Thoughtful Writing

Thoughtful Writing, through its advice and through its muscle-memory-developing exercises, teaches students how to succeed at any kind of investigative or argumentative writing. Its training in how to find and use telling details solves the mystifying problem of how to write enough words to fill your required number of pages.   This text demonstrates how to move from facts to inferences to a thesis and helps you write thesis statements that are genuinely thoughtful. It helps give warmth and life to your writing by making you conscious that you are writing for readers that you respect. It very specifically shows you how to conduct research – how to learn from people, from books, and from the vast resources on the internet.   Its chapters on organizing, paragraphing, revising, and punctuating help you achieve professional standards of presentation. It teaches English grammar in a more enjoyable and useful way than does any other writing textbook.   All in all, it helps you produce writing that is, in both the humane and the intellectual senses of the term, genuinely thoughtful.  

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 Where Do We Start?      Critical Skills and Attitudes for a Writer      Assessing Your Current Writing Ability      Writing Priorities Survey Chapter 2 Telling Details      Telling Details: The Basis of All Effective Writing      Recalling and Writing Telling Details      Qualities, Comparisons, Details      Coming Up with Telling Facts      Writing Telling Facts from Direct Observation      Taking Pains Not to Write without Details Chapter 3 Facts, Inferences, and Theses      Inferences      Drawing Inferences from Observed Facts      Drawing Inferences from Statistics      Combining Inferences into a Thesis      Drawing Inferences and a Thesis from a Text      Fact-Inference Pairs as a Research Tool      Paragraphing with Facts and Inferences      The Vulnerability of Inferences      Qualifying Inferences      Substantiating Assertions Chapter 4 Writing for a Reader      Developing an Honest and Recognizable Voice      Drawing Inferences about Writers      Timed Writing      Becoming Conscious of Our Readers      Readers and Overhearers      Sensing Your Reader as You Write      Becoming Your Own Reader      Respecting Readers Chapter 5 Systematic Patterns of Thought      Organization: Our Choice or Theirs?      Choosing a Systematic Organization      The Common, Systematic Thought Patterns      Chronological Narration      Spatial Description      Classification      Comparing and Contrasting      Definition      Cause and Effect      Problem-Solution      Assertion with Examples      Assertion with Reasons      Building to a Climax      Writing and Recognizing the Common Thought Patterns      Writing Patterned Answers to Essay Questions Chapter 6 Persuasion:Writing with Authority      Earning, and Then Using, Authority      Discriminating among Ethos, Logos, and Pathos      Logos      Ethos      Pathos      Fallacies      All Writing Needs Effective Ethos, Logos, and Pathos Chapter 7 Paragraphing, Introductions, and Conclusions      Paragraphing      Writing a Paragraph Outline      Choosing, and Giving Reasons for, Paragraph Breaks      Coherence      Introductions      Conclusions Chapter 8 Revision      Giving Yourself the Power of Two      Self-Critique      Revision Checklist Chapter 9 Sentence Sense: Making Grammar Your Ally      Self-Assessment: Common Punctuation Errors      Self-Assessment: Grammar and Punctuation Terms      What Is a Sentence?      Destroying a Sentence by Adding to It      Repairing a Sentence Fragment by Adding to It      Discovering an Independent Clause      Clauses      Adjectives and Adverbs      Enriching Sentences with Clauses      Enriching Sentences with Prepositional Phrases      Phrases      Participles      Past Participles      Gerunds      Infinitives: The Third Verbal      Parallel Structure      Punctuation      Common Problems in Punctuation      Comma Splices and Fused Sentences      Sentence Fragments      Punctuation with Connectors      Punctuation with And     Interrupting Words, Phrases, and Clauses      Introducing a Quotation      The Apostrophe Chapter 10 Research on the Internet and in the Library      Research: The Way We Find Raw Material for Our Papers       The Internet and its Databases       Libraries      Historical Exploring       The Research Process in a Nutshell       Research Paper Skills       Note Taking      Drawing Inferences from Your Research Sources      Keeping the Subject Covered to a Reasonable Size      Evaluating Your Sources      Ensuring That Your Work Is Your Own      Incorporating Quotations      Punctuating Quotations      Acknowledging Source      Putting Together Your Works Cited List      Checklist for Works Cited Format Chapter 11 Research through Interviewing      Preparing Questions for an Interview      Practice Interview      Comparing Written and Video Interviews Chapter 12 Research through Careful Reading      Drawing Inferences While Reading      (Reading between the Lines)      Drawing Readers’ Inferences      Drawing Inferences from a Writer’s Facts      Locating Assumptions While Reading      Thoughtful Reading      From Drawing Inferences to Evaluating      Rhetorical Analysis      Reading, and Writing about, Fiction      Drawing Inferences about Works of Fiction Chapter 13 The Writing Process: An Overview      Reflections on the Writing Process      Your Writing Process      Stages of the Writing Process      Collecting and Selecting      Incubation (Waiting)      Ordering      Drafting      Revising (Making the Work Readable)      Publishing      Overview Chapter 14 What Next?      Answers to Exercises Earlier in the Book      Taking Stock      Recommended Books      Strengthening Intuition    Works Cited  Acknowledgments  Index