Customer Reviews

Along These Lines: Writing Paragraphs and Essays, Third Edition

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I am a writer with a disability that pokes holes in my memory just when I need most to retrieve vital information, so I needed a totally complete book on essay writing to look up the types of essays I want to use for my freelance essay writing efforts, and had considered taking a class or workshop, but knew I'd only forget the best parts, later. So, I spent days searching here in the novelist, journalist and writer's subject areas for a thorough "How To" book on writing essays that covered ALL of the rhetorical forms for structuring essays. A few books focused on only one type of essay or were only 100 pages of highlights featuring at most, one or two essay types.

Luckily I thought to check the textbook area on Amazon.com. These books aren't just for "kids". Now I have added the textbook area to my favorites list. :-)

"Along These Lines: Writing Paragraphs and Essays, Third Edition
by John Sheridan Biays and Carol Wershoven" would get 10 stars if possible. The book is 640 pages. The first 396 pages are devoted to essay writing instructions, idea generating lessons, very clear examples (through out), free flow and journal writing, simple and challenging exercises, countless writing prompts, indepth paragraph structure, writing from reading, and tear-out peer review critique pages in each section with fun word quizzes, individual & class tests. I have the Annotated Instructor's (3rd) Edition, containing the answers, a benefit for writers who want to test their knowledge for each chapter, before moving to the next one. The rest of the book's pages extensively cover grammar and punctuation as used in writing sentences, paragraphs and essays. "Along These Lines" is extensively indexed also.

"Along These Lines" contains dozens of beautiful full color photographs (every picture tells a story) and side-bars, with plenty of white space on the pages and margins, that makes the text a pleasure to look through and read. "Along These Lines" is perfect for writers who want a refresher course on essay writing and grammar; writers who enjoy word puzzles, word & vocabulary quizzes and self-testing; any one who writes or wants to be a writer, whether just for fun or a professional, student, journalist or amateur, and wants a course or workshop in Creative Writing, an English refresher class, english-as-second-language practice, or upper level high school or college students.

If the price is a problem, there are great alternative sources on Amazon, for used and like-new quality texts at a quarter of the price. My copy came from Amazon Marketplace seller. Now I'm on to edit my wishlist, and remove all the so-so essay writing books that aren't even a third as complete or thorough as "Along These Lines", though they cost about the same price (or more) than I paid for this book. "Along These Lines" is the ONLY Essay Writing book you or I will ever need.

The book was in good condition. It took it little longer than I expected to receive it so it was an even bigger upset to realize that it was the wrong book, but I was able to purchase the correct book the same day.