Published in 2010
867 pages
Rebecca Moore Howard, Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Syracuse University, has devoted her career to figuring out how to improve the teaching of advanced literacy practices, so that college students have the best possible opportunities for becoming better readers, writers, and critical thinkers. Published in a number of books and articles, her work on the question of how academic culture defines plagiarism has urged instructors to recognize that “patchwriting”——too-close paraphrase——stems from students’ literacy rather than from their ethics. That work has also encouraged college instructors to teach summary, paraphrase, and a creative range of rhetorical engagements with complex written texts.
What is this book about?
This Comprehensive version of Writing Matters unites research, reasoning, documentation, grammar, and style into a cohesive whole, helping students see the conventions of writing as a network of responsibilities writers have…
- To other writers: Writing Matters emphasizes the responsibility writers share, whether collaborating online in peer review or conducting research with digital and print sources, to treat information fairly and accurately and to craft writing that is unique and original―their own!
- To the audience: Writing Matters emphasizes the need to use conventions appropriate to the readership, to write clearly, and to provide readers with the information and interpretation they need to make sense of a topic.
- To the topic: Writing Matters encourages writers to explore a topic thoroughly and creatively, to assess sources carefully, and to provide reliable information at a depth that does the topic justice.
- To themselves: Writing Matters encourages writers to take their writing seriously and to approach writing tasks as an opportunity to learn about a topic and to expand their scope as writers. Students are more likely to write well when they think of themselves as writers rather than as error-makers.
