The facts on file guide to good writing

The task of writing, that is, of producing

a written document of some description –

is like many other tasks: what we tend to

think of as the whole is in fact only a part.

If the talk of tasks and burdens suggests

that writing is all labor and no reward,

then let it be said that there is as much

satisfaction and pleasure to be gained

THE FACTS ON FILE

GUIDE TO

GOOD WRITING

The task of writing, that is, of producing a written

document of some description – is like many other

tasks: what we tend to think of as the whole is in fact

only a part. If the talk of tasks and burdens suggests

that writing is all labor and no reward, then let it be

said that there is as much satisfaction and pleasure to

be gained from writing as from the exercise of any

other skill. The task of writing, that is, of producing a

THE FACTS ON FILE

GUIDE TO

GOOD WRITING

MARTIN H. MANSER

DAVID H. PICKERING and STEPHEN CURTIS

Associate Editors

THE FACTS ON FILE GUIDE TO GOOD WRITING

Copyright © 2006 by Martin H. Manser

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission

in writing from the publisher. For information contact:

Facts On File, Inc.

An imprint of Infobase Publishing

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New York NY 10001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Manser, Martin H.

The Facts On File guide to good writing / Martin H. Manser.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 0-8160-5526-2 (acid-free paper)

1. English language—Composition and exercises—Study and teaching

(Elementary) 2. English language—Grammar—Study and teaching (Elementary)

I. Title: Guide to good writing. II. Title.

LB1576.M3775 2005

372.62'3—dc22 2004026990

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Cover design by Cathy Rincon

Printed in the United States of America

VB FOF 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

CONTENTS

Introduction ix

PART I THE WRITING PROCESS

✒ Introduction 3

✒ The Four Stages of the Writing Process 4

1 Preparing to Write 7

✒ Thinking and Researching 7

✒ Paraphrasing and Summarizing 22

✒ Quotations 29

✒ Thinking and Researching: An Overview 36

✒ Planning 36

✒ Planning: An Overview 47

2 Writing Your Document 48

✒ Getting Started 48

✒ Your Authorial Voice 54

✒ Composition: Paragraphs 63

✒ Writing: An Overview 71

3 Revising Your Document 72

✒ How to Revise 72

✒ Revision Checklist 74

✒ An Example of Revising a Text 75

✒ Checking for Consistency 86

✒ Proofreading 88

✒ References 89

✒ Revision: An Overview 92

PART II WRITING FUNDAMENTALS

✒ Introduction 95

4 Grammar 97

✒ Introduction 97

✒ Nouns 98

✒ Adjectives 109

✒ Determiners 114

✒ Verbs 115

✒ Adverbs 132

✒ Pronouns 135

✒ Prepositions 141

✒ Conjunctions 144

✒ Phrases, Clauses, and Sentences 148

✒ Reporting Speech 167

5 Words in Use 171

✒ Introduction 171

✒ Vocabulary 171

✒ Spelling 176

✒ Prefixes and Suffixes 185

✒ Foreign Words and Phrases 193

✒ Abbreviations and Symbols 202

✒ Numbers 217

✒ Sensitive Terms 219

✒ Slang 227

6 Words Often Confused 229

7 Punctuation 337

✒ Introduction 337

✒ Punctuation Marks 338

✒ Apostrophe 338

✒ Capital Letters 340

✒ Colon 340

✒ Comma 342

✒ Dash 347

✒ Ellipsis 348

✒ Exclamation Point 349

✒ Hyphen 350

✒ Italics 352

✒ Paragraph 353

✒ Parentheses and Brackets 353

✒ Period 354

✒ Question Mark 355

✒ Quotation Marks 356

✒ Semicolon 358

✒ Slash 359

8 Reference Resources 360

✒ Introduction 360

✒ Dictionaries 360

✒ Thesauri 361

✒ Other Reference Books 362

✒ Electronic Reference Sources 363

9 Glossary of Grammatical Terms 365

Index 383

INTRODUCTION

Everywhere in the modern world the emphasis is on speed, and nowhere

have things moved faster than in communications. Messages travel at

the speed of light, and we humans seem to feel that we have to imitate the

wonderful machines that flash our words around the globe in fractions of

a second. We have become a race of scribblers, jotting memos, punching in

text messages, rushing off e-mails, and dashing off quick “Happy Birthday”

or “Thank You” cards, often not worrying much whether what we write

gets our message across or even makes sense. Fewer and fewer of us, it

seems, take the time to write properly. Fewer and fewer of us perhaps

know how to write properly. Fashions in the teaching of English have

changed over the years, and we can easily find that we have finished our

education but have never grasped the principles of correct English. Then

the day comes when we have to write an important letter, prepare a speech

or presentation, or hand in an essay or assignment, and suddenly we are at

a loss.

Are you unsure about how to write good, clear English? If you are, this

book has been specifically designed to help you. It comes in two major sec￾tions: Chapters 1 to 3, of Part I, deal with the writing process itself; chapters

4 to 9, which make up Part II, deal with grammar, spelling, usage, and punc￾tuation. Some writing manuals begin with grammar and then move on to dis￾cuss writing. The authors of this book believe, however, that it is better to get

something down on paper in draft form first and to polish up the grammar

afterward, hence the placement of the “Preparing to Write,” “Writing Your

Document,” and “Revising Your Document” chapters at the beginning.

These chapters treat writing as a task that can be divided into manageable

parts: thinking, researching, and planning; writing; and revising. Each of

these activities is explained in detail with the help of examples.

In order to write good English, however, we also need to be aware of the

rules that govern the use of words and the construction of sentences. The

later chapters therefore contain a review of grammar, a discussion of how

words are formed and used in practice, advice on sensitive language issues, a

list of words that are often confused (“Is it continual or continuous?”), and

ix

a guide to punctuation (“Where do I put a comma?”). The book concludes

with information about additional reference tools to help with problems of

grammar and vocabulary and a glossary of grammatical terms.

There are two ways of finding what you need within the pages of this

book. If you want help with a general topic (for example, planning, summa￾rizing, verbs, spelling, or commas), you can find your way to the relevant sec￾tion either through the Table of Contents or the Index. If you are unsure

about how to use a particular word, for example, whether you should use

affect or effect, then you can look up either of these words in the Index,

where you will be directed to the page where the usage of the word or words

in question is discussed.

So, if you are faced with a particular task, such as writing a formal let￾ter, a report, or an assignment, then you will find help here. If you need to

develop your understanding of the basic rules of English grammar, punctua￾tion, spelling, or usage, all the information and guidance you need is pro￾vided. The authors hope that you will find this book a useful, practical—and

at times perhaps even inspiring—guide to writing good English.

Martin H. Manser

David H. Pickering

Stephen Curtis

x THE FACTS ON FILE GUIDE TO GOOD WRITING

Part I

THE WRITING PROCESS

3

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this section is to guide you through the process of producing

a written document that will say what you want it to say and achieve the pur￾pose that you want it to achieve.

This book starts from the assumption that writing belongs in the cate￾gory of basic tasks—that it is on a similar level to, say, cooking or driving.

Just as most people ought to be able to drive a car or cook an egg, because

ordinary living is a lot more complicated if they cannot perform these simple

tasks for themselves, so most people ought to take the time to acquire the

rudiments of writing. There are, of course, people who are born with a nat￾ural talent for writing and people who write for a living. When we call some￾one “a writer,” we usually mean that he or she is a journalist or an author.

But there are a great many people, too, who are natural-born cooks or who

earn their daily bread baking bread for others, and there are just as many

who support their families by driving trucks, limousines, or even racing cars.

The existence of experts and professionals does not exempt the rest of us

from learning the basic skills that they have developed to a particularly high

degree. This is as true of writing as it is of any similar activity. Writing skills

can be learned. There are well-established procedures that can be followed

when you are preparing or composing a document. This part of the book will

familiarize you with those skills and procedures and help you to undertake

this basic process with more than merely basic equipment.

When we analyze any process from beginning to end, breaking it down

into its different stages and discussing each of those stages in some detail, the

analysis is likely to make the process seem more extended and elaborate than

it generally is in real life. That does not mean that the process is in itself espe￾cially complicated, mysterious, or intimidating. Explaining even the most

basic task usually takes longer than actually performing it.

Furthermore, not all the procedures outlined in the following pages will

be relevant to every writing task you face. Common sense will tell you—if the

clock and your schedule do not—how much time and effort you should

expend on a particular writing task. Common sense will likewise tell you

which procedures are relevant to even the most minor compositional duties

and which will be most useful to you personally. Your own habits, strengths,

and weaknesses will probably make you want to concentrate on some aspects

of the writing process more than others. Everything dealt with in this section

of the book, however, is worth looking into for the day when you are sud￾denly confronted with the job of composing that vital letter, report, or assign￾ment that presents far more of a challenge to your authorial know-how than

an everyday memo or set of notes. It is worth considering the writing process

as a whole, in case you can pick up any tips that will lighten your particular

burden, or in case something stated here points out a bad writing habit that

could be replaced by a better one.

If the talk of tasks and burdens suggests that writing is all labor and no

reward, then let it be said that there is as much satisfaction and pleasure to

be gained from writing as from the exercise of any other skill. Cooks who

produce perfect omelets or drivers who take hairpin turns smoothly and with￾out unnerving their passengers have a right to feel pleased with themselves.

So do people who write well. And their efforts are just as likely to be appre￾ciated.

THE FOUR STAGES OF THE WRITING PROCESS

The task of writing is like many other tasks: What we tend to think of as the

whole is in fact only a part. Just as building a wall involves more than laying

bricks in rows and cementing them together with mortar, so writing involves

more than filling a screen or a sheet of paper with words. That is the main

part, the crucial part, perhaps, but we neglect the other parts at our peril.

As with so many other jobs, the before and the after in writing are as

important as the central act. An old saying states that composition is 10 per￾cent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration. This is distressingly true, but

there are more useful and relevant ways of working out the percentages. The

average writing task can be broken down roughly as follows: 50 percent

preparation, 25 percent creation, and 25 percent revision. On that basis, we

may even have to change our view of what constitutes the main part of the

task.

However small the job, time spent thinking, planning, and researching

before you sit down at your desk to begin your text is anything but wasted

time. The better prepared you are, the easier it will be to find the right words

to put across your point. This is an obvious fact, but so often disregarded.

Likewise, when you write “The end” for the first time or come to the point

where you would normally add your signature, the task is still not finished.

Since Greek and Roman times, experienced creative writers have urged their

disciples to “polish”—that is, to revise and perfect—everything they write.

“Polissez-le sans cesse, et le repolissez,” said the French classical poet Nico￾las Boileau. We might freely translate his advice as “Polish your work non￾stop, and then sit right down and polish it again.” Even if you are not aiming

at classical perfection, you will need to look over your work carefully and

revise it. Word-processing spell-check programs only check your spelling;

they do not edit your work. They cannot tell you that your work would ben￾efit from a little shortening here and a little filling out there. If you can per￾suade a candid (and literate) friend to look over what you have written, so

much the better, because fresh eyes often spot what familiarized eyes slide

over. But even if you have such a friend, and he or she has time available, the

final responsibility is yours. It would be a pity if the 75 percent (of prepara￾tion and creation) were spoiled because you omitted to pay sufficient atten￾tion to the final 25 percent (revision).

In a nutshell, then, the four stages of the writing process are

• Thinking and researching

• Planning

4 THE FACTS ON FILE GUIDE TO GOOD WRITING