A Writer's Reference with Exercises, with 2021 MLA Update
Tenth Edition ©2021 Diana Hacker; Nancy Sommers Formats: E-book
As low as C$39.99
As low as C$39.99
Authors
-
Diana Hacker
Diana Hacker personally class-tested her handbooks with nearly four thousand students over thirty-five years at Prince George's Community College in Maryland, where she was a member of the English faculty. Hacker handbooks, built on innovation and on a keen understanding of the challenges facing student writers, are the most widely adopted in America. Hacker handbooks, all published by Bedford/St. Martin's, include A Writer's Reference, Eleventh Edition (2025); A Pocket Style Manual, Tenth Edition (2025); The Bedford Handbook, Twelfth Edition (2023); Rules for Writers, Tenth Edition (2022); and Writer’s Help 2.0, Hacker Version.
-
Nancy Sommers
Nancy Sommers, who has taught composition and directed composition programs for thirty years, now teaches in Harvard's Graduate School of Education. She led Harvard's Expository Writing Program for twenty years, directing the first-year writing program and establishing Harvard's WAC program. A two-time Braddock Award winner, Sommers is well known for her research and publications on student writing. Her articles “Revision Strategies of Student and Experienced Writers” and “Responding to Student Writing” are two of the most widely read and anthologized articles in the field of composition. Recently she has been exploring different audiences through publishing in popular media. Sommers is the lead author on Hacker handbooks, all published by Bedford/St. Martin’s, and editor of Tiny Teaching Stories on Macmillan Learning's Bits Blog.
Table of Contents
C1 Planning
C2 Drafting
C3 Writing paragraphs
C4 Reviewing, revising, and editing
C5 Preparing a portfolio; reflecting on your writing
A | Academic Reading, Writing, and Speaking
A1 Reading and writing critically
A2 Reading and writing about multimodal texts
A3 Reading arguments
A4 Writing arguments
A5 Speaking confidently
A6 Writing in the disciplines
R | Researched writing
R1 Thinking like a researcher; gathering sources
R2 Managing information; taking notes responsibly
R3 Evaluating sources
MLA | MLA Style
MLA-1 Supporting a thesis
MLA-2 Citing sources; avoiding plagiarism
MLA-3 Integrating sources
MLA-4 Documenting sources
MLA-5 Format and sample research essay
APA CMS | APA Style and CMS Style
APA-1 Supporting a thesis
APA-2 Citing sources; avoiding plagiarism
APA-3 Integrating sources
APA-4 Documenting sources
APA-5 Format and sample research essay
CMS-1 Supporting a thesis
CMS-2 Citing sources; avoiding plagiarism
CMS-3 Integrating sources
CMS-4 Documenting sources
CMS-5 Format and sample research essay
S | Sentence Style
S1 Parallelism
S2 Needed words
S3 Problems with modifiers
S4 Shifts
S5 Mixed constructions
S6 Sentence emphasis
S7 Sentence variety
W | Word choice
W1 Glossary of usage
W2 Wordy sentences
W3 Active verbs
W4 Appropriate language
W5 Exact language
G | Grammatical sentences
G1 Subject-verb agreement
G2 Verb form, tenses, and moods
G3 Pronouns
G4 Adjectives and adverbs
G5 Sentence fragments
G6 Run-on sentences
M | Multilingual Writers and ESL topics
M1 Verbs
M2 Articles
M3 Sentence structure
M4 Using adjectives
M5 Prepositions and idiomatic expressions
M6 Paraphrasing sources effectively
P | Punctuation and Mechanics
P1 The comma
P2 Unnecessary commas
P3 The semicolon and the colon
P4 The apostrophe
P5 Quotation marks
P6 Other punctuation marks
P7 Spelling and hyphenation
P8 Capitalization
P9 Abbreviations and numbers
P10 Italics
B | Basic Grammar
B1 Parts of speech
B2 Sentence patterns
B3 Subordinate word groups
B4 Sentence types
I | Index
Product Updates
The ebook has been updated to give your students the latest guidance on documenting sources in MLA style and follows the guidelines set forth in the MLA Handbook, 9th edition (April 2021).
Achieve--a new digital composition space designed for engagement. Co-designed with composition instructors and students from across the country, Achieve is an exciting, new, and comprehensive set of interconnected teaching and assessment tools. It offers new ways to engage students and to assign and facilitate writing, reflection, and peer review.
- Writing tools keep writing and revising at the center of your course. Draft Goals focus students, feedback tools help you target problems, reflection prompts increase rhetorical awareness, and the Revision Plan makes feedback actionable.
- Pre-built assignments make your life easier. Each one can be assigned as-is or customized: analysis, argument, annotated bibliography, narrative, reflection, and research.
- An interactive e-book version of A Writer’s Reference, built in to Achieve, brings together the resources students need to prepare for class. Students can download the e-book to read offline or to have read aloud to them.
- Built-in Source Check plagiarism prevention software guides students as they learn to be responsible academic researchers.
- Diagnostics and individualized study plans give students ownership of their learning process.
- Powerful trends, insights, and reports for each assignment inform your teaching and feedback and help you visualize and measure students’ progress.
Reorganized for academic writers. To make using A Writer’s Reference with Exercises easier than ever, we’ve clustered all of the material critical to the composition course and essential for the most common assignments up front: coverage of the writing process, critical reading, argument and analysis — and now research and documentation. The first half of the book becomes a robust how-to guide, and the second half of the book functions as a quick reference for style, grammar, and punctuation topics designed for writers with a wide variety of experience with English.
More help with paraphrasing and fact checking. The new edition includes stronger help for working with sources. A new how-to guide gives students a writing process for paraphrasing original material, along with a concrete example to follow. New advice for detecting false and misleading sources encourages students to ask critical questions about the news, data, and other information they encounter as part of an academic or everyday writing task.
New "Note to self" feature that encourages good writers’ habits. Aligned with the pedagogy of Achieve, the handbook helps students with reflection and revision planning. A new boxed feature models the kind of thinking and planning that successful writers do as they move from assignment to draft or from one draft to another. Both Achieve and the handbook foster the active and personalized learning that research shows leads to greater success rates for a wide variety of students.
A more engaging visual approach. For students who respond to information presented visually, we offer new visuals to complement the written instruction in sections that cover working with sources, testing assumptions, writing conclusions, integrating sources, and understanding the rhetorical situation.
A new resource for corequisite composition. For students enrolled in paired, corequisite, or ALP sections of composition, A Student’s Companion to Hacker Handbooks offers practical support that will help them get up to speed and perform on-level. The resource, available in print or in Achieve, includes more than 60 exercises for grammar, research, and writing; graphic organizers for many types of essays and paragraphs; substantial support for college reading; numerous reflection activities; outline templates; and more.
Authors
-
Diana Hacker
Diana Hacker personally class-tested her handbooks with nearly four thousand students over thirty-five years at Prince George's Community College in Maryland, where she was a member of the English faculty. Hacker handbooks, built on innovation and on a keen understanding of the challenges facing student writers, are the most widely adopted in America. Hacker handbooks, all published by Bedford/St. Martin's, include A Writer's Reference, Eleventh Edition (2025); A Pocket Style Manual, Tenth Edition (2025); The Bedford Handbook, Twelfth Edition (2023); Rules for Writers, Tenth Edition (2022); and Writer’s Help 2.0, Hacker Version.
-
Nancy Sommers
Nancy Sommers, who has taught composition and directed composition programs for thirty years, now teaches in Harvard's Graduate School of Education. She led Harvard's Expository Writing Program for twenty years, directing the first-year writing program and establishing Harvard's WAC program. A two-time Braddock Award winner, Sommers is well known for her research and publications on student writing. Her articles “Revision Strategies of Student and Experienced Writers” and “Responding to Student Writing” are two of the most widely read and anthologized articles in the field of composition. Recently she has been exploring different audiences through publishing in popular media. Sommers is the lead author on Hacker handbooks, all published by Bedford/St. Martin’s, and editor of Tiny Teaching Stories on Macmillan Learning's Bits Blog.
Table of Contents
C1 Planning
C2 Drafting
C3 Writing paragraphs
C4 Reviewing, revising, and editing
C5 Preparing a portfolio; reflecting on your writing
A | Academic Reading, Writing, and Speaking
A1 Reading and writing critically
A2 Reading and writing about multimodal texts
A3 Reading arguments
A4 Writing arguments
A5 Speaking confidently
A6 Writing in the disciplines
R | Researched writing
R1 Thinking like a researcher; gathering sources
R2 Managing information; taking notes responsibly
R3 Evaluating sources
MLA | MLA Style
MLA-1 Supporting a thesis
MLA-2 Citing sources; avoiding plagiarism
MLA-3 Integrating sources
MLA-4 Documenting sources
MLA-5 Format and sample research essay
APA CMS | APA Style and CMS Style
APA-1 Supporting a thesis
APA-2 Citing sources; avoiding plagiarism
APA-3 Integrating sources
APA-4 Documenting sources
APA-5 Format and sample research essay
CMS-1 Supporting a thesis
CMS-2 Citing sources; avoiding plagiarism
CMS-3 Integrating sources
CMS-4 Documenting sources
CMS-5 Format and sample research essay
S | Sentence Style
S1 Parallelism
S2 Needed words
S3 Problems with modifiers
S4 Shifts
S5 Mixed constructions
S6 Sentence emphasis
S7 Sentence variety
W | Word choice
W1 Glossary of usage
W2 Wordy sentences
W3 Active verbs
W4 Appropriate language
W5 Exact language
G | Grammatical sentences
G1 Subject-verb agreement
G2 Verb form, tenses, and moods
G3 Pronouns
G4 Adjectives and adverbs
G5 Sentence fragments
G6 Run-on sentences
M | Multilingual Writers and ESL topics
M1 Verbs
M2 Articles
M3 Sentence structure
M4 Using adjectives
M5 Prepositions and idiomatic expressions
M6 Paraphrasing sources effectively
P | Punctuation and Mechanics
P1 The comma
P2 Unnecessary commas
P3 The semicolon and the colon
P4 The apostrophe
P5 Quotation marks
P6 Other punctuation marks
P7 Spelling and hyphenation
P8 Capitalization
P9 Abbreviations and numbers
P10 Italics
B | Basic Grammar
B1 Parts of speech
B2 Sentence patterns
B3 Subordinate word groups
B4 Sentence types
I | Index
Product Updates
The ebook has been updated to give your students the latest guidance on documenting sources in MLA style and follows the guidelines set forth in the MLA Handbook, 9th edition (April 2021).
Achieve--a new digital composition space designed for engagement. Co-designed with composition instructors and students from across the country, Achieve is an exciting, new, and comprehensive set of interconnected teaching and assessment tools. It offers new ways to engage students and to assign and facilitate writing, reflection, and peer review.
- Writing tools keep writing and revising at the center of your course. Draft Goals focus students, feedback tools help you target problems, reflection prompts increase rhetorical awareness, and the Revision Plan makes feedback actionable.
- Pre-built assignments make your life easier. Each one can be assigned as-is or customized: analysis, argument, annotated bibliography, narrative, reflection, and research.
- An interactive e-book version of A Writer’s Reference, built in to Achieve, brings together the resources students need to prepare for class. Students can download the e-book to read offline or to have read aloud to them.
- Built-in Source Check plagiarism prevention software guides students as they learn to be responsible academic researchers.
- Diagnostics and individualized study plans give students ownership of their learning process.
- Powerful trends, insights, and reports for each assignment inform your teaching and feedback and help you visualize and measure students’ progress.
Reorganized for academic writers. To make using A Writer’s Reference with Exercises easier than ever, we’ve clustered all of the material critical to the composition course and essential for the most common assignments up front: coverage of the writing process, critical reading, argument and analysis — and now research and documentation. The first half of the book becomes a robust how-to guide, and the second half of the book functions as a quick reference for style, grammar, and punctuation topics designed for writers with a wide variety of experience with English.
More help with paraphrasing and fact checking. The new edition includes stronger help for working with sources. A new how-to guide gives students a writing process for paraphrasing original material, along with a concrete example to follow. New advice for detecting false and misleading sources encourages students to ask critical questions about the news, data, and other information they encounter as part of an academic or everyday writing task.
New "Note to self" feature that encourages good writers’ habits. Aligned with the pedagogy of Achieve, the handbook helps students with reflection and revision planning. A new boxed feature models the kind of thinking and planning that successful writers do as they move from assignment to draft or from one draft to another. Both Achieve and the handbook foster the active and personalized learning that research shows leads to greater success rates for a wide variety of students.
A more engaging visual approach. For students who respond to information presented visually, we offer new visuals to complement the written instruction in sections that cover working with sources, testing assumptions, writing conclusions, integrating sources, and understanding the rhetorical situation.
A new resource for corequisite composition. For students enrolled in paired, corequisite, or ALP sections of composition, A Student’s Companion to Hacker Handbooks offers practical support that will help them get up to speed and perform on-level. The resource, available in print or in Achieve, includes more than 60 exercises for grammar, research, and writing; graphic organizers for many types of essays and paragraphs; substantial support for college reading; numerous reflection activities; outline templates; and more.
Helping college writers achieve more. As always.
The ebook has been updated to give your students the latest guidance on documenting sources in MLA style and follows the guidelines set forth in the MLA Handbook, 9th edition (April 2021).
A Writer’s Reference has offered clear and quick answers to tough questions for millions of college writers. With a groundbreaking tabbed, lay-flat format and a first-of-its-kind directness, it helped a generation of students engage in their own writing and meet the challenges of the composition course. As we celebrate the 10th edition, we invite you to see our latest innovation--our latest answer to the question we have been asking for 35 years: How can we help? We help with superior content developed by experienced authors and shaped by faculty and student advisers. And we help with Achieve, a first-of-its-kind suite of digital tools paired with content you trust.
Achieve with A Writer’s Reference lets you engage students in new ways. They do the work of the composition course in a contained and active writing space: they read, write, reflect, respond to peers, consult the handbook, and make action plans. And instructors use Achieve to design and facilitate writing assignments, peer review, and reflection. The best part? Achieve gives you deeper visibility into students’ writing processes--lets you see “between the drafts.” Insights for each writer and for each class provide actionable information about how your students are responding to expectations, allowing you to see, foster, and measure progress. The 10th edition is an innovation celebration--a continued commitment to college writers and teachers of writing.
Looking for instructor resources like Test Banks, Lecture Slides, and Clicker Questions? Request access to Achieve to explore the full suite of instructor resources.
Instructor Resources
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Diana Hacker; Marcy Carbajal Van Horn; Jonathan S. Cullick; Sara McCurry | Fourth Edition | ©2021 | ISBN:9781319342029You've selected:
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If you’re a verified instructor, you can request a free sample of our courseware, e-book, or print textbook to consider for use in your courses. Only registered and verified instructors can receive free print and digital samples, and they should not be sold to bookstores or book resellers. If you don't yet have an existing account with Macmillan Learning, it can take up to two business days to verify your status as an instructor. You can request a free sample from the right side of this product page by clicking on the "Request Instructor Sample" button or by contacting your rep. Learn more.
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Sometimes also referred to as a spiral-bound or binder-ready textbook, loose-leaf textbooks are available to purchase. This three-hole punched, unbound version of the book costs less than a hardcover or paperback book.
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We can help! Contact your representative to discuss your specific needs for your course. If our off-the-shelf course materials don’t quite hit the mark, we also offer custom solutions made to fit your needs.
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FAQs
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Are you a campus bookstore looking for ordering information?
MPS Order Search Tool (MOST) is a web-based purchase order tracking program that allows customers to view and track their purchases. No registration or special codes needed! Just enter your BILL-TO ACCT # and your ZIP CODE to track orders.
Canadian Stores: Please use only the first five digits/letters in your zip code on MOST.
Visit MOST, our online ordering system for booksellers: https://tracking.mpsvirginia.com/Login.aspx
Learn more about our Bookstore programs here: https://www.macmillanlearning.com/college/us/contact-us/booksellers
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-
-
Our courses currently integrate with Canvas, Blackboard (Learn and Ultra), Brightspace, D2L, and Moodle. Click on the support documentation below to find out more details about the integration with each LMS.
Integrate Macmillan courses with Blackboard
Integrate Macmillan courses with Canvas
-
-
-
If you’re a verified instructor, you can request a free sample of our courseware, e-book, or print textbook to consider for use in your courses. Only registered and verified instructors can receive free print and digital samples, and they should not be sold to bookstores or book resellers. If you don't yet have an existing account with Macmillan Learning, it can take up to two business days to verify your status as an instructor. You can request a free sample from the right side of this product page by clicking on the "Request Instructor Sample" button or by contacting your rep. Learn more.
-
-
-
Sometimes also referred to as a spiral-bound or binder-ready textbook, loose-leaf textbooks are available to purchase. This three-hole punched, unbound version of the book costs less than a hardcover or paperback book.
-
-
-
We can help! Contact your representative to discuss your specific needs for your course. If our off-the-shelf course materials don’t quite hit the mark, we also offer custom solutions made to fit your needs.
-
A Writer's Reference with Exercises, with 2021 MLA Update
The ebook has been updated to give your students the latest guidance on documenting sources in MLA style and follows the guidelines set forth in the MLA Handbook, 9th edition (April 2021).
A Writer’s Reference has offered clear and quick answers to tough questions for millions of college writers. With a groundbreaking tabbed, lay-flat format and a first-of-its-kind directness, it helped a generation of students engage in their own writing and meet the challenges of the composition course. As we celebrate the 10th edition, we invite you to see our latest innovation--our latest answer to the question we have been asking for 35 years: How can we help? We help with superior content developed by experienced authors and shaped by faculty and student advisers. And we help with Achieve, a first-of-its-kind suite of digital tools paired with content you trust.
Achieve with A Writer’s Reference lets you engage students in new ways. They do the work of the composition course in a contained and active writing space: they read, write, reflect, respond to peers, consult the handbook, and make action plans. And instructors use Achieve to design and facilitate writing assignments, peer review, and reflection. The best part? Achieve gives you deeper visibility into students’ writing processes--lets you see “between the drafts.” Insights for each writer and for each class provide actionable information about how your students are responding to expectations, allowing you to see, foster, and measure progress. The 10th edition is an innovation celebration--a continued commitment to college writers and teachers of writing.
Select a demo to view:
Sample Achieve