreading. V. SENTENCE BASICS. 19. The Sentence. 20. Building Sentences. VI. THE 20 MOST COMMON SENTENCE ERRORS. Error # 1. Sentence Fragments. Error # 2. Run-on Sentences. Error # 3. Lack of Subject-Verb Agreement. Error # 4. Incorrect Verb Forms. Error # 5. Incorrect Forms of Do, Be, and Have. Error # 6. Passive Voice. Error # 7. Shift in Tense. Error # 8. Shifting Point of View. Error # 9. Unclear or Missing Referent. Error # 10. Lack of Pronoun Agreement and Sexism. Error # 11. Trouble with Comparisons and Superlatives. Error # 12. Dangling or Misplaced Modifiers. Error # 13. Omitted Commas, Part I. Error # 14. Omitted Commas, Part II. Error # 15. Apostrophe Problems. Error # 16. Trouble with Quotation Marks. Error # 17. Incorrect Capitalization, Part I. Error # 18. Incorrect Capitalization, Part II. Error # 19. Misspelled Words, Part I. Error # 20. Misspelled Words, Part II. VII. READINGS. Help for Your Reading. Narrating. Describing. Illustrating. Explaining a Process. Defining. Classifying. Comparing and Contrasting. Arguing. Credits. Index.