Painless Writing (Fourth Edition)

If you have a student who thinks writing is painful, maybe they would benefit from the tips in this friendly, laid-back book. Rather than starting from the very beginning, this book offers a handful of strategies to improve writing by targeting some common problems. Nine chapters written directly to the student focus on cleaning up preposition clutter, enlivening your writing, silencing the passive voice, reducing nominalizations and activating your writing, smoothing out your writing, harnessing the power of the comma, adding rhythm, spotting gremlins in your writing, and creating a template for term papers. Within each of these chapters, helpful and conversational text helps students spot these potential weaknesses and offers practical advice for correcting each problem. Short exercises called "Brain Ticklers" give students the opportunity to put their newfound knowledge to use cleaning up poorly written sentences. Learning to avoid these pitfalls will go a long way in improving students' term papers, essays, and other writing assignments, and hopefully, it will also give them confidence that the writing process won't be painful. 182 pgs. Melissa