Easy Access: The Reference Handbook for Writers

Rating:
Summary: Helpful book
Review: I just started my Masters program and found this book helpful in my writing style. I found the book easy to reference material with and it made sense of things so that you could understand easily what the author was explaining. I recommend this book for all levels of education.

Rating:
Summary: Useful for college english 155
Review: Required book, very useful. However explanations can be hard to understand at times. The physical layout of the book is well thought out. It is binded together which would be great if you could fold the pages like a notebook, but unfortunately you cant.

Rating:
Summary: A Politically Correct Grammar Handbook
Review: This is an excellent grammar handbook. The sections on "Common Writing Problems" and "The Basics From A to Z" are most useful. Even a well-educated and experienced writer should find it a handy reference to answer grammar or word usage rules that have been forgotten--or never learned. However, some of it is a bit simplistic. We are told "The apostrophe is a small but important mark of punctuation." Which other small marks of punctuation are not important? And are all large marks of punctuation important just because of their size?

If you are politically correct you will especially like this book. It's a celebration that the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-everything America of Bill Clinton's dreams has arrived. You won't find Jack and Jill here. Luigi,Heinrich, Sean and many other western European names are also missing. The examples are about Chayyal, Juana, Shanelle, Mustapha, and La Shonda. Hopefully, the authors will receive a letter from "Conjugates-With-Alacrity" complaining about the lack Lakota Sioux names.

PC gender politics are evident in the examples "Captain Janeway found the universe to be bigger than she had thought" and "Darla left the house because of her husband's violence." Four pages are devoted to "Biased Uses of Language."

There is an entire section devoted to "ESL (English as a Second Language) Writers," who are all immigrants. Little world symbols throughout the book highlight points of special concern to ESL writers. Bad grammar is "nonstandard English" rather than bad grammar. Those who use plantation English like "She love him until he die" are admonished to "include the standard endings when you are writing." How about when speaking during a job interview? Apparently the authors would rather be PC about not offending those who speak this way than to condemn this as bad grammar on all occasions.

Much of this book is for students but that is not revealed in the title. The sections on writing school papers and ESL are about half the book. Those extra pages and the plastic spiral binding are probably why it costs about twice as much as a grammar handbook should cost. If you need a book that will remain open at the desired page while you use both hands to cook or repair your motorcycle then it may be worth paying for spiral binding but it is unnecessary in a grammar book.

Unless you plan to carry it around a campus in your backpack, you would do well to compare this to The Chicago Style Manual of Style before buying.