Economics is not a field that is known for good writing. Charts, yes. Sparkling prose, no.
 
Except, that is, when it comes to Deirdre Nansen McCloskey. Her conversational and witty yet always clear style is a hallmark of her classic works of economic history, enlivening the dismal science and engaging readers well beyond the discipline. And now she’s here to share the secrets of how it’s done.
 
Economical Writing is itself economical: a collection of thirty-five pithy rules for making your writing clear, concise, and effective. Proceeding from big-picture ideas to concrete strategies for improvement at the level of the paragraph, sentence, or word, McCloskey shows us that good writing, after all, is not just a matter of taste—it’s a product of adept intuition and a rigorous revision process. Debunking stale rules, warning us that “footnotes are nests for pedants,” and offering an arsenal of readily applicable tools and methods, she shows writers of all levels of experience how to rethink the way they approach their work, and gives them the knowledge to turn mediocre prose into magic.
 
At once efficient and digestible, hilarious and provocative, Economical Writing lives up to its promise. With McCloskey as our guide, it’s impossible not to see how any piece of writing—on economics or any other subject—can be a pleasure to read.

What happened to the bold, kicky promise of writing instruction in the 1960s? The current conservative trend in composition is analyzed allegorically by Geoffrey Sirc in this book-length homage to Charles Deemer's 1967 article, in which the theories and practices of Happenings artists (multi-disciplinary performance pioneers) were used to invigorate college writing. Sirc takes up Deemer's inquiry, moving through the material and theoretical concerns of such pre- and post-Happenings influences as Duchamp and Pollock, situationists and punks, as well as many of the Happenings artists proper.

With this book, already a cult classic, began a neo-avant-garde for composition studies.

Winner of the Ross W. Winterowd Award for most outstanding book in composition theory.

The authors of Academic Writing for Graduate Students have written a book for the next level of second language writing. English in Today's Research World offers students a very high level of writing instruction, with a specific focus on the projects students undertake--such as dissertations and conference abstracts--at the end of their university work or as they begin careers in research or academia.
In addition to instruction on writing for publication, English in Today's Research World provides needed advice on applications, recommendations, and requests--types of communications that are particularly vulnerable to influences from national cultural expectations and conventions and that, therefore, place the NNS writer at increased disadvantage.
The text is both a reference manual and a course book, so that researchers can continue to use the book after they have completed their formal education. New ESL/EFL teachers can use English in Today's Research World as a reference book for themselves or as a teaching aid in the classroom.

Explanation Points is a curated collection of disciplinary knowledge and advice for publishing in rhetoric and composition. Covering a variety of topics in an approachable, conversational tone, the book demonstrates how writing faculty from diverse career trajectories and institutions produce, prepare, edit, revise, and publish scholarship.
 
Rhetoric and composition is a uniquely democratic field, made of a group of scholars who, rather than competing with one another, lift each other up and work together to move the field forward. This lively, engaging, story-anchored book offers advice from a range of authors—including emeritus faculty, prolific authors, and early career researchers. Organized by various stages in the writing and publishing process, Explanation Points presents the advice shared between colleagues, passed along from professor to student, or offered online in abbreviated tweets and updates.
 
The best advice book on writing and publishing in the field, Explanation Points is a useful resource for rhetoric and composition scholars including faculty, graduate students, and advanced undergraduate students; writing center administrators, staff, and consultants; graduate pratica and seminars; writing workshop classes; and editors, associate editors, assistant editors, and other academic journal staff.
 
Contributors:
Tim Amidon, Chris Anson, Nancy G. Barron, Ellen Barton, Michael Baumann, Steve Bernhardt, Kristine L. Blair, David Blakesley, Lynn Z. Bloom, Marcia Bost, James Brown, Amber Buck, Rebecca Burnett, Joyce Carter, Kate Comer, Janice Cools, Marilyn Cooper, Craig Cotich, Ellen Cushman, Gabriel Cutrufello, Courtney Danforth, Sid Dobrin, William Duffy, Norbert Elliot, Jessica Enoch, Doug Eyman, Michael Faris, Jenn Fishman, Linda Flower, Brenda Glasscot, Laura Gonzales, Jeffrey T. Grabill, Laurie Gries, Bump Halbritter, Joseph Harris, Byron Hawk, Douglas Hesse, Troy Hicks, Bruce Horner, Asao Inoue, Darin L. Jensen, Erin Jensen, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Gesa E. Kirsch, Sarah Kornfield, Ashanka Kumari, Christina M. LaVecchia, Donna LeCourt, Barbara L’Eplattenier, Heather Lettner-Rust, Justin Lewis, Julie Lindquist, Tara Lockhart, Andrea Abernethy Lunsford, Katie Manthey, Lisa Mastrangelo, Ben McCorkle, Heidi McKee, Cruz Medina, Laura R. Micciche, Holly Middleton, Lilian Mina, Janine Morris, Joan Mullin, Kim Hensley Owens, Jason Palmeri, Mike Palmquist, Steve Parks, Juli Parrish, Staci Perryman-Clark, Mya Poe, Jacqueline Rhodes, Jeff Rice, Jim Ridolfo, Shirley K Rose, Stuart A. Selber, Jody Shipka, Naomi Silver, Ryan Skinnell, Trixie Long Smith, Kyle Stedman, Patrick Sullivan, Carrie Strand Tebeau, Christie Toth, John Trimbur, Chris Warnick, Kathleen Blake Yancey

Exploring Options is designed to help student writers develop their knowledge and use of academic language to meet the demands of college- and university-level writing assignments. It draws on the research identifying lexical and grammatical patterns across academic contexts and provides authentic reading contexts for structured vocabulary learning. Recognizing that vocabulary choices in writing often require consideration of grammatical structure, Exploring Options focuses on specific kinds of lexico-grammatical decisions—that is, the ones involving the interaction between vocabulary and grammar--that students face in shaping, connecting, and restructuring their ideas. The book helps writers learn how to effectively use resources such as learner dictionaries, thesauruses, and concordancers to improve academic word knowledge.
 
Following a unit on using resources for vocabulary development, the contents are divided into three parts: Showing Relationships within Sentences, Connecting and Focusing across Sentences, and Qualifying Statements and Reporting Research. Part 1 focuses on verbs and modifiers that express increases and decreases, verbs and abstract nouns that describe change, connectors and verbs describing causal relationships, and parallel structures. Part 2 explores the words that help connect ideas and add cohesion. Part 3 discusses how to express degrees of certainty and accuracy and the use of reporting verbs.