The Well-Crafted Sentence by Nora Bacon - Third Edition, 2019 from Macmillan Student Store

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The Well-Crafted Sentence

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.