The Least You Should Know about English: Writing Skills (13th edition)

Most English textbooks cover more than you need to know. This book will present the least you should know in order to write with clarity and confidence. Improving your writing skills doesn’t require memorizing complex grammatical terms like gerund, auxiliary verb, or demonstrative pronoun. You can write well without knowing such technical labels if you understand certain key concepts—what we call “the least you should know about English.” The concepts covered in the four parts of this book progress from smaller structures to larger ones but can be approached in any order.

Part One on “Word Use” demonstrates how words work alone and together in predictable ways to express meaning. Part Two on “Sentence Structure” explains how subjects and verbs create clauses and join other structures to form sentences. Part Two also illustrates how knowing the patterns of English can help writers avoid and correct common errors. Part Three on “Punctuation” shows how punctuation marks act as a written code to aid understanding. Part Four on “Writing” explains how paragraphs and essays present ideas and evidence on a larger scale and in a variety of ways through the process of composition. To reinforce these concepts, all four parts focus less on “rules” and more on the skills and structures that successful writers use to communicate.