Quick & Dirty

Writing
Handbook
Julie Malsbury

Table of Content

Welcome

Getting Started
The Writing Sample
Write a Sample

7
8
9

Back to Basics
What is Writing?
Why Teachers Make you Write
The Thesis Statement

10
11
12
13

Rhetoric
What is Rhetoric?
What are Rhetorical Situations?
What are Rhetorical Choices?
What are Rhetorical Contexts
The Rhetorical Triangle
Basis Genres
Academic Genres

14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21

Writing is a Process
The Myth of the Writer
Find Your Process
Brainstorm/Prewriting
Drafting
Reviewing
Revising is Not Editing

22
23
24
25
26
27
28

Research is a Process
What is Research?
Finding Sources
Annotating Sources
Incorporating Sources

29
30
31
32
33

Starts and Stops

34

Introductions
Conclusions

35
36

Make it Pretty
Polishing/Style

37
38

The C Word
What is Citation?
In Text Citation
Parenthetical Citation
Attributive Tags
References
APA/MLA/AMA/Chicago/IEEE

39
40
41
42
43
44
45

So You Think Youre Finished

What is a Portfolio?
What is Reflection?

46
47
48

Welcome
You should use this book
Its free.
In the age of technology, EBooks are great, but they still
cost money. This is free.99.
I have put this book together because textbooks are
expensive, and they all say the same thing, but they are
often written in a language that students dont speak yet.
Often, teachers have been teachers for longer than they
have been students and forget how difficult learning is.
They speak in their native language, and not the
language of their students. While I dont claim to speak
the same language as all incoming college freshmen, this
book is written in plain English.
I put this book together to explain the how and why that
go along with the what of writing, and I tried to do it
quickly and easily.
Trust me. Its on the internet. It has to be true. Also, Im
a Professor of writing, rhetoric, and communication.
I teach freshman composition because I want to, not
because I have to. Many professors hate teaching
freshman composition because they dont want to teach
students who hate writing.
This is a vast generalization, and I apologize if you do
not fit into such a broad statement. If you are a teacher

who doesnt hate teaching freshman writers, I commend

you. If you are a student who doesnt hate writing, I
commend you, too.
I like teaching it, because everyone can write. I take this
philosophy from the chorus teacher at my old high
school. Mr. Fisher told us, the incoming freshman class,
during 8th grade orientation, that everyone can sing. He
was teaching us the high schools spirit song, and we
didnt care. We were too cool to sing. After the typical
coaching expected from a man trying to get a bunch of
girls, who didnt want to sing, to sing, he finally made a
very convincing argument:
Everyone can sing. Not everyone can sing well, and
some people never sing outside the shower unless under
extreme duress, but everyone with a voice can and
should sing. He gave himself as an example. He was a
grown man, graduate of an all boys school, a teacher of
music, and if he can sing the spirit song of an all girls
school with pride, then damnit, so can we.
I dont know if it worked because we felt sorry for him
or because he made us laugh, but we sang, and we sang
with pride. We were awful, but we did it.
And that is all I ask of you. Just write. Write because you
have to. Then, hopefully, you will write because you
found something of importance that you want to write
about. Write about that. Your interested, may I dare say
excitement, will come through your writing. The more
fun you have writing usually translates into more fun the
teacher will have reading your work.

You should still use my book. I love teaching freshman

composition because I love watching students become
better writers and I love the writing process.
Disclaimer: I am not a professionally published author,
but I am a teacher who has turned D writers into A
writers. It takes time, many drafts, and much
procrastination.

Getting
Started

The Writing Sample

In the beginning of most college writing classes,
freshman comp to graduate school, teachers typically
often ask students to provide a writing sample.
This is obnoxious.
You have just come back from summer or Christmas
break and dont feel like writing on the first day of
school. Hell, you probably havent even bought your
textbook yet. Do you even have a pen on you?
The purpose of the writing sample is to provide an
opportunity for teachers to get to know you as a writer
but without grading you. Teachers find out how you feel
about the particular class you are taking and how you
feel about writing in general.
The writing sample also provides an idea of how you
write cold, without any prep. Typically, not that well,
which is ok. Youre not supposed to write well without
preparation.
Its a teaching moment.

Write a Sample
Questions that writing teachers often ask include
~ How do you feel about writing?
~ What kind of writer are you?
~ What do you like to write?
~ Where do you write?
~ What do you write well?
~ What kind of reader are you?
~ What do you like to read?
~ What are your strengths as a writer?
~ What are your weaknesses as a writer?
~ What is your writing process?
~ What do you know about peer review?
~ What do you know about conferences?
~ What do you know about research?
~ What do you know about citation?
~ What do you know about plagiarism?

Back
to
Basics

What is Writing?
Writing is a tangible form of communication. From cave
drawings to podcasts, writing has been used to express
ideas.
Good writing seeks to create something new. Good
writing enters a conversation about a specific topic and
adds your own opinion.
Writing Prompt: What is good writing? What is some of
the best writing you have read or written?

Why Teachers Make you Write

Because we can.
Not really. Teachers make students write to see how
they think.
Writing is linked to thinking. If you are a sloppy writer,
then you are a sloppy thinker. Teachers insist on proper
writing because if you cannot clearly express yourself,
then your audience will not know what you are talking
about.
Being able to write about something means that you
understand something. The better you are able to express
yourself is equal to understanding what you are
discussing.

The Thesis Statement

Students often dont know what a thesis statement is.
They know they need one, they know it goes somewhere
in the introduction, but they dont always know how to
define it. I understand. I didnt know what a thesis
statement was until my sophomore year in college.
Thesis statements are necessary in formal/academic
writing.
A thesis statement is like a topic sentence for the whole
essay. Just like a topic sentence tells the reader what the
paragraph will discuss, a thesis statement tells the reader
what the essay will discuss.
A thesis statement is explicitly stating what your essay is
about, who cares, and why it is important.
Not all genres need an explicit thesis statement. Creative
genres have an implied thesis. This is where the readers
understands the point without the writer every saying it.

Rhetoric

What is Rhetoric?
Rhetoric is the art of communicating. It seeks the best
way to accomplish a writer or speakers goal in
communication whether it is to inform, entertain, or
persuade.
Originally, rhetoric was tied directly to knowledge.
However, as the focus of rhetoric became the art of
persuasion without the logic to support it, rhetoric earned
a bad reputation of being empty language.
Rhetoric is the philosophy behind writing, or how we
think about writing. It asks the questions:
What am I writing about?
What is my purpose in writing?
Who is my audience?
What is my stance?
What genre should I use?
What language should I use?
How can I accomplish my purpose?

What are Rhetorical Situations?

What is purpose?

What is audience versus reader?

What is stance?

What is genre?

What are Rhetorical Choices?

Often best understood in the context of images.

What are Rhetorical Contexts

The Rhetorical Triangle

Basis Genres

The nine basic genres

Academic Genres

Essays

Reports

Case Studies

Research proposals

Book reviews

Brief research reports

Literature reviews

Reflective writing

Introductions

Research methods

Research results

Research discussions

Writing conclusions

Research abstracts

Research Dissertations & Theses

Research essays

Literature reviews

Lab report

Writing is
a Process

The Myth of the Writer

Many students are under the impression that good
writers are born that way. This is false. No is born good
at anything. Everyone has a natural aptitude towards
something. For some students, this is writing. Feel free
to hate them just a little. I do.
There is no such thing as a great first draft. There are
terrible drafts, ok drafts, decent drafts, and as you write
more, better rough drafts.
There is no such thing as a one and done A paper.
Any one who claims to have written one draft and gotten
an A, either has his or her pants on fire or had a shitty
teacher who didnt worry about purpose and content as
well as style and structure.

Find Your Process

Writing Prompt: Describe where you write.
What is the writing process?

Brainstorm/Prewriting

Drafting

Reviewing

Revising is Not Editing

Revising
o Purpose/topic sentence
o Content

Do examples support topic

sentence?

o Organization

Methods of organization

Linear

Flashback

By importance

Cut and paste paragraphs

Research
is a
Process

What is Research?
Writing Prompt: How do you conduct research?

Finding Sources

Annotating Sources

Annotations are anything that you write in a book

or on a print out.

Marking a book is having a conversation with the

book
o Highlight main points (create a summary)
o Write down thoughts, connections,

Incorporating Sources

Starts
and Stops

Introductions

Conclusions

Make it
Pretty

Polishing/Style

Sentence structure
o Commas
o Run on sentences
o The evil semicolon
o Other fun punctuation

Points of ellipses

The dash, the dash, and hyphen

(like duck, duck, goose!)

Language and word choice

Formatting the Essay in MSWord, Open Office, & Pages

The
C
Word
What is Citation?

In Text Citation

Parenthetical Citation

Attributive Tags

References

APA/MLA/AMA/Chicago/IEEE

So You
Think
Youre
Finished

What is a Portfolio?
A portfolio is just a collection.

What is Reflection?
So much better than a final exam.
Many students may not be able to write A papers, but
they understand the concepts behind writing an A paper.
Knowledge is hard to assess if it is not perfectly
demonstrated.
Reflection allows teachers to assess your metacognition,
which is just a fancy way of saying Reflection allows
teachers to assess your ability to think about thinking,
but of course, the former is fancy, and the latter just
sounds dumb.