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Rules for Writers
Eleventh Edition©2026 Diana Hacker; Nancy Sommers
You can be confident that the advice in Rules for Writers comes from a writing teacher and scholar who understands your needs. Author Nancy Sommers provides clear guidance to help you build your writing skills for college and beyond. Included are practice exercises, model essays, and a new chapter on AI and writing.
Table of Contents
1 Exploring, planning, and drafting
2 Writing paragraphs
3 Revising, editing, and reflecting
4 AI and the writing process
Academic Reading and Writing
5 Reading and writing critically
6 Reading and writing about multimodal texts
7 Reading arguments
8 Writing arguments
9 Writing about literature
Clarity
10 Verbs
11 Parallelism
12 Needed words
13 Mixed constructions
14 Misplaced and dangling modifiers
15 Shifts
16 Emphasis
17 Variety
18 Wordy sentences
19 Appropriate language
20 Exact words; glossary of usage
Grammar
21 Sentence fragments
22 Run-on sentences
23 Subject-verb agreement (is or are etc.)
24 Pronoun-antecedent agreement (singular or plural)
25 Pronoun reference
26 Pronoun case (I vs. me etc.)
27 who and whom
28 Adjectives and adverbs
29 Verb forms, tenses, and moods
Multilingual Writers and ESL Topics
30 Verbs
31 Articles (a, an, the)
32 Sentence structure
33 Prepositions and idiomatic expressions
34 Paraphrasing sources effectively
Punctuation
35 The comma
36 Unnecessary commas
37 The semicolon
38 The colon
39 The apostrophe
40 Quotation marks
41 End punctuation
42 Other punctuation marks
Mechanics
43 Abbreviations
44 Numbers
45 Italics
46 Spelling
47 Hyphenation
48 Capitalization
Grammar Basics
49 Parts of speech
50 Sentence patterns
51 Subordinate word groups
52 Sentence types
Research
53 Thinking like a researcher; gathering sources
54 Managing information; taking notes responsibly
55 Evaluating sources
Writing Essays in MLA Style
56 Supporting a thesis
57 Citing sources; avoiding plagiarism
58 Integrating sources
59 Documenting sources in MLA style
60 MLA format; sample research essay
Writing Papers in APA Style
61 Supporting a thesis
62 Citing sources; avoiding plagiarism
63 Integrating sources
64 Documenting sources in APA style
65 APA format; sample research paper
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.
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