Substance, Style and Strategy

Ideal for courses in advanced composition, Substance, Style, and Strategy offers a comprehensive guide to develop effective writing in every student. It enables students to form a personal style, to write about issues that are substantial and meaningful, and to use a range of strategies for solving writing problems of all kinds.
Recognizing that students often require basic reminders of elementary stylistic principles, the book begins with a review in the first chapter, "Developing a Personal Style," that brings writers up to speed in standard skills. It discusses issues of subject, audience, style, and the writing process. Following chapters examine not only the types of essay writing students must do in college but also ways of writing that will be useful to them as developing writers later in life. The author presents workable, direct, and useful strategies for writing effective personal, biographical, argumentative, familiar, and critical essays. Each essay form is discussed in detail and illustrated through examples that are analyzed in depth; these examples are illuminating and instructive because they offer ways of solving problems that all writers confront. The text concludes with a practical appendix on research materials that outlines the most useful research strategies for modern writers, discussing both print resources and new on-line resources such as Lexis-Nexis, CD-ROM on-line databases and services, and the World Wide Web.
Substance, Style, and Strategy stimulates students to develop their thoughts and feelings in skillful, meaningful, and expressive prose, providing them with a thorough grounding in how to be writers for life.

Lee A. Jacobus is at University of Connecticut.