If You Write Everyday, You Need The Everyday Writer

I felt as though I'd been trapped in a maze with no exit. Just two days prior to the start of my current college semester, they - "they" being the college - they were kind enough to regretfully inform me that a class I'd registered for had been cancelled. Feeling somewhat panicked - I have to take at least 9 credit hours a semester to remain eligible for financial aid, because I'm a poor, miserable bastard with no job - I logged on and tried to register for a replacement class. And tried, and tried, and tried. I ran into the same proverbial brick wall with each class I attempted to get into: ENG 121, or English Composition, was a prerequisite for registration: whether it was Humanities, Regional Geography, Sociology, or Binge Drinking 105, I had to take English Comp first, which of course, I had to test into. Anyway, one of the books required for this particular English Comp course is Andrea A. Lunsford's The Everyday Writer, a writer's reference book or writer's manual or writer's guide that's already paying itself off in terms of GPA.

The Everyday Writer is an efficiently-organized reference book full of rules of punctuation and grammar, sentence structure, writing basics, hints, tips, and a Best of Penthouse Forum section (OK, so I made that last part up) all easily accessed by tabs (and also indexed for those that are anti-tab.) More importantly, as far as the student is concerned, there is an MLA (Modern Language Association) Format/Style section. MLA is the format used by most professors and instructors these days - gone are your old-school cover pages, for example - and the MLA section gives the student step-by-step rules and a real-world example of how to properly format a paper to fit MLA guidelines.

For instance, instead of the old cover page, the info contained on that antiquated titular method is now placed in the top left corner of the first page - and you'd better make sure you have a header in the upper right corner of each page, and you'd better indent each paragraph as well. Don't worry, though, page 403 has a real-life example written by an actual college student back in 2003 - it's unknown whether David Craig was paid for the use of his work, but he can rest more easily knowing that his paper on Instant Messaging helped me get an "A" on my own summary of The Iron Maiden: How Advertising Portrays Women.

Ah, but of course, my grade wasn't only due to Craig's example - although that played a huge part in terms of proper formatting. No, our first paper was an ungraded essay on a book review; Axle of Evil: America's Twisted Love Affair with Sociopathic Cars by Gregg Easterbrook. I wrote, essentially, a review of the review (and it was quite good, if I may say so myself.) But since it was ungraded, I didn't bother with The Everyday Writer. This resulted in a wildly blatant misuse of apostrophes and semicolons - my otherwise perfect paper was full of "delete" symbols, all punctuation-related, as if some apostrophe-happy, wild-eyed madman had hijacked my paper on its way to the printer. But for The Iron Maiden, I made careful use of the tab representing pages 318-364. I paid careful attention to the rules contained therein - you know, stuff like "use apostrophes to signal possessive case," stuff I knew yet chose to ignore - which resulted in a much cleaner paper.

Another section that writers might find helpful at some point include Writing in the Disciplines, which gives advice for writing for Literature, Social and Natural Sciences, and Business. Multilingual writers will find a helpful section by Franklin E. Horowitz at the final, back tab that covers fundamentals that will help multilingual writers. Since I'm not a multilingual writer I've only perused the section, but I'd like to think that someone writing in English as a second language might find it useful.

Considering that I had no choice but to purchase The Everyday Writer - it's pretty much my Bible for the next couple months, whether I like it or not - it's already paying off in a big way in terms of school work. Hell, I like it so much that rather than sell it at the end of the semester, I'll probably hang on to it and start using it for other purposes, such as Epinions reviews and letters to Penthouse.