Well-Crafted Sentence by Nora Bacon - Second Edition, 2013 from Macmillan Student Store

Well-Crafted Sentence

Second  Edition©2013  Nora Bacon

About

Grounded in the art of writing, The Well-Crafted Sentence zeroes in on the building block of great prose: the sentence. With a friendly, approachable, and elegant tone, Nora Bacon shows the benefits of attention to style and offers a range of revision strategies that give students the tools to strengthen and develop their writing.

Giving students the opportunity to see successful rhetorical choices at work in writing they admire, the text includes a brief anthology of readings by ten accomplished stylists, five of them new to this edition. Examples throughout the text are drawn from these model pieces, as are integrated exercises that help students apply concepts to their own writing. Additionally, a new first chapter, Approaches to Style, introduces students to the concept of style.

Affordable and brief, The Well-Crafted Sentence works as a core classroom text or as a supplement.

Table of 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 
          Adverb Clauses
          Adjective Clauses
          Noun 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
Variation in Coordinate Series 
     Length 
     The Echo Effect: Pairs
     The Echo Effect: Repetition

5. Well-Developed Sentences: Modification
Early Modifiers and Paragraph Cohesion 
     The Crescendo Effect: The Pleasures of the Periodic Sentence
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? 
     Should an Adjective Clause Be Set Off with Punctuation?
     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
Dangling Modifiers
 
8. Layering Meaning with Appositives and Absolutes
Noun Phrases in Apposition
     Identifying People 
     Defining Terms 
     Filling in Examples or Explanations 
     Renaming with a Twist
Other Structures in Apposition 
     That Clauses 
     Verb Phrases 
     Prepositional Phrases
Absolute Phrases
 
9. Special Effects: Expectations and Exceptions
Focus on the Subject
Completeness and Explicitness
Sentence Variety
 
Model Texts for Writers
Louise Erdrich, Shamengwa
*Drew Gilpin Faust, "We Should Grow Too Fond of It": Why We Love the Civil War
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Sin Boldly
*Barack Obama, A More Perfect Union
Tim O'Brien, On the Rainy River
*Ted Olson, The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage
*Oliver Sacks, Papa Blows His Nose in G
David Sedaris, Genetic Engineering
Amy Tan, Mother Tongue
*Lily Wong Fillmore, Loss of Family Languages: Should Educators Be Concerned?
 
Glossary of Grammatical Terms
Index
 
*new to this edition

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.