Readings for Writers, 2016 MLA Update

From helping you find your voice to guiding you on the latest MLA and APA documentation guidelines, READINGS FOR WRITERS is designed to help you become a more successful writer. Throughout the text, the authors offer helpful commentary, practical tips and suggestions, real student essays, and other writing tools that you can use for any assignment. But even more importantly, they present over 70 readings from a variety of genres and authors that will inspire and inform your writing as you learn what good writing is, and how to create it on your own. This edition has been updated to reflect guidelines from the 2016 MLA HANDBOOK, Eighth Edition.

Table of Contents:
Part I: READING AND WRITING: FROM READING TO WRITING. 1. Reading Critically. Kinds of Reading. Steps to Critical Reading. Read Actively. Demystify the Writer. Understand What You Read. Imagine an Opposing Point of View for All Opinions. Look for Biases and Hidden Assumptions. Separate Emotion from Fact. If the Issue Is New to You, Look up the Facts. Use Insights from One Subject to Illuminate or Correct Another. Evaluate the Evidence. Ponder the Values behind a Claim. Recognize Logical Fallacies. Don't Be Seduced by Bogus Claims. Annotate Your Reading. Finally, Be Sure You Understand the Writer's Opening Context. Answers to Critical Reading Questions on Andy Rooney. 2. Rhetoric: The Art of Persuasion. Road Map to Rhetoric. Grammar and Rhetoric. The Importance of Good Grammar. Letting the Habits of Literate Writers Be the Final Referee. Exercises. The Importance of Rhetoric. Audience and Purpose. The Internal Reader/Editor. Levels of English. Writing as a Process. Writing about Visual Images. Writing on Social Networks. Advice. What--and How--to Write When You Have No Time to Write / Donald Murray. Examples. I Have a Dream / Martin Luther King, Jr. Letter to Horace Greeley / Abraham Lincoln. Chapter Writing Assignments. Pointer from a Pro: Write Often. Real-Life Student Writing. Email from Samoa. 3. Synthesis: Incorporating Outside Sources. Road Map to Synthesis. Building Blocks of Incorporating Outside Sources. Paraphrase. Exercises. Summary. Exercises. Quotation. Exercises. Guidelines for Effectively Synthesizing Outside Sources. Guidelines for Thinking and Reading Critically. Guidelines for Improving Your Use of Outside Sources. Writers at Work: Strategies for Incorporating Outside Sources. Writers at Work: Using Paraphrase and Summary. Writers at Work: Using Quotation. Chapter Writing Assignment: Writing a Synthesis Essay. Sources. The Death of Horatio Alger / Paul Krugman. By Our Own Bootstraps / W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm. Long Live the American Dream / Shikha Dalmia. Essay Prompts. Suggestions for Additional Reading. 4. The Writer's Voice. Road Map to Writer's Voice. Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? Vocabulary. Syntax. Attitude. Exercises. Advice. Tone: The Writers' Voice in the Reader's Mind / Mort Castle. Examples. Salvation / Langston Hughes. Parkinson's Disease and the Dream Bear / Anthony C. Winkler. Chapter Writing Assignments. Real-Life Student Writing. A Thank-You Note to an Aunt. 5. The Writer's Thesis. Road Map to Thesis. Finding Your Thesis. Key Words in the Thesis. Characteristics of a Good Thesis. Nine Errors to Avoid in Composing a Thesis. The Explicit Versus the Implicit Thesis. Exercises. Advice. The Thesis / Sheridan Baker. Examples. Remarks on the Life of Sacco and on His Own Life and Execution / Bartolomeo Vanzetti. A Good Man is Hard to Find / Flannery O'Connor. Chapter Writing Assignments. Real-Life Student Writing. A Eulogy to a Friend Killed in a Car Wreck. 6. Organizing Ideas. Road Map to Organizing. Organizing the Short Essay. Organizing the Long Essay. Planning by Listing Supporting Materials. Organizing with a Formal Outline. Exercises. Advice. Write to Be Understood / Jim Staylor. Examples. Rules for Aging / Roger Rosenblatt. That Time of Year (Sonnet 73) / William Shakespeare. Chapter Writing Assignments. Real-Life Student Writing. Note from a Graduate Student to a Department Secretary. 7. Developing Good Paragraphs. Road Map to Paragraphs. Parts of the Paragraph. Supporting Details. Topic Sentence Developed over More Than One Paragraph. Position of the Topic Sentence. Paragraph Patterns. Characteristics of a Well-designed Paragraph. Writing Your Own Paragraphs. Exercises. Advice. Writing Successful Paragraphs / A. M. Tibbetts and Charlene Tibbetts. Examples. Paragraphs with the Topic Sentence at the Beginning. From the Lessons of the Past / Edith Hamilton. Paragraphs with the Topic Sentence at the End. Man against Darkness / W. T. Stace. Chapter Writing Assignments. Real-Life Student

About the Author :
Born in Belgium, the daughter of an American minister, Jo Ray McCuen-Metherell had moved from Brussels to Paris to Bern, Switzerland, by the time she was seven years old. In Bern, she attended the Freies Gymnasium and spoke not only fluent French and German but also English, which was the language spoken to her by her American parents. After World War II, Dr. McCuen-Metherell's parents sent her and her brother to Pacific Union College (in California's Napa Valley), where she received a B. A. in English. She taught English and French in high school for several years and then took night classes at the University of Southern California, where she earned an M.A. and Ph.D. While working on her doctorate, she was hired to teach English at Glendale Community College and later to serve as Dean of the Evening College. A chance meeting in 1973 with Anthony C. Winkler, a successful novelist, led to a literary partnership that has produced 15 co-authored textbooks used at colleges and universities across the United States. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies, Anthony C. Winkler was educated in Jamaica at Excelsior College, Mount Alvernia Academy and Cornwall College, the last two being in Montego Bay. He was also educated at Citrus Community College, Glendora, California. Winkler taught briefly at Pasadena City College and for a year at Moneague Teachers College in Saint Anne, Jamaica, an experience chronicled in "Going Home to Teach" (1995). From 1968 to 1975 Winkler had sales territories as a bookman for Appleton Century Crofts textbook publishers, and later for Scott, Foresman. In 1969, he decided he could write textbooks as well as anyone. Through a chance meeting with the sales representative of another company, he submitted the manuscript, "Poetry as System," and was offered a contract for its publication. Eventually, he met Jo Ray McCuen-Metherell and the two became textbook writers and collaborators. Over the years, they have produced more than a dozen textbooks, most on rhetoric and writing. In addition to Winkler's textbooks, his body of work includes, among other books: "The Painted Canoe" (novel, 1983); "The Lunatic" (novel, 1987); "The Great Yacht Race" (novel, 1992); "Dog War" (novel, 2006); "Trust the Darkness: My Life as a Writer" (autobiography, 2008); "The Burglary" (play, premiered in Toronto in 2005); "The Lunatic" (movie, filmed in 1991); "The Annihilation of Fish" (movie, 1999) and "Bob Marley, an Intimate Portrait by His Mother" (biography, 1996, with Cedella Booker).