Sin Boldly!: Dr. Dave's Guide to Writing the College Paper

My favorite part of this book was an actual student paper that David Williams used as an example: "Women are Like Boxcars: A study of the Cinderella myth. ... They are just writing around waiting to get hitched." Here's what Dr. Williams (And this Dr. comes from a Ph.D. from Harvard no less) says about this paper: "The paper reproduced in this section is a real one. That is to say, it was written not by me--I swear!--but by a student in one of my college composition classes. Mr. Beard, the student author, is a respresentative of that pervasive sourthern species... Only kudzu, honeysuckle, and poison ivy are more resistant to cultivation... Over six feet and built like a refrigerator, he was the type of guy who causes the tractor to tilt when he climbs on... His papers tended to smell of the stuff he had clinging to his boots when he stomped into class. But they also had a distinctive voice, an enviable clarity, straightforward logic, good organization, and fair to virtuous grammar. What is more, given the political atmosphere in acadmeia today, he took dangerous risks. Horrified though I sometimes was at the content of his essays, I had to love them."

This book is more than a writing guide! It should be required for everyone teaching or studying at college level. I picked this item up by accident and have recommended it to many. Dr. Dave's sense of humour and social commentary makes it all the more fun to read.

This book is a godsend for people who have either forgotten how to write or who are now being forced to write correctly. I recommended it to doctoral students who have been in business for so long that they can only compose memos or email. Hidden within its witty pages are the answers to such secrets as: 1) its or it's? 2) commas--are they just sentence jewelry? and 3) where do I put the punctuation -- inside the quotes or outside? Run, do not walk, to purchase this invaluable writer's best friend.

The academic world ready for a new approach to tackling the traditional problems of English composition, and the business world is on the brink of degenerating into a sterile environment of catch-phrases and e-terms that slam the door shut on creativity and turn potential clients into sleepy-eyed techno-drones. There is a beast within you who wants to write, and David Williams' new and irreverent book, Sin Boldly, will reach into your bestupored brain and pull out the impressive abilities of composition which you never knew you had.Shortly after Walt Whitman composed his famous book of poetry, Leaves of Grass, he commented on the influence of his hero, Ralph Waldo Emerson, "I was simmering, simmering, then Emerson brought me to a boil!" This is exactly how I felt after a semester with David Williams, and it is the result that many aspiring writers will undoubtedly experience after digesting the lessons of Sin Boldly.The main point of Sin Boldly is that you must abandon your inhibitions, forget the tyrannical instructors who tried to mold your prose in the past. Writing is an iterative process, the first stage of which is exposition. How you expose your points sets the pace for the rest of the process and the final composition.David Williams educational credits include a degree from Harvard Divinity School and Ph. D from Brown College in American Studies. He is a seasoned expert on American culture and possesses a unique talent for bringing out the suppressed literary skills that we all have. He is one of the rare educators who belong to an elite corps of literary intellectuals who have abandoned the snobbery of departmental politics to dedicate his career toward teaching english composition college undergraduates. I was fortunate to have Dr. Williams for one of the first classes toward earning my masters degree in English literature. He set me free from the fetters of conventional paper composition that had been drilled into my head throughout my collegiate career. He has an entertaining and provacative style in his teaching that comes across remarkably intact in his writing. He makes you want to write.The point is writing is easy. It is something to be enjoyed, not dreaded. You don't have to be an English student to enjoy composition, either. Whether you are composing an e-mail or writing a proposal for a multi-million dollar telecommunications venture, writing your words should be as easy and natural as thinking them, with the added gratification of being able to see them on paper.

Dave Williams' "Sin Boldly" ought to be required reading in colleges today. It's not the dry, ponderous grammar rulebook so common to dry, ponderous English lectures; "Sin Boldly" cuts to the heart of writing by describing effective thinking: how to plot an argument, logical pitfalls, and reasoning on paper. In addition, it includes engaging rules of grammar, asking some of those tricky "Is it this way, or that?" questions. It's a quick read, a handy reference, and an indispensable tool for "acing the college paper!"