Cover: The Well-Crafted Sentence, 3rd Edition by Nora Bacon

The Well-Crafted Sentence

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Third  Edition©2019  Nora Bacon

ISBN:9781319249946

ISBN:9781319058623

About

Style in context

What makes a sentence sing? The Well-Crafted Sentence demystifies sentences by taking apart expert writers’ work and helping you revise your own. Example sentences throughout the book are from 11 readings included in the back, so you can see how those writers made their work stronger.

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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

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.