This textbook focuses on writing and digital media. Increasingly, writing is published on digital platforms like social media, websites, and blogs, and this online writing performs a variety of personal, professional, academic, and civic functions. The textbook discusses these functions from a critical and rhetorical perspective and provides practical skills and strategies that students can put into practice in their own digital writing.
This is a textbook that was originally designed for a 3000-level large lecture course on “Rhetorical Theory” at the University of Minnesota, Twin-Cities. An interdisciplinary tradition, rhetorical theory describes how speech, representation, and power are managed by techniques and technologies of communication. The plan of this book moves from rhetoric as an art of speech to rhetoric as a technology of power. The early chapters provide definitions and context for rhetoric as speech, middle chapters (e.g., on signs, symbols, visual images, argumentation, and narrative) describe rhetoric as representation, and the concluding chapters (e.g., on settler colonialism, secrecy, and digital rhetoric) elaborate on rhetoric as a technology of power.
University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing
Writing for Inquiry and Research guides students through the composition process of writing a research paper. The book divides this process into four chapters that each focus on a genre connected to research writing: the annotated bibliography, proposal, literature review, and research essay. Each chapter provides significant guidance with reading, writing, and research strategies, along with significant examples and links to external resources. This book serves to help students and instructors with a writing-project-based approach, transforming the research process into an accessible series of smaller, more attainable steps for a semester-long course in research writing. Additional resources throughout the book, as well as in three appendices, allow for students and instructors to explore the many facets of the writing process together.
This free and open access textbook introduces new writers to some basic elements of the craft of creative writing in the genres of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. The authors—Rachel Morgan, Jeremy Schraffenberger, and Grant Tracey—are editors of the North American Review, the oldest and one of the most well-regarded literary magazines in the United States. They’ve selected nearly all of the readings and examples (more than 60) from writing that has appeared in NAR pages over the years.
J.D. Schraffenberger,Rachel Morgan, Grant Tracey
Reading and Writing Successfully in College: A Guide for Students
This textbook provides students with guidelines for understanding writing tasks as intellectual work using Bloom’s Taxonomy and for treating the writing process as a set of variable activities that move along a trajectory from idea or assignment to a finished product. The book also includes chapters on strengthening reading strategies and on finding, evaluating, and using sources effectively.
This book offers a wealth of instructional material on the topic of research article writing for publication and thesis or dissertation completion. The text provides graduate student writers with helpful information, strategies, and tips on navigating disciplinary writing in their fields and how to understand, dissect, and ultimately, construct their own research article. The text is organized according to a standard research article format, breaking down each section of the empirical research in a simple and straightforward manner to help graduate students build a quality, argument-driven manuscript as they write up their empirical study findings.
Processes: Writing Across Academic Careers
Processes: Writing Across Academic Careers is an edited collection featuring writing from students, faculty, and staff at Farmingdale State College, a State University of New York (SUNY) campus on Long Island. Each contributor reflects on their own writing as well as writing in their fields/disciplines. Namely, they reflect on their writing processes, hence the name of the book
It’s About Them: Public Speaking in the 21st Century
In addition to original material this book is an adaptation of Introduction to Speech Communication authored by Sarah E. Hollingsworth, Kathryn Weinland, Sasha Hanrahan, and Mary Walker with a CC BY-NC-SA license. Introduction to Speech Communication includes original work as well as adapted and remixed material from Exploring Public Speaking: 4th Edition licensed CC BY-NC-SA, Stand Up, Speak Out licensed CC BY-NC-SA, and Fundamentals of Public Speaking licensed CC BY.
Sara Kim, Douglas Marshall, June Pulliam,
Mindful Technical Writing: An Introduction to the Fundamentals
Welcome to Mindful Technical Writing: An Introduction to the Fundamentals, an open textbook designed for use in co-requisite course pairings of developmental writing and introductory technical writing, or indeed in other lower-division college writing courses that focus on building study skills alongside effective workplace and academic writing skills. It offers a no-cost alternative to commercial products, combining practical guidance with interactive exercises and thoughtfully designed writing opportunities.
Technical and Professional Writing Genres: A Study in Theory and Practice
This modern, open-source guide to technical and professional writing explores workplace composition through theoretical and practical applications. Discussions of multiple writing genres will assist you in understanding how to apply for jobs, how to compose clear and precise business communications once the job has been acquired, and how to create documents -- such as proposals and reports -- that will be instrumental in helping to advance your career.
Naming the Unnameable: An Approach to Poetry for New Generations
Informed by a writing philosophy that values both spontaneity and discipline, Michelle Bonczek Evory’s Naming the Unnameable: An Approach to Poetry for New Generations offers practical advice and strategies for developing a writing process that is centered on play and supported by an understanding of America’s rich literary traditions. With consideration to the psychology of invention, Bonczek Evory provides students with exercises aimed to make writing in its early stages a form of play that gives way to more enriching insights through revision, embracing the writing of poetry as both a love of language and a tool that enables us to explore ourselves and better understand the world. The volume includes resources for students seeking to publish and build a writing-centered lifestyle or career. Poets featured range in age, subject, and style, and many are connected to colleges in the State University of New York system. Naming the Unnameable promotes an understanding of poetry as a living art of which students are a part, and provides ways for students to involve themselves in the growing contemporary poetry community that thrives in America today.
Descriptive writing is often found in fiction, though it can make an appearance in nonfiction as well (for example, memoirs, firsthand accounts of events, or travel guides). When an author writes in a descriptive style, they are painting a picture in words of a person, place, or thing for their audience. The author might employ metaphor or other literary devices in order to describe the author’s impressions via their five senses (what they hear, see, smell, taste, or touch). But the author is not trying to convince the audience of anything or explain the scene – merely describe things as they are.
Write Here, Right Now: An Interactive Introduction to Academic Writing and Research
An interactive Introduction to Academic Writing and Research utilizes PressBooks to create and host a writing e-textbook for first year university students that would effectively integrate into the flipped classroom model. The textbook could also be used for non-flipped classroom designs, as the embedded videos, diagrams and linked modules would act as an all-in-one multimedia textbook geared towards multiple learning styles and disciplines. The components of the textbook, including the embedded videos, could be swapped in and out in order to accommodate a professor’s best idea of his/her own course design.
writing spaces : readings on writing spaces volume 1
Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing offer multiple perspectives on a wide-range of topics about writing, much like the model made famous by Wendy Bishop’s “The Subject Is . . .” series. In each chapter, authors present their unique views, insights, and strategies for writing by addressing the undergraduate reader directly. Drawing on their own experiences, these teachers-as-writers invite students to join in the larger conversation about developing nearly every aspect of the craft of writing. Consequently, each essay functions as a standalone text that can easily complement other selected readings in writing or writing-intensive courses across the disciplines at any level.
Writing in College: From Competence to Excellence
Writing in College is designed for students who have largely mastered high-school level conventions of formal academic writing and are now moving beyond the five-paragraph essay to more advanced engagement with text. It is well suited to composition courses or first-year seminars and valuable as a supplemental or ecommended text in other writingintensive classes. It provides a friendly, down-to-earth introduction to professors’ goals and expectations, demystifying the norms of the academy and how they shape college writing assignments. Each of the nine chapters can be read separately, and each includes suggested exercises to bring the main messages to life. Students will find in Writing in College a warm invitation to join the academic community as novice scholars and to approach writing as a meaningful medium of communication. With concise discussions, clear multidisciplinary examples, and empathy for the challenges of student life, Guptill conveys a welcoming tone. In addition, each chapter includes Student Voices: peer-to-peer wisdom from real SUNY Brockport students about their strategies for and experiences with college writing.
The purpose of a technical report is to completely and clearly describe technical work, why it was done, results obtained and implications of those results. Following the guidelines provided in this document should lead to a well-written technical report that allows the reader to quickly understand what has been accomplished, regardless of the summative or formative nature of the work, and establishes the credibility of the work. The report also provides sufficient detail for the reader to appreciate how the results were collected and possibly recreate the results although the level of detail provided depends heavily on the report’s audience and any roprietary nature of the work. Although this document provides guidance for good lab report writing, chronicling work performed for a laboratory assignment as is done for the familiar academic lab report is not the same as producing a report on technical work. For example, technical reports commonly cite sources and include a bibliography often not expected in an academic lab report. However, these guidelines can be used in total to support formal technical report writing or referred to selectively depending on the type of report and level of formality required.
Chinese Rhetoric and Writing: An Introduction for Language Teachers
The primary aim of this book is to give teachers of writing, especially those involved in the teaching of English academic writing to Chinese students, an introduction to key stages in the development of Chinese rhetoric. The book will make Western readers familiar with Chinese rhetorical styles and Chinese scholarship on Chinese rhetoric. Chinese rhetoric is a wide-ranging field with a history of several thousand years. This book is concerned with what might be loosely termed non-fiction or “academic” writing and the writing of essays. It therefore does not deal in any depth with the Chinese poetic tradition. While the focus is on writing, principles of persuasion in Chinese oral texts will also be considered.