Sunday, June 07, 2009

Still Dealing With Writing Questions

Blot out, correct, insert, refine,
Enlarge, diminish, interline;
Be mindful, when invention fails,
To scratch your head, and bite your nails.

--Jonathan Swift


I seem to be amassing writing handbooks. Here are all the guides we currently own. (Several of these were given to us):


The Little, Brown Handbook
Writer's, Inc.
Strunk and White's Elements of Style
Prentice Hall Handbook for Writers, 6th Ed.
The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers
English Writing and Skills, Third Course (Coronado)
Understanding and Using English, 4th Ed. (Birk and Birk)
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers
The Writer's Jungle (Bravewriter)
Jenson's Format Writing
(Update: we were given another handbook yesterday-- the A Beka Handbook of Grammar and Composition, 4th Ed.)

And I have some books on writing that aren't actual student handbooks or textbooks, but are more like collections of essays on writing:

On Writing Well by William Zinsser
Writing to Learn by William Zinsser
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Triss and I like the Prentice Hall Handbook the best at this point. She likes the conversational tone of the explanations.

Last night, at the Quiddity blog, I found a couple of posts on writing I really like:

What is Writing
Teaching the Transcendent
Assessment and Feedback for a Written Composition

The deeper I get into teaching writing, the more I realize how little I know about it.

Kris at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers blog wrote a post awhile back about Sully Sullenberger and his conversation with the air traffic controller, his calm statement that, "We're gonna be in the Hudson", which I find strangely comforting at this time.

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