- Chapter one: Understanding the Assignment - Looking for Action
- Different Verbs, Different Essays
- Chapter two: Planning and Outlining - Gathering Material
- What/How/Why
- Organizing Material-Developing Your Thesis and Outline
- Chapter three: Paragraphs - The Long and the Short of It
- What/How/Why . Again
- Focus and Coherence
- Transitions
- Beginnings and Endings
- Know Your Project
- Chapter four: Stylistic Decisions - Editing with Your Ears
- Content vs. Grammar
- To Be or Not .
- Prepositional Phrases
- Tone
- Beware Your Thesaurus
- Figurative Language
- Be Precise and Be Realistic
- Chapter five: Essential Grammar - Clauses
- Voice: Passive or Active?
- Making Contact: Working with Connectors
- She or Her, Who or Whom? It All Depends on the Case
- He, She, or They?: Pronoun Agreement and Gender Neutrality
- Chapter six: Punctuation - That's All I Have to Say. Period.
- Connecting Ideas: Commas and Dashes
- Connecting More Ideas: Colons and Semicolons
- Exclamation Points!
- Ellipses and Brackets: Clarifying Quoted Material
- Contraction and Possession: The Apostrophe
- Apostrophes and Plurals
- When Not to Use an Apostrophe: Possessive Pronouns
- Chapter seven: Documentation - The P Word: Plagiarism
- When to Cite a Source
- When Not to Cite a Source
- Documentation Systems - Modern Language Association (MLA) Format
- American Psychological Association (APA) Format
- Chicago Manual of Style (Chicago Style) Format
- Chapter eight: Business Writing - Reader-Centred Writing: It's All about You
- Always Look on the Bright Side: Making Negatives Positive
- Creating Information Snapshots: Parallel Structure
- Creating More Information Snapshots: Bullets and Headings
- Memos, Letters, and Reports: Conventional Formats
- Some Notes on Email
- Chapter nine: Writing in the Sciences - IMRAD: Formatting Your Lab Report
- Abstracts: Making the Essentials Concrete
- Passive Voice: It's Not All about You
- Giving Credit: Documentation Formats
- Tone: Be Direct and Be Objective
- Appendix: Confusable Words: Usage and Misusage
