Writing Made Easy: Just the Basics

Book excerpt: Writing Made Easy: Just the Basics by Timothy Sharkey explains how to make writing easy. It provides a “just-the-basics” approach to writing and it eliminates the complicated information that gets in the way. It includes expert definitions and helpful examples of what is really needed in writing – with professional scholarship and a literary sensibility – from an author who has taught English 101 and English 102 classes in college for over 15 years. Writing Made Easy: Just the Basics is the culmination of Timothy Sharkey’s 15-year effort to put the good information about writing into one book. Writing Made Easy: Just the Basics contains the following information: —Grammar, Syntax, Usage, Diction, Etymology —Mechanics: abbreviations, capitalization, spelling —Agreement Tips: past, present, and future; singular and plural; first, second, and third person voices —Using whom correctly —Punctuation Marks: apostrophe, brackets, colon, comma, dash, ellipsis, exclamation point, hyphen, parentheses, quotation marks, semicolon, slash —Sentences: required ingredients, sentence mistakes (sentence fragments, run-on sentences, and comma-splice sentences – and how to correct them) —Paragraphs: required ingredients; introduction, body, and concluding paragraphs; transition words —Rhetorical Techniques: alliteration, allusion, hyperbole, metaphor, onomatopoeia, irony, parallel construction, personification —Arguing Well: critical thinking, dialectics; Aristotle’s ethos, pathos, & logos; the Socratic Method, common ground —Fallacies: ad hominem attack, begging the question, coded language, double-edged sword, hasty analogy, red herring, slippery slope, straw man, etc. —Research Tips: advanced Google searches, Boolean operators, databases, Google Scholar, Google News, WolframAlpha, the CIA Factbook, etc. —Research Paper (MLA 9th Edition): direct quotes, indirect quotes, interpolations, in-text citations, works cited page, hanging indents, correct formatting —Writing Terms defined: bombastic, cliche, colloquial, concise, diction, etymology, euphemism, figure of speech, hyperbole, jargon, metaphor, oxymoron, redundant, rhetoric, slang, succinct, verbose, etc. —Latin Terms for Writers defined: a priori, ad hoc, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, alumnus, bona fide, de facto, ibidem (ibid.), ipso facto, non sequiter, per se, prima facie, quasi, reductio ad absurdem, sic, summa cum laude, magna cum laude, verbatim, etc. —Sample Essays included: descriptive essay, argumentative essay, research paper (MLA 9th Edition) —Writing approaches, insights, and advice