Customer Reviews

The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Handbook, Second Edition

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The three (not quite redeeming) strengths of this book are its reasonable price, readability, and great example essays for each genre of writing discussed - some essays by professional writers and some by first-year college writing students. The example essays represent a broad range of styles and voices, allowing students to see the variety of "right ways" that a person might write in a particular genre.

As a teacher, however, I feel books such as this are something of a waste of time for my students. The only way a person can truly improve at writing is to write, not sit around and read about writing. Aside from the example essays, the reading itself is terribly dry, and I would in fact prefer that my students spent their time reading socially relevant and thought-provoking texts and freewriting on them instead of reading this text. Most basic writing-process guidelines that a freshman comp student will ever use (if he or she hasn't already learned them in high school) can be found in more multipurpose texts such as Diana Hacker's _Writer's Reference_. The number of items I assign my students to read in this book each semester is not even worth their buying it in the first place.

If you are considering this book, I urge you to look over the much denser and more helpful _A Writer's Reference_ instead and save your students the money for this field guide.

I ordered The Norton Field Guide to Writings with Readings SBN#9780393933819. What I received was The Norton Field Guide to Writing SBN#9780393934380. Just started my homework for class this minute and discovered my reading assignment is not contained in this edition. This is not the book I ordered.

Thanks to the real A+ seller, quick shipping, book is perfectly as described and just right on time for my next term of classes. Thanks a lot.
Bought and satisfied with The Norton Field Guide to Writing (Second Edition with 2009 MLA Updates)

When I recieved the Norton Field Guide to Writing it looked as though it was practically brand new. No problems with it. I recommmend this product.

I had to buy this for my English class. It's a nice book which has lots of sections and different variations and whatnot to keep the reader's attention. The book was delivered to me quickly and in perfect condition. Great price too!

This book has been helpful to understand academic writing. There are helpful visuals of the different writing styles.

Bought this book for a college course, it was about half the price of the ones at the book store. However it was an older edition and about 100 pages shorter than the newest edition.

I find this book to be as advertised and was in new condition. I am very pleased with this book.

It arrived in the predicted amount of time; I was very satisfied and pleased. It came in the condition described, also.

The book is very good for explaining writing concepts in an easily understood format. It also color codes rhetorical aspects of writing, which never helped me, but I'm sure would be quite useful for other people. However, the shipping time for this book was completely unacceptable. I bought this book 2 weeks before college started along with several other books from amazon. All the other books arrived just on time, but this book was almost 3 weeks late so I finally was forced to buy a different copy from the college store since I needed the book for a class. So now I have an extra copy of the book. Wasn't very happy about this.