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Writing Clear Paragraphs
Sixth Edition
by Robert B. Donald,
James D. Moore,
Betty Richmond Morrow,
Lillian Griffith Wargetz,
and Kathleen Werner
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FOR THE STUDENTS
This book explains itself in its title. It aims to teach you how to communicate with all the people who share your personal world... a large aim with a very simple tool, the paragraph. Once you have mastered the paragraph, you will be familiar with a basic tool for writing.
The paragraph is built with three parts:
1. the topic sentence, which tells what you are going to talk about (your subject) and how you are going to treat it (your attitude).
2. the body, which gives the details explaining and supporting your topic sentence and reveals how you feel about your subject.
3. the conclusion, which sums up your subject and confirms your attitude. Because competent writing improves everything you do, you need to organize your paragraph effectively, to write understandable and convincing sentences, and to choose precise and pleasing words. This is all... and everything... you need to communicate well.
FOR THE INSTRUCTORS
We certainly have no advice for you, only gratitude. We are pleased that you have found our book a help in our mutual task of sharing the problems and joys of teaching. We are especially grateful to those of you who have pointed out areas where your experience can improve our efforts. Some of the changes we have made to accommodate your suggestions are as follows:
We have put the assignment early in the chapter so that the students know what is expected of them and will respond to the rest of the chapter with a purpose.
We have rewritten--and improved, we hope--all of the exercises except those that you, the instructors, asked us to retain.
We have improved the format, adding more headings and breaking up long paragraphs. We have also added more cartoons.
We have added more examples of documentation using student essays.
We would like to thank the reviewers of the sixth edition: Kate Gleason, Berkeley College; Carin Halper, Fresno City College; and Judity O. Scott, Sandhills Community College.
We hope you like the changes, and, as always, we are open to any further suggestions you may have to improve the book.
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