Nowadays, most colleges and universities have centers or programs or individuals to work with students on their writing. The Yale College Writing Center, the dedicated and talented group of residential college writing tutors, and the writing programs in the Graduate Writing Center are among the best in the country, and I hope that you avail yourselves of privilege of working with them.
Beyond that, are there resources that might be helpful to you in writing in this course? I have a shelf of books on writing in my office and a thick file of articles and columns about writing that I have collected over the years. What economists call the law of diminishing returns applies well to writing resources, and one can quickly become overwhelmed with–and put off by–the mountains of well-meaning advice. So I will be highly selective!
1. Style guides. I always have on my desk a small spiral-bound style manual for quick reference about grammar, punctuation, word use, and formatting. The one I’ve been using for the last few years is Diana Hacker’s A Pocket Style Manual (Bedford/ St. Martin’s).
2. Online guidelines. Many choices here. My current favorite is The Writing Center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill because it has a particularly helpful and extensive set of online handouts about all aspects of college (and professional) writing. See here for its menu. My top seven handouts are the following, and I highly recommend them, especially for your writing in this course:
3. Books about writing and the writing process. Again, there are so many to choose from! Three of my favorites are:
- William K. Zinsser (many editions) On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction. Bass PE1429 .Z5X 2001 (and others)
- Frederick Busch, editor (1999) Letters to a Fiction Writer. New York and London: W.W. Norton. SML PN3355 L38X 1999
- Anne Lamott (1994) Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York: Pantheon. Bass PN147 L315X 1994
William Zinsser, by the way, has recently published the text of a talk that he gave in 2009 to incoming international students at the Columbia School of Journalism. It is full of common-sense advice for all of us, not just those who write in English as a second language:
William Zinsser (2010) “Writing English as a Second Language,” American Scholar 79(1): 120.