The Well-Crafted Sentence
Third Edition ©2019 Nora Bacon Formats: E-book, Print
As low as $29.99
As low as $29.99
Authors
-
Nora Bacon
Nora Bacon is a Professor of English, Emeritus and former writing program administrator at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Her research, begun at UC Berkeley in the 1990s, has examined service-learning pedagogy, the development of "writing agility," and the relationship between texts and the contexts in which they are written and read. Nora’s current research focuses on the stylistic choices preferred in different disciplines, uniting her interest in variation and her abiding fascination with sentences.
Table of Contents
Contents
Preface for Instructors
About the Author
Introduction
1. Approaches to Style
Style as Identity
Style as Embellishment
The Plain Style
Style in Context: Making Rhetorically Smart Choices
Style in Academic Writing
2. The Sentence’s Working Parts
Clause Structure
Transformations within the Clause
Extending the Clause
Joining Independent Clauses
Modifiers
Dependent Clauses
3. Well-Focused Sentences: The Subject-Verb Pair
Populated Prose
Active Voice and Passive Voice
Variation in Sentence Focus
Sharpening the Focus
Double-Check Sentences with Abstract Subjects
Double-Check Sentences with There in the Subject Position
Keep Subject Phrases Short
Uncover Subjects Buried in Introductory Phrases
Transform Nouns to Verbs
4. Well-Balanced Sentences: Coordination and Parallel Structure
Coordination
Parallel Structure
Correlative Conjunctions
Stylistic Effects in Coordinate Series
Long Series
The Echo Effect: Pairs
The Echo Effect: Repetition
Repetition and Paragraph Cohesion
5. Well-Developed Sentences: Modification
Early Modifiers and Paragraph Cohesion
The Crescendo Effect: The Pleasures of the Periodic Sentence
Leaping and Lingering: The Pleasures of the Cumulative Sentence
6. Adding Color with Adjectivals
The Structure of Adjective Clauses
Choices in Crafting Adjective Clauses
Who or Whom?
With or without Commas?
Which or That—or Not?
Reducing Adjective Clauses
Adjective Phrases
7. Adding Action with Verbal Phrases
Functions of Verbal Phrases
Managing Emphasis with Verbal Phrases
Reducing Clauses to Create Verbal Phrases
Editing Checks for Verbal Phrases
8. Layering Meaning with Appositives and Absolutes
Noun Phrases in Apposition
Identifying People
Defining Terms
Filling in Examples
Renaming with a Twist
9. Special Effects: Expectations and Exceptions
Focus on the Subject
Completeness and Explicitness
Sentence Variety
Figures of Speech
ANTHOLOGY
Model Texts for Writers
Louise Erdrich, Shamengwa
Ben Fountain, Soldiers on the Fault Line: War, Rhetoric, and Reality
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Sin Boldly
Atul Gawande, from Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Helen MacDonald, from H is for Hawk
Barack Obama, A More Perfect Union
Tim O’Brien, On the Rainy River
David Sedaris, Genetic Engineering
Jane Smiley, Say it Ain’t So, Huck
Amy Tan, Mother Tongue
Lily Wong Fillmore, Loss of Family Languages: Should Educators Be Concerned?
Glossary of Grammatical Terms
Index
Product Updates
Four new readings provide up-to-date models in a variety of genres and showcase style in academic writing. Carefully chosen for excellence in prose, the new model texts include an excerpt from Being Mortal by Atul Gawande; the speech, "Soldiers on the Fault Line: War, Rhetoric, and Reality," by Ben Fountain; an excerpt from H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald; and the essay, "Second Thoughts on Mark Twains Masterpiece," by Jane Smiley.
New and revised exercises offer more opportunities for students to experiment with sentences. Throughout the book, drawing from the new model texts, additional exercises allow students to build the skills they need to revise their own essays and stories.
Expanded discussions of grammatical concepts build on the book’s successful approach to teaching style by adding more example sentences from model texts to explain trickier points.
New coverage of figures of speech show students the power of using special effects in their writing. A discussion of figures of speech, including parallelism, antithesis, and asyndeton, shows how occasionally breaking with convention and using special effects allows writers to communicate more powerfully or more beautifully, and take their readers by surprise.
Expanded instructor’s resources for are available for download at macmillanlearning.com. In addition to downloadable exercises and sample responses for selected exercises, the instructor’s resources include sample assignments asking students to write stylistic analyses of texts they admire.
Authors
-
Nora Bacon
Nora Bacon is a Professor of English, Emeritus and former writing program administrator at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Her research, begun at UC Berkeley in the 1990s, has examined service-learning pedagogy, the development of "writing agility," and the relationship between texts and the contexts in which they are written and read. Nora’s current research focuses on the stylistic choices preferred in different disciplines, uniting her interest in variation and her abiding fascination with sentences.
Table of Contents
Contents
Preface for Instructors
About the Author
Introduction
1. Approaches to Style
Style as Identity
Style as Embellishment
The Plain Style
Style in Context: Making Rhetorically Smart Choices
Style in Academic Writing
2. The Sentence’s Working Parts
Clause Structure
Transformations within the Clause
Extending the Clause
Joining Independent Clauses
Modifiers
Dependent Clauses
3. Well-Focused Sentences: The Subject-Verb Pair
Populated Prose
Active Voice and Passive Voice
Variation in Sentence Focus
Sharpening the Focus
Double-Check Sentences with Abstract Subjects
Double-Check Sentences with There in the Subject Position
Keep Subject Phrases Short
Uncover Subjects Buried in Introductory Phrases
Transform Nouns to Verbs
4. Well-Balanced Sentences: Coordination and Parallel Structure
Coordination
Parallel Structure
Correlative Conjunctions
Stylistic Effects in Coordinate Series
Long Series
The Echo Effect: Pairs
The Echo Effect: Repetition
Repetition and Paragraph Cohesion
5. Well-Developed Sentences: Modification
Early Modifiers and Paragraph Cohesion
The Crescendo Effect: The Pleasures of the Periodic Sentence
Leaping and Lingering: The Pleasures of the Cumulative Sentence
6. Adding Color with Adjectivals
The Structure of Adjective Clauses
Choices in Crafting Adjective Clauses
Who or Whom?
With or without Commas?
Which or That—or Not?
Reducing Adjective Clauses
Adjective Phrases
7. Adding Action with Verbal Phrases
Functions of Verbal Phrases
Managing Emphasis with Verbal Phrases
Reducing Clauses to Create Verbal Phrases
Editing Checks for Verbal Phrases
8. Layering Meaning with Appositives and Absolutes
Noun Phrases in Apposition
Identifying People
Defining Terms
Filling in Examples
Renaming with a Twist
9. Special Effects: Expectations and Exceptions
Focus on the Subject
Completeness and Explicitness
Sentence Variety
Figures of Speech
ANTHOLOGY
Model Texts for Writers
Louise Erdrich, Shamengwa
Ben Fountain, Soldiers on the Fault Line: War, Rhetoric, and Reality
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Sin Boldly
Atul Gawande, from Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Helen MacDonald, from H is for Hawk
Barack Obama, A More Perfect Union
Tim O’Brien, On the Rainy River
David Sedaris, Genetic Engineering
Jane Smiley, Say it Ain’t So, Huck
Amy Tan, Mother Tongue
Lily Wong Fillmore, Loss of Family Languages: Should Educators Be Concerned?
Glossary of Grammatical Terms
Index
Product Updates
Four new readings provide up-to-date models in a variety of genres and showcase style in academic writing. Carefully chosen for excellence in prose, the new model texts include an excerpt from Being Mortal by Atul Gawande; the speech, "Soldiers on the Fault Line: War, Rhetoric, and Reality," by Ben Fountain; an excerpt from H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald; and the essay, "Second Thoughts on Mark Twains Masterpiece," by Jane Smiley.
New and revised exercises offer more opportunities for students to experiment with sentences. Throughout the book, drawing from the new model texts, additional exercises allow students to build the skills they need to revise their own essays and stories.
Expanded discussions of grammatical concepts build on the book’s successful approach to teaching style by adding more example sentences from model texts to explain trickier points.
New coverage of figures of speech show students the power of using special effects in their writing. A discussion of figures of speech, including parallelism, antithesis, and asyndeton, shows how occasionally breaking with convention and using special effects allows writers to communicate more powerfully or more beautifully, and take their readers by surprise.
Expanded instructor’s resources for are available for download at macmillanlearning.com. In addition to downloadable exercises and sample responses for selected exercises, the instructor’s resources include sample assignments asking students to write stylistic analyses of texts they admire.
Teach style in context
What makes a sentence strong? Nora Bacon’s The Well-Crafted Sentence: A Writer’s Guide to Style demystifies grammatical concepts and stylistic choices by taking apart expert writers’ sentences as illustrations and asking students to practice crafting and revising their own. Examples throughout the text are excerpted from 11 readings collected in an anthology at the end of the book, so you can teach style in the context of a larger argument or narrative. With four new model texts, expanded explanations of grammatical concepts, and new coverage of figures of speech, the third edition invites students to experiment with sentence structures that make writing stronger.
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ISBN:9781319249946
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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
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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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The Well-Crafted Sentence
What makes a sentence strong? Nora Bacon’s The Well-Crafted Sentence: A Writer’s Guide to Style demystifies grammatical concepts and stylistic choices by taking apart expert writers’ sentences as illustrations and asking students to practice crafting and revising their own. Examples throughout the text are excerpted from 11 readings collected in an anthology at the end of the book, so you can teach style in the context of a larger argument or narrative. With four new model texts, expanded explanations of grammatical concepts, and new coverage of figures of speech, the third edition invites students to experiment with sentence structures that make writing stronger.
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