United States
The Bedford Handbook with 2020 APA and 2021 MLA Updates
Eleventh Edition©2021 Diana Hacker; Nancy Sommers
The essentials of college writing
This ebook has been updated to provide you with the latest guidance on documenting sources in MLA style and follows the guidelines set forth in the MLA Handbook, 9th edition (April 2021).
Why buy The Bedford Handbook? It’s a one-stop affordable source for how to write well in all of your courses. You’ll find writing advice that’s direct and trustworthy, with everything you need exactly when you need it. Quickly find straightforward answers to any questions you have about college writing, whether it’s how to strengthen your thesis, use a semicolon, cite your research, or judge whether a source is credible.
Table of Contents
1 Exploring, planning, and drafting
2 Building effective paragraphs
3 Revising, editing, and proofreading
Part 2 | Academic Reading and Writing
4 Reading critically; writing analytically
5 Reading arguments
6 Writing arguments
7 Writing in the disciplines
Part 3 | Clear Sentences
8 Active verbs
9 Parallelism
10 Needed words
11 Mixed constructions
12 Misplaced and dangling modifiers
13 Shifts
14 Emphasis
15 Variety
Part 4 | Word Choice
16 Wordy sentences
17 Appropriate language
18 Exact words
19 Glossary of usage
Part 5 | Grammatical Sentences
20 Sentence fragments
21 Run-on sentences
22 Subject-verb agreement
23 Pronoun-antecedent agreement
24 Pronoun reference
25 Pronoun case (I vs. me)
26 who vs. whom
27 Adjectives and adverbs
28 Standard English verb forms
29 Multilingual topics
Part 6 | Punctuation
30 The comma
31 Unnecessary commas
32 The semicolon and the colon
33 The apostrophe
34 Quotation marks
35 End punctuation
36 Other punctuation marks
Part 7 | Mechanics
37 Abbreviations, numbers, and italics
38 Spelling and the hyphen
39 Capitalization
Part 8 | Grammar Basics
40 Parts of speech
41 Sentence patterns
42 Subordinate word groups
43 Sentence types
Part 9 | Researched Writing
44 Thinking like a researcher; gathering sources
45 Managing information; taking notes responsibly
46 Evaluating sources
47 Writing a research paper
48 Citing sources; avoiding plagiarism
49 Integrating sources
50 Documenting sources in MLA style
51 MLA format; sample research paper
52 Documenting sources in APA style
53 APA format; sample research paper
Answers to Exercises | Index | List of Grammatical Terms
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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