The Writer's FAQs Pocket Handbook

Etre d'avis et justifier l'opinion, c'est ca la formation aux Etats-Unis. Ainsi ecrire bien veut-il dire s'engager aux buts, a l'audience, a l'organisation bien identifiees et bien liees. Depuis le commencement, jusqu'a la fin, tout se devoue a, s'appuie sur l'idee principale. Tout en y arrivant, il faut tout verifier, des renseignements et des statistiques, soit de l'Internet soit des bonnes sources. Et que le tout s'accorde avec le manuel du discipline, par exemple le Chicago Manual of Style, pour les anthropologistes.

Get used to having an opinion and defending it: education in the United States wants to know what writers think, not how well they repeat the thinking of experts and great scholars. Muriel Harris says that good writing means being aware of and committed to purpose, audience and organization: everything between beginning and ending goes to support the main idea by passing judgment on each part of the thesis statement and on the sources. I like the way the author describes conclusions: looking backwards by summing up what went before and forward by giving advice or suggestions. THE WRITER'S FAQS reminds us that both Internet and nondigital sources need to be checked for reliability and that a particular course of study, such as anthropology, links with a particular handbook, such as CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE. Readers have no problems moving from this helpfully clear guide to specifics in Michael Alley's THE CRAFT OF SCIENTIFIC WRITING, Jan A. Pechenik's A SHORT GUIDE TO WRITING ABOUT BIOLOGY, Allan M. Siegal and William G. Connolly's THE NEW YORK TIMES MANUAL OF STYLE AND USAGE, and Joseph F. Trimmer's THE ESSENTIALS OF MLA STYLE.