Smarthinking Writer's Handbook

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1: Understanding Your Writing Assignment
  • Section 1: Essay Prompt and Purpose
    • Lesson 1: Analyzing the Prompt
  • Section 2: Essay Genres and Assignment Types
    • Lesson 1: Writing a Narrative
    • Lesson 2: Writing a Memoir
    • Lesson 3: Writing a Descriptive Essay
    • Lesson 4: Writing a Definition Essay
    • Lesson 5: Writing a Cause and Effect Essay
    • Lesson 6: Writing a Process Essay
    • Lesson 7: Writing a Classification Essay
    • Lesson 8: Writing a Compare and Contrast Essay
    • Lesson 9: Writing an Argument Essay
    • Lesson 10: Tools for Arguing
    • Lesson 11: Writing an Exemplification/Illustration Essay
    • Lesson 12: Writing Literary Analyses and Explications
    • Lesson 13: Film and Television Analyses
    • Lesson 14: Rhetorical Analyses
    • Lesson 15: Evaluations and Reviews
    • Lesson 16: Annotated Bibliographies
    • Lesson 17: Literature Reviews
    • Lesson 18: Proposals
    • Lesson 19: Abstracts
    • Lesson 20: Writing Scientific or Technical Reports
    • Lesson 21: Business Reports
    • Lesson 22: Résumé Writing
    • Lesson 23: Cover and Thank You Letters
    • Lesson 24: Writing Memos
    • Lesson 25: Business, Complaint, and Suggestion Letters
    • Lesson 26: Personal Statement, College Application, and Scholarship Essays
    • Lesson 27: Short Fiction
    • Lesson 28: Poetry
    • Lesson 29: Digital Portfolios
    • Lesson 30: Art Analysis
    • Lesson 31: Speech Outlines
    • Lesson 32: Slide Presentations
• Chapter 2: Preparing to Write Your Essay
  • Section 1: Determining Your Audience
    • Lesson 1: Analyzing Your Audience
    • Lesson 2: Audience Types
  • Section 2: Prewriting
    • Lesson 1: Recognizing and Overcoming Writer’s Block
    • Lesson 2: Using Invention Methods
    • Lesson 3: Choosing the Right Topic
  • Section 3: Researching
    • Lesson 1: Completing the Research Process
    • Lesson 2: Reading Critically to Gather Information
    • Lesson 3: Using the Internet Wisely
    • Lesson 4: Using the Library Wisely
    • Lesson 5: Conducting Field Research
    • Lesson 6: Conducting Interviews
    • Lesson 7: Evaluating Sources
    • Lesson 8: Using Your Sources Wisely
    • Lesson 9: Documentation
    • MLA Style
    • APA Style 6th Edition
    • APA Style 7th Edition
    • Chicago/Turabian Style
    • Harvard Style
  • Section 4: Planning
    • Lesson 1: Developing Ideas
    • Lesson 2: Developing a Thesis
    • Lesson 3: Formal and Informal Outlines
• Chapter 3: Drafting Your Essay
  • Lesson 1: Effective Introductions
  • Lesson 2: Strong Conclusions
  • Lesson 3: Clear Topic Sentences
  • Lesson 4: Powerful Body Paragraphs
  • Lesson 5: Smooth Transitions
  • Lesson 6: The One-Paragraph Essay
• Chapter 4: Revising and Editing Your Essay
  • Lesson 1: Moving From the Rough to the Presentation Draft
  • Lesson 2: Revising Content
  • Lesson 3: Editing and Proofreading
• Chapter 5: Grammar and Mechanics
  • Section 1: Parts of Speech
    • Lesson 1: Nouns
    • Lesson 2: Personal Pronouns
    • Lesson 3: Demonstrative, Relative, Reflexive, and Indefinite Pronouns
    • Lesson 4: Verbs
    • Lesson 5: Adjectives
    • Lesson 6: Adverbs
    • Lesson 7: Prepositions
    • Lesson 8: Articles and Other Determiners
    • Lesson 9: Conjunctions
  • Section 2: Usage
    • Lesson 1: Subjects
    • Lesson 2: Count and Noncount Nouns
    • Lesson 3: Gerunds
    • Lesson 4: Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement
    • Lesson 5: Predicates
    • Lesson 6: Subject-Verb Agreement
    • Lesson 7: Simple Verb Tenses
    • Lesson 8: Verb Tenses: Progressive and Perfect
    • Lesson 9: Verb Tense Shifts
    • Lesson 10: Being and Linking Verbs
    • Lesson 11: Irregular Verbs
    • Lesson 12: Helping Verbs
    • Lesson 13: Infinitives
    • Lesson 14: Participles
  • Section 3: Mechanics
    • Lesson 1: End Punctuation
    • Lesson 2: Colons
    • Lesson 3: Semicolons
    • Lesson 4: Commas
    • Lesson 5: Apostrophes
    • Lesson 6: Quotation Marks
    • Lesson 7: Hyphens and Parentheses
    • Lesson 8: Dashes, Slashes, Brackets, and Ellipses
    • Lesson 9: Capitalization
    • Lesson 10: Spelling Strategies
  • Section 4: Sentence Structure
    • Lesson 1: Independent Clauses
    • Lesson 2: Dependent Clauses
    • Lesson 3: Complete Sentences
    • Lesson 4: Sentence Types
    • Lesson 5: Incomplete Sentences: Fragments
    • Lesson 6: Comma Splices and Run-ons
    • Lesson 7: Parallel Structure
    • Lesson 8: Using Modifiers Precisely
    • Lesson 9: Sentence Unity and Clarity
    • Lesson 10: Sentence Variety
• Chapter 6: Writing Style
  • Lesson 1: Building Your Writing Style
  • Lesson 2: Point of View
  • Lesson 3: Consistent Tone and Voice
  • Lesson 4: Word Choice
  • Lesson 5: Formal and Informal Language
  • Lesson 6: Wordiness
  • Lesson 7: Active and Passive Voice
  • Lesson 8: Choosing the Right Subject
  • Lesson 9: Figurative Language
• Chapter 7: Using Resources
  • Lesson 1: Using a Computer’s Checker Tools
  • Lesson 2: Keeping a Writer’s Error Log
  • Lesson 3: Using a Dictionary and Thesaurus
• Appendix:
  • Glossary of Writing Terms
  • Top 10 Writing Concerns
  • Verb Tenses
  • Irregular Verbs
  • Conditional Verb Tenses
  • Common Homophones and Homonyms
  • References

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