Writing Today, 4th edition
Published by Pearson (February 19, 2018) © 2019
  • Richard Johnson-Sheehan
  • Charles Paine

Title overview

For courses in English Composition.

Practical writing skills for composing in the real world

Writing Today is an accessible text that fits the way people today read and learn. Its chunked writing style, eye-catching design and focus on writing genres, strategies, and processes sets students up for success in their courses, careers, and civic lives.

The 4th Edition marks a turning point in this highly successful series. Authors Richard Johnson-Sheehan and Charles Paine have made  reflection, or discovering why we think the way we do, a main focus. As students explore this theme, they build their intellect, while becoming more aware, versatile, and resilient.

Hallmark features of this title

Up-to-date, flexible writing instruction

  • The text's highly visual layout and interactive writing style appeal to the way today's students read and learn.
    • At-a-Glance diagrams begin each chapter in Part 2 helping students visualize 1-2 common ways to organize a genre's key elements while providing an adaptable working model.
    • The text's to-the-point writing style lets students skim, ask questions and access information when they're ready for it, putting them in control of their learning.
  • Practice writing in a digital world includes working with visuals, inserting graphics, using audio tools, and collaborating remotely.
  • A focus on the genres of writing, strategies for writing, and process for writing guides students' understanding of genre awareness and genre know-how.
  • Free download: The Pearson Guide to the 2021 MLA Handbook.

New and updated features of this title

  • NEW: Reflection has been integrated as a key element of the writing process, encouraging students to look at their work critically and reflect on how their writing embodies their motives, values and culture. (New Ch. 5. offers strategies on "Reflecting Critically, Starting Your Portfolio.")
  • NEW: Coverage of microgenres has been expanded to reflect writing happening online today with new, student-friendly examples (e.g., "portrait," "slam," and "online comment").
  • NEW: More than 25 topical new readings have been added to inspire discussion and student writing. Included are several models of each genre, which appear in each chapter, such as student-written examples annotated to highlight the writer's key rhetorical decisions.
  • UPDATED: A variety of question sets (following each genre model) are designed to achieve various learning goals: to prompt analytical reading, responses, and discovery, and to inspire writing that further explores a genre's possibilities.
  • NEW: Coverage of citations is expanded to fully prepare students for the challenges of properly citing sources and avoiding plagiarism online.
  • ENHANCED: Terminology consistent with WPA Outcomes is built into the text, allowing instructors and students to respond to assessment rubrics and evaluation tools required by university stakeholders.

Key features

Highlights of the DIGITAL UPDATE for Revel (available for Spring 2022 classes)

Give corequisite learners the edge they need to succeed.

  • NEW: “The Edge” is a series of 9 workshop modules integrated into Revel Writing Today providing scaffolded learning on topics from grammar and sentence structure to critical reading and research (at no extra cost to students).
  • The workshop series includes 66 activities (40 of which are assignable writing prompts) plus 30 interactives (e.g., fill-in-the-blank, multiple-choice questions, user-controlled animations, flashcards, and drag-and-drop activities), as well as an end-of-module quiz to measure mastery.
  • The Instructor's Resource Manual has been expanded to help integrate The Edge into your instruction with Writing Today.

Features of Revel for the 4th Edition

  • Exploratory Writing Prompts embedded throughout help students write pieces that can then be incorporated into drafts of larger works. When scaffolded, the exercises mimic a structured writing process.
  • A library of 500 pre-built writing assignments is provided to hone academic, professional and civic writing skills.
  • 300 Writing Assignments and 200 Multimodal Assignments encourage literacy, critical thought and invention, and span from argument to research, to modes and genres, across multiple mediums.

Table of contents

PART 1: GETTING STARTED

  1. Writing and Genres
  2. Topic, Angle, Purpose
  3. Readers, Contexts, and Rhetorical Situations
  4. Reading Critically, Thinking Analytically
  5. Reflecting Critically, Starting Your Portfolio

PART 2: USING GENRES TO EXPRESS IDEAS

  1. Memoirs
  2. Profiles
  3. Reviews
  4. Literary Analyses
  5. Rhetorical Analyses
  6. Commentaries (Argument)
  7. Arguments (Argument)
  8. Proposals (Argument)
  9. Formal Reports
  10. Research Papers

PART 3: DEVELOPING A WRITING PROCESS

  1. Inventing Ideas and Prewriting
  2. Organizing and Drafting
  3. Choosing a Style
  4. Designing
  5. Revising and Editing

PART 4: STRATEGIES FOR SHAPING IDEAS

  1. Developing Paragraphs and Sections
  2. Using Basic Rhetorical Patterns
  3. Using Argumentative Strategies (Argument)
  4. Collaborating and Peer Response

PART 5: DOING RESEARCH

  1. Starting Your Research
  2. Finding Sources and Collecting Evidence
  3. Citing, Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing Sources
  4. Using MLA Style
  5. Using APA Style

PART 6: GETTING YOUR IDEAS OUT THERE

  1. Writing with Social Networking
  2. Succeeding on Written Exams and Assessments
  3. Presenting Your Work

PART 7: THEMATIC ANTHOLOGY OF READINGS

  1. College and a New Life
  2. Identity and Human Nature
  3. Culture and Entertainment
  4. Place and Environment
  5. Health and Safety
  6. Science and Technology

PART 8: HANDBOOK

  1. Sentences
  2. Verbs
  3. Pronouns
  4. Style
  5. Punctuation, Mechanics, and Spelling

Appendix: Readings Arranged by Theme

The Edge for Writing Today

Workshop 1: Getting Your Edge

  • 1.0 Why Do People Succeed in College (And Some Don't)?
  • 1.1 Managing Your Time
  • 1.2 Reading Smarter for Classes
  • 1.3 Taking Good Notes in Class
  • 1.4 Coping with Stress in College
  • 1.5 Starting a Study Group
  • 1.6 Talking to Your Instructors
  • 1.7 Getting Help on Campus
  • 1.8 Succeeding in Online and Hybrid Writing Courses

Workshop 2: Reading to Strengthen Your Writing

  • 2.0 What is Different About College Reading?
  • 2.1 Previewing a Text
  • 2.2 Reading
  • 2.3 Highlighting and Annotating
  • 2.4 Playing the Believing and Doubting Game
  • 2.5 Analyzing the Reliability of an Author's Evidence
  • 2.6 Evaluating the Validity of an Author's Reasoning
  • 2.7 Responding to a Text by Reflecting on Your Reading Process

Workshop 3: Inventing Ideas Before You Write

  • 3.0 What's Your Writing Process?
  • 3.1 Analyzing Your Rhetorical Situation
  • 3.2 Using Prewriting to Get Ideas Out of Your Head
  • 3.3 Concept Mapping (or Mind Mapping)
  • 3.4 Freewriting
  • 3.5 Brainstorming Lists of Ideas
  • 3.6 Using the "Five-W and How" Questions

Workshop 4: Writing a College Paper

  • 4.0 How Should You Put Your Paper Together?
  • 4.1 Writing Your Introduction (Tell Them What You're Going to Tell Them!)
  • 4.2 Writing Your Thesis Statement
  • 4.3 Organizing the Body of Your Paper (Tell Them)
  • 4.4 Writing Your Conclusion Paragraph (Tell Them What You Told Them)
  • 4.5 Using Effective Headings in Your Papers

Workshop 5: Writing Stronger Sentences

  • 5.0 Why is This Sentence So Hard to Read?
  • 5.1 Finding the Doer and the Main Action of the Sentence
  • 5.2 Putting the Doer of the Main Action in the Subject of the Sentence
  • 5.3 Stating the Main Action of the Sentence as a Verb
  • 5.4 Turning Passive Sentences into Active Sentences
  • 5.5 Making Sentences Breathing Length
  • 5.6 Combining Sentences

Workshop 6: Revising Paragraphs

  • 6.0 What Do Paragraphs Do?
  • 6.1 Identifying the Topic Sentence of a Paragraph
  • 6.2 Using Support Sentences in Paragraphs
  • 6.3 Using Transitional Words and Phrases to Bridge Sentences
  • 6.4 Bridging Two Paragraphs with Transitions
  • 6.5 Types of Paragraphs

Workshop 7: Doing Research and Citing It

  • 7.0 Why Do Research?
  • 7.1 Is This Real News or Fake News?
  • 7.2 Focusing a Research Question
  • 7.3 Turning a Research Question into a Working Thesis or Hypothesis
  • 7.4 Triangulating Sources
  • 7.5 Using an In-Text Citation
  • 7.6 Creating a List of Works Cited or References

Workshop 8: Fixing the Dirty Dozen Grammar Errors

  • 8.0 Why is Grammar Important Anyway?
  • 8.1 Comma Splice
  • 8.2 Fused Sentence
  • 8.3 Sentence Fragment
  • 8.4 Subject-Verb Disagreement
  • 8.5 Pronoun-Antecedent Disagreement
  • 8.6 Apostrophe Errors
  • 8.7 Misused Commas
  • 8.8 Dangling Modifiers
  • 8.9 Faulty Parallelism
  • 8.10 Pronoun-Case Error
  • 8.11 Shifted Tense
  • 8.12 Vague Pronouns

Workshop 9: Punctuating Correctly

  • 9.0 What Does Punctuation Do, and Why Is It Important?
  • 9.1 The Period, Question Mark, Exclamation Mark
  • 9.2 The Comma
  • 9.3 The Apostrophe
  • 9.4 The Semicolon and Colon
  • 9.5 Quotation Marks and Italics
  • 9.6 Dashes and Hyphens
  • 9.7 Parentheses, Brackets, and Ellipsis Dots

Author bios

About our authors

Richard Johnson-Sheehan is a Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at Purdue University. There, he has directed the Introductory Composition program and served as the Director of the Purdue Writing Lab and the Purdue OWL. He teaches a variety of courses in composition, professional writing, medical writing, environmental writing and writing program administration, as well as classical rhetoric and the rhetoric of science. He has also published widely in these areas.

Johnson-Sheehan's books on writing include Argument Today, coauthored by Charles Paine; Technical Communication Today, now in its fifth edition and Writing Proposals, now in its second edition. He was awarded the 2008 Fellow of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing. In 2017, he was awarded the J.R. Gould Award for Excellence in Teaching by the Society for Technical Communication.

Charles Paine is a Professor of English at the University of New Mexico, where he directs the Core Writing and the Rhetoric and Writing programs. He teaches first-year composition and courses in writing pedagogy, the history of rhetoric and composition and many other areas. His published books span a variety of topics in rhetoric and composition, including The Resistant Writer (a history of composition studies), Teaching with Student Texts (a coedited collection of essays on teaching writing) and Argument Today (an argument-based textbook).

An active member of the Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA), he has served on its Executive Board and as coleader of the WPA Summer Conference Workshop. He cofounded and coordinates the Consortium for the Study of Writing in College, a joint effort of the National Survey of Student Engagement and the Council of Writing Program Administrators. The Consortium conducts general research into the ways that undergraduate writing can lead to enhanced learning, engagement and other gains related to student success.

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