... Revisions 34
17
PART II.
8.
9.
10 .
11 .
The Essay 43
Beginning 45
Closing 60
Organizing the Middle
Point of View, Persona,
67
and Tone
74
PART 3 The Expository Paragraph 87
12 . Basic Structure 89
13 . Paragraph ... www.tailieuduhoc.org
Contents
Introduction 3
1. Subject, Reader, and Kinds of Writing 5
2. Strategy and Style 9
3. Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics
13
PART 1 The W...
... Barbara
Most similes are brief, but they may be
by breaking the vehicles into parts and applying each to the
tenor. A historian, writing about the Italian patriot Garibaldi,
explains that
his mind was ... Overworked
Metaphors and similes ought not to be sprinkled about pro-
fusely, especially in expository writing. Even when they do
not clash, too many are likely to cancel one anothe...
... hand bells of pietists, summoning all to pray
for the
SOLlls of
the dead. Morris Bishop
Images can appeal to other senses: to smell, taste, touch,
even to the muscular sense of movement and ... that one looks directly into their foliage, too lush, too un-
settlingly glossy, the greenery of nightmare; the fallen eucalyptus
bark is too dusty, a place for snakes to breed. Joan Didion...
... the narrative: Peter
Romano's being carried off to jail.
In the simple and often partial stories you are likely to tell
in expository writing, it is not always necessary (or even de-
sirable) ... evicted. On June
11 ,
he came
himself to the Romanos and demanded the money again. He threat-
ened to have the marshal in and put them out that very afternoon.
Peter Romano tried to...
... www.tailieuduhoc.org
CHAPTER
24
Meaning
To say that a word has meaning is to say that it has purpose.
The purpose may be to signify is, to refer
to an object or person other than the writer, to an abstract
conception ... about Toronto? What can one? What has any-
body ever said? It is impossible to give it anything but commen-
dation. is not squalid like Birmingham, or cramped C...
... to overcome masculine resistance to toilet-
ries as "sissy" (or perhaps to appeal to women, who buy most
of these products for their men).3
Emotionally loaded diction is also the stock-in-trade ... fact: that part of a word's mean-
ing is the purpose it is expected to fulfill, and that words may
serve different purposes.
To get a bit further into this matter it wi...
... is
repeated too closely. It ought to be replaced by a synonym
or a pronoun:
The auto industry used to produce cars that lasted, but they didn't
make enough profit so planned obsolescence came into ... he proceeded to the
bulletin board.
BETTER: Told yes, he went to the bulletin board.
Television shows which demonstrate participation in physical ex-
ercise will improve your muscle...
... do not need to be
made more concise; they need to be eliminated. There are two
broad causes of pointless diction: (1) failing to credit readers'
intelligence, and (2) failing to focus on ... it is not too
much to ask people to look into a dictionary now and again.)
Don't Spell Out What Is Clearly Implied
Unless there is a clear chance of confusion, you do not have
to...
... in his angry overalls, too angry to come down
tO
luncheon. Harold Nicholson
Oxymoron and Rhetorical Paradox
When the oddity of a collocation becomes seemingly contra-
dictory, it is called an ... arranges definitions in historical order, illustrating each
sense by dated quotations (totaling about 1, 800,000). These
begin with the earliest known use of a word in a particular
sense and inc...
... organization and tone. Or-
ganization involves (1) how you analyze your topic, the parts into
which you divide it, and (2) the order in which you present these
parts and how you tie them together. Tone means
... entries, you may want to
make an index or to group passages according to subject.
A commonplace book will help your writing in several
ways. It will be a storehouse of topics...