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Howard S. Becker

The classic guide to avoiding pitfalls and achieving success in academic writing—in a fully updated edition with a new preface by the author.

For decades, Writing for Social Scientists has been a lifeboat for academic writers of all fields, from beginning students to seasoned professionals. With reassuring candor, author and sociologist Howard S. Becker identifies some of the common problems all academic writers face, including from procrastination and stifling perfectionism to getting caught up in the trappings of “proper” academic writing, and struggling with the when and how of citations. He then offers concrete advice, based on his own experiences and those of his students and colleagues, for overcoming these obstacles and gaining confidence as a writer.

This new edition has been updated throughout to reflect the contemporary landscape of academic writing, offering a new generation of scholars and students encouragement to write about society or any other scholarly topic clearly and persuasively. As academics are called upon to write more often, in more formats, Writing for Social Scientists continues be an important resource for any writer’s shelf.

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing

Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start & Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

Write clearly about any subject: “Writers should check out Economical Writing, and editors should recommend it. Your future readers will be thankful.” —Journal of Scholarly Publishing

Economics is not a field known for good writing. Charts, yes. Sparkling prose, no. Except, that is, when it comes to Deirdre Nansen McCloskey. Her conversational and witty yet always clear style is a hallmark of her classic works of economic history, enlivening the dismal science and engaging readers well beyond the discipline. And now she’s here to share the secrets of how it’s done, no matter what your field.

Economical Writing is itself economical: a collection of thirty-five pithy rules for making your writing clear, concise, and effective. Proceeding from big-picture ideas to concrete strategies for improvement at the level of the paragraph, sentence, or word, McCloskey shows us that good writing, after all, is not just a matter of taste—it’s a product of adept intuition and a rigorous revision process. Debunking stale rules, warning us that “footnotes are nests for pedants,” and offering an arsenal of readily applicable tools and methods, she shows writers of all levels of experience how to rethink the way they approach their work, and gives them the knowledge to turn mediocre prose into magic.

At once efficient and digestible, hilarious and provocative, Economical Writing lives up to its promise. With McCloskey as our guide, we discover how any piece of writing—on economics or any other subject—can be a pleasure to read.

Economical Writing, Third Edition: Thirty-Five Rules for Clear and Persuasive Prose

Janet Burroway

Elizabeth Stuckey-French

Ned Stuckey-French

This updated edition of the classic, comprehensive guide to creative writing features new topics and writing prompts, contemporary examples, and more.

A creative writer’s shelf should hold at least three essential books: a dictionary, a style guide, and Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction. This best-selling classic is the most widely used creative writing text in America, and for decades it has helped hundreds of thousands of students learn the craft. Now in its tenth edition, Writing Fiction is more accessible than ever for writers of all levels—inside or outside the classroom.

This new edition continues to provide advice that is practical, comprehensive, and flexible. Moving from freewriting to final revision, Burroway addresses “showing not telling,” characterization, dialogue, atmosphere, plot, imagery, and point of view. It includes new topics and writing prompts, and each chapter now ends with a list of recommended readings that exemplify the craft elements discussed. Plus, examples and quotations throughout the book feature a wide range of today’s best and best-known creators of both novels and short stories.

Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft

Charles Lipson

Updated Edition: “An invaluable tool for researchers who must cite sources in their writing . . . you’ll want to keep it within easy reach of your keyboard.” —Technical Communications

Cite Right is the perfect guide for anyone who needs to learn a new citation style or who needs an easy reference to Chicago, MLA, APA, AMA, and other styles. Each chapter serves as a quick guide that introduces the basics of a style, explains who might use it, and then presents an abundance of examples.

This edition includes updates reflecting the most recent editions of The Chicago Manual of Style and the MLA Handbook. With this book, students and researchers can move smoothly among styles with confidence that they are getting it right.

Cite Right: A Quick Guide to Citation Styles—MLA, APA, Chicago, the Sciences, Professions, and More

Chris Mackenzie Jones

One of Poets & Writers’ “Best Books for Writers”: The behind-the-scenes stories of eleven debut books, from their authors, agents, editors, and publishers.

Every book has a story of its own, a path leading from the initial idea that sparked it to its emergence into the world in published form. No two books follow quite the same path, but all are shaped by a similar array of market forces and writing craft concerns as well as by a cast of characters stretching beyond the author.

Behind the Book explores how eleven contemporary first-time authors, in genres ranging from post-apocalyptic fiction to young adult fantasy to travel memoir, navigated these pathways with their debut works. Based on extensive interviews with the authors, it covers the process of writing and publishing a book from beginning to end, including idea generation, developing a process, building a support network, revising the manuscript, finding the right approach to publication, building awareness, and ultimately moving on to the next project. It also includes insights from editors, agents, publishers, and others who helped to bring these projects to life.

Unlike other books on writing craft, Behind the Book looks at the larger picture of how an author’s work and choices can affect the outcome of a project. The authors profiled in each story open up about their challenges, mistakes, and successes. While their paths to publication may be unique, together they offer important lessons that authors of all types can apply to their own writing journeys.

“Essential.” —Poets & Writers

Behind the Book: Eleven Authors on Their Path to Publication

Jane Friedman

“Destined to become a staple reference book for writers and those interested in publishing careers.” —Publishers Weekly

Writers talk about their work in many ways: as an art, as a calling, as a lifestyle. Too often missing from these conversations is the fact that writing is also a business. Those who want to make a full- or part-time job out of writing are going to have a more positive and productive career if they understand the basic business principles underlying the industry.

This book offers the business education writers need but so rarely receive. It is meant for early-career writers looking to develop a realistic set of expectations about making money from their work. or for working writers who want a better understanding of the industry. Writers will gain a comprehensive picture of how the publishing world works—from queries and agents to blogging and advertising—and will learn how they can best position themselves for success over the long term.

Jane Friedman has more than two decades of experience in the publishing industry, with an emphasis on digital media strategy for authors and publishers. She is encouraging without sugarcoating, blending years of research with practical advice that will help writers market themselves and maximize their writing-related income—and leave them empowered, confident, and ready to turn their craft into a career.

“Friedman’s 20-plus years in the industry, launching and managing the social media presence of Writer’s Digest, along with her expertise in business strategies for authors and publishers, combine to create an invaluable compendium of practical advice.” —Library Journal (starred review)

The Business of Being a Writer

Will Dunne

Spark your creativity, hone your writing, and improve your scripts with the self-contained character, scene, and story exercises found in this classic guide.

Having spent decades working with dramatists to refine and expand their existing plays and screenplays, Dunne effortlessly blends condensed dramatic theory with specific action steps—over sixty workshop-tested exercises that can be adapted to virtually any individual writing process and dramatic script. Dunne’s in-depth method is both instinctual and intellectual, allowing writers to discover new actions for their characters and new directions for their stories. The exercises can be used by those just starting the writing process and by those who have scripts already in development. With each exercise rooted in real-life issues from Dunne’s workshops, readers of this companion will find the combined experiences of more than fifteen hundred workshops in a single guide.

This second edition is fully aligned with a brand-new companion book, Character, Scene, and Story, which offers forty-two additional activities to help writers more fully develop their scripts. The two books include cross-references between related exercises, though each volume can also stand alone.

No ordinary guide to plotting, this handbook centers on the principle that character is key. “The character is not something added to the scene or to the story,” writes Dunne. “Rather, the character is the scene. The character is the story.” With this new edition, Dunne’s remarkable creative method will continue to be the go-to source for anyone hoping to take their story to the stage.

“Dunne mixes an artist’s imagination and intuition with a teacher’s knowledge of the craft of dramatic writing.” —May-Brit Akerholt, award-winning dramaturg

The Dramatic Writer's Companion: Tools to Develop Characters, Cause Scenes, and Build Stories

Bryan A. Garner

The authoritative guide to using the English language effectively, from “the greatest writer on grammar and usage that this country has ever produced” (David Yerkes, Columbia University).
 
 The author of The Chicago Manual of Style’s popular “Grammar and Usage” chapter, Bryan A. Garner is renowned for explaining the vagaries of English with absolute precision and utmost clarity. With The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation, he has written the definitive guide for writers who want their prose to be both memorable and correct.

 Garner describes standard literary English—the forms that mark writers and speakers as educated users of the language. He also offers historical context for understanding the development of these forms. The section on grammar explains how the canonical parts of speech came to be identified, while the section on syntax covers the nuances of sentence patterns as well as both traditional sentence diagramming and transformational grammar. The usage section provides an unprecedented trove of empirical evidence in the form of Google Ngrams, diagrams that illustrate the changing prevalence of specific terms over decades and even centuries of English literature. Garner also treats punctuation and word formation, and concludes the book with an exhaustive glossary of grammatical terms and a bibliography of suggested further reading and references.

The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation is a magisterial work, the culmination of Garner’s lifelong study of the English language. The result is a landmark resource that will offer clear guidelines to students, writers, and editors alike.
 
 “[A manual] for those of us laboring to produce expository prose: nonfiction books, journalistic articles, memorandums, business letters. The conservatism of his advice pushes you to consider audience and occasion, so that you will understand when to follow convention and when you can safely break it.”—John E. McIntyre, Baltimore Sun

The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation

Helen Sword

“Sword aims to lead us to ‘fit and trim’ prose via an assault course covering horrors such as ‘Prepositional pudge,’ ‘Ad-dictions’ and ‘Waste words.’” —Times Higher Education

Do your sentences sag? Could your paragraphs use a pick-me-up? If so, The Writer’s Diet is for you! It’s a short, sharp introduction to great writing that will help you energize your prose and boost your verbal fitness.

Helen Sword dispenses with excessive explanations and overwrought analysis. Instead, she offers an easy-to-follow set of writing principles: use active verbs whenever possible; favor concrete language over vague abstractions; avoid long strings of prepositional phrases; employ adjectives and adverbs only when they contribute something new to the meaning of a sentence; and reduce your dependence on four pernicious “waste words”: it, this, that, and there.

Sword then shows the rules in action through examples from William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Martin Luther King Jr., John McPhee, A. S. Byatt, Richard Dawkins, Alison Gopnik, and many more. A writing fitness test encourages you to assess your own writing and get immediate advice on addressing problem areas. While The Writer’s Diet is as sleek and concise as the writing ideals contained within, this slim volume packs a powerful punch.

With Sword’s coaching writers of all levels can strengthen and tone their sentences with the stroke of a pen or the click of a mouse. As with any fitness routine, adhering to the rules requires energy and vigilance. The results, however, will speak for themselves.

“Who says nutritious material must be bland? This short book is packed with excellent advice on writing, offered with charm and good cheer.” —Steven Pinker, author of The Sense of Style

The Writer's Diet: A Guide to Fit Prose

The University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff

“A wonderful blend of substance and snark—both a useful reference and a fun (yes, fun) read.”—Mignon Fogarty, New York Times-bestselling author of Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing
 
Q. Is it happy medium or happy median?
 
A. The idiom is happy medium, but I like the image of commuters taking refuge from road rage on the happy median.
 
 Every month, tens of thousands of self-declared word nerds converge upon a single site: The Chicago Manual of Style Online's Q&A. There the Manuals editors open the mailbag and tackle readers’ questions on topics ranging from abbreviation to word division to how to reform that coworker who still insists on two spaces between sentences.
 
 Champions of common sense, the editors offer smart, direct, and occasionally tongue-in-cheek responses that have guided writers and settled arguments for more than fifteen years. But Can I Start a Sentence with But? brings together the best of the Chicago Style Q&A. Curated from years of entries, it features some of the most popular and hotly debated rulings, and also recovers old favorites long buried in the archives.
 
 In addition, a foreword by Carol Fisher Saller, the Q&A’s longtime editor, takes readers through the history of the Q&A and addresses its reputation for mischief. Taken together, the questions and answers offer insights into some of the most common issues that face anyone who works with words—touching on editorial style—capitalization, punctuation, alphabetizing, special characters—as well as grammar, usage, and beyond. It’s a comforting reminder that even the best writer or editor needs a little help (and humor) sometimes.

But Can I Start a Sentence with "But"?: Advice from the Chicago Style Q&A

Jane E. Miller

For students, scientists, journalists and others, a comprehensive guide to communicating data clearly and effectively.

Acclaimed by scientists, journalists, faculty, and students, The Chicago Guide to Writing about Numbers has helped thousands communicate data clearly and effectively. It offers a much-needed bridge between good quantitative analysis and clear expository writing, using straightforward principles and efficient prose. With this new edition, Jane Miller draws on a decade of additional experience and research, expanding her advice on reaching everyday audiences and further integrating non-print formats.

Miller, an experienced teacher of research methods, statistics, and research writing, opens by introducing a set of basic principles for writing about numbers, then presents a toolkit of techniques that can be applied to prose, tables, charts, and presentations. She emphasizes flexibility, showing how different approaches work for different kinds of data and different types of audiences.

The second edition adds a chapter on writing about numbers for lay audiences, explaining how to avoid overwhelming readers with jargon and technical issues. Also new is an appendix comparing the contents and formats of speeches, research posters, and papers, to teach writers how to create all three types of communication without starting each from scratch. An expanded companion website includes new multimedia resources such as slide shows and podcasts that illustrate the concepts and techniques, along with an updated study guide of problem sets and suggested course extensions.

This continues to be the only book that brings together all the tasks that go into writing about numbers, integrating advice on finding data, calculating statistics, organizing ideas, designing tables and charts, and writing prose all in one volume. Field-tested with students and professionals alike, this is the go-to guide for everyone who writes or speaks about numbers.

The Chicago Guide to Writing About Numbers

William Germano

How to transform a thesis into a publishable work that can engage audiences beyond the academic committee.

When a dissertation crosses my desk, I usually want to grab it by its metaphorical lapels and give it a good shake. “You know something!” I would say if it could hear me. “Now tell it to us in language we can understand!”

Since its publication in 2005, From Dissertation to Book has helped thousands of young academic authors get their books beyond the thesis committee and into the hands of interested publishers and general readers. Now revised and updated to reflect the evolution of scholarly publishing, this edition includes a new chapter arguing that the future of academic writing is in the hands of young scholars who must create work that meets the broader expectations of readers rather than the narrow requirements of academic committees.

At the heart of From Dissertation to Book is the idea that revising the dissertation is fundamentally a process of shifting its focus from the concerns of a narrow audience—a committee or advisors—to those of a broader scholarly audience that wants writing to be both informative and engaging. William Germano offers clear guidance on how to do this, with advice on such topics as rethinking the table of contents, taming runaway footnotes, shaping chapter length, and confronting the limitations of jargon, alongside helpful timetables for light or heavy revision.

Germano draws on his years of experience in both academia and publishing to show writers how to turn a dissertation into a book that an audience will actually enjoy, whether reading on a page or a screen. He also acknowledges that not all dissertations can or even should become books and explores other, often overlooked, options, such as turning them into journal articles or chapters in an edited work. With clear directions, engaging examples, and an eye for the idiosyncrasies of academic writing, he reveals to recent PhDs the secrets of careful and thoughtful revision—a skill that will be truly invaluable as they add “author” to their curriculum vitae.

From Dissertation to Book

“This easy-to-follow guide is useful both as a general course of instruction and as a targeted aid in solving particular legal writing problems.” —Harvard Law Review

Clear, concise, down-to-earth, and powerful—all too often, legal writing embodies none of these qualities. Its reputation for obscurity and needless legalese is widespread. For more than twenty years, Bryan A. Garner’s Legal Writing in Plain English has helped address this problem by providing lawyers, judges, paralegals, law students, and legal scholars with sound advice and practical tools for improving their written work. 

The leading guide to clear writing in the field, this indispensable volume encourages legal writers to challenge conventions and offers valuable insights into the writing process that will appeal to other professionals: how to organize ideas, create and refine prose, and improve editing skills.

Accessible and witty, Legal Writing in Plain English draws on real-life writing samples that Garner has gathered through decades of teaching. Trenchant advice covers all types of legal materials, from analytical and persuasive writing to legal drafting, and the book’s principles are reinforced by sets of basic, intermediate, and advanced exercises in each section.

In this new edition, Garner preserves the successful structure of the original while adjusting the content to make it even more classroom-friendly. He includes case examples from the past decade and addresses the widespread use of legal documents in electronic formats. His book remains the standard guide for producing the jargon-free language that clients demand and courts reward.

“Those who are willing to approach the book systematically and to complete the exercises will see dramatic improvements in their writing.” —Law Library Journal

Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing - Kirjasarja

Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing - Kirjasarja

Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing-kirjat järjestyksessä

Kuuntele missä ja milloin haluat