Your Guide to College Writing

Like most college textbooks,  writing handbooks are more expensive than they should be. That’s a problem. A larger problem is that most of these handbooks are written not to students who use them but to the instructors who order them. The elevated writing style and exhaustive breadth makes these handbooks challenging for students who haven’t already mastered the basics of college writing. Your Guide to College Writing addresses these problems by putting the focus back where it belongs — on the students.

The first four chapters cover writing basics. We start with paragraphs in Chapter 1 and then narrow our focus to sentences in Chapter 2 and punctuation and mechanics in Chapter 3. By Chapter 4, word choice, we’re talking about the selection of individual words, asking you to choose them like you might choose the right apple at the grocery store. In the second half of the book, we examine the basics of college research, explaining how to find useful information, assess its reliability, and integrate it into your own writing. In the final three chapters, we map out three popular documentation systems.

Your Guide to College Writing is part of a broader initiative underway at Chemeketa Community College to combat the high cost of college textbooks by working with faculty, staff, and students to publish affordable and effective alternatives. Really, I could go on. To join the colleges across Oregon and the greater United States already using the book, contact the fine revolutionaries at Chemeketa Press.