Learn To Write Badly

A humorous, clearly written scholarly analysis of what is going wrong with the way that social scientists write.

Modern academia is increasingly competitive yet the writing style of social scientists is routinely poor and continues to deteriorate. Are social science postgraduates being taught to write poorly? What conditions adversely affect the way they write? And which linguistic features contribute towards this bad writing? Michael Billig's witty and entertaining book analyses these questions in a quest to pinpoint exactly what is going wrong with the way social scientists write. Using examples from diverse fields such as linguistics, sociology and experimental social psychology, Billig shows how technical terminology is regularly less precise than simpler language. He demonstrates that there are linguistic problems with the noun-based terminology that social scientists habitually use - 'reification' or 'nominalization' rather than the corresponding verbs 'reify' or 'nominalize'. According to Billig, social scientists not only use their terminology to exaggerate and to conceal, but also to promote themselves and their work.

"His use of language, his ability to twist the narrative and turn the obscure into the profound is outstanding." – The Stage Looking for a creative writing guide out there that will tell you how to write better? A book to tell you how to structure a perfect plot, create great characters, use language in a powerful and poetic way? This is not that book. 100 Ways to Write Badly Well is an adventure in drivel. It will teach you how to botch a plot, how to create characters that no one in their right mind would identify with and how to reduce the beauty of the English language to an incoherent mush. Using one hundred practical examples, each awful in its own unique way, blogger and creative writing tutor Joel Stickley will lead you methodically up the creek and carefully remove your paddle before running off and leaving you stranded. The route is lined with mixed metaphors, terrible plot twists, piles of adjectives and characters staring at themselves in mirrors for no apparent reason. Based on the popular blog and live comedy show How To Write Badly Well, this book is an invaluable guide to the art of awful writing that no would-be author should be without. Remember – if a thing's worth doing badly, it's worth doing badly well.

After being diagnosed with terminal cancer, a professor shares the lessons he's learned—about living in the present, building a legacy, and taking full advantage of the time you have—in this life-changing classic. "We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." —Randy Pausch A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull over the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy? When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave—"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"—wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have . . . and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living. In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.

Letters of Note, the book based on the beloved website of the same name, became an instant classic on publication in 2013, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. This new edition sees the collection of the world's most entertaining, inspiring and unusual letters updated with fourteen riveting new missives and a new introduction from curator Shaun Usher. From Virginia Woolf's heart-breaking suicide letter to Queen Elizabeth II's recipe for drop scones sent to President Eisenhower; from the first recorded use of the expression 'OMG' in a letter to Winston Churchill, to Gandhi's appeal for calm to Hitler; and from Iggy Pop's beautiful letter of advice to a troubled young fan, to Leonardo da Vinci's remarkable job application letter, Letters of Note is a celebration of the power of written correspondence which captures the humour, seriousness, sadness and brilliance that make up all of our lives.

Fasten your seat belt for a crash course in careful usage.... Just like automobile accidents, accidents of style occur all over the English-speaking world, in print and on the Internet, thousands of times every day. They range from minor fender benders, such as confusing their and there, to serious smashups, such as misusing sensual for sensuous or writing loathe when you mean loath. Charles Harrington Elster shows you how to navigate the hairpin turns of grammar, diction, spelling, and punctuation with an entertaining driver's manual covering 350 common word hazards and infractions, arranged in order of complexity for writers of all levels. Elster illustrates these surprisingly common accidents with quotations from numerous print and online publications, many of them highly regarded---which perhaps should make us feel better: If the horrendous redundancy close proximity and the odious construction what it is, is have appeared in The New York Times, maybe our own accidents will be forgiven. But that shouldn't keep us from aspiring to accident-free writing and speaking. If you want to get on the road to writing well, The Accidents of Style will help you drive home what you want to say.

For courses in First-Year Composition - Rhetoric. Puts inquiry at the heart of good writing We write to learn as much as we do to express what we already know. In his remarkably personal and engaging voice, Bruce Ballenger makes that powerful concept central to The Curious Writer, Concise Edition. The Curious Writer, Concise Edition doesn't read like a textbook or provide a formula for composing essays. Instead, it encourages students to suspend judgment, to ask questions, and to seek answers much like academics do. Yet it covers a wide range of genres beyond the academic essay-narrative, profile, review, ethnography, argument, and more-all with a distinctive approach and "personality" that is lacking in other texts. It also reinforces the assumption that genres are malleable with a new chapter on repurposing or "re-genre-ing." Students love that this book helps them learn to write by pursuing their own curiosity. Teachers appreciate that Ballenger provides ample opportunities for students to develop the habits of mind necessary to become critical thinkers and curious writers. Also available with MyWritingLab(TM) MyWritingLab is an online homework, tutorial, and assessment program designed to work with this text to engage students and improve results. Within its structured environment, students practice what they learn, test their understanding, and pursue a personalized study plan that helps them better absorb course material and understand difficult concepts. Note: You are purchasing a standalone product; MyWritingLab does not come packaged with this content. Students, if interested in purchasing this title with MyWritingLab, ask your instructor for the correct package ISBN and Course ID. Instructors, contact your Pearson representative for more information. If you would like to purchase both the physical text and MyWritingLab, search for: 0134150791 / 9780134150796 The Curious Writer, Concise Edition Plus MyWritingLab without Pearson eText -- Access Card Package Package consists of: 0133933296 / 9780133933291 MyWritingLab without Pearson eText -- Access Card 013393330X / 9780133933307 MyWritingLab without Pearson eText -- Inside Star Sticker 0134120701 / 9780134120706 The Curious Writer, Concise Edition

Now in paperback, “a compelling, accessible, and provocative piece of work that forces us to question many of our assumptions” (Gillian Tett, author of Fool’s Gold). Quants, physicists working on Wall Street as quantitative analysts, have been widely blamed for triggering financial crises with their complex mathematical models. Their formulas were meant to allow Wall Street to prosper without risk. But in this penetrating insider’s look at the recent economic collapse, Emanuel Derman—former head quant at Goldman Sachs—explains the collision between mathematical modeling and economics and what makes financial models so dangerous. Though such models imitate the style of physics and employ the language of mathematics, theories in physics aim for a description of reality—but in finance, models can shoot only for a very limited approximation of reality. Derman uses his firsthand experience in financial theory and practice to explain the complicated tangles that have paralyzed the economy. Models.Behaving.Badly. exposes Wall Street’s love affair with models, and shows us why nobody will ever be able to write a model that can encapsulate human behavior.