The MLA's Line by Line, How to Edit Your Own Writing

The essential guide for all writers. With over 700 examples of original and edited sentences, this book provides information about editing techniques, grammar, and usage for every writer from the student to the published author.

Contents

Preface
On Looking at Sentences

1 Loose, Baggy Sentences

Profile of a Wordy Sentence
Shortcuts

2 Faulty Connections

Putting Modifiers in Their Places
Clarifying the Structure

3 Ill-matched Partners

Unbalanced Pairs and Series
Parallelism and Correlative Conjunctions
Parallelism and Clarity
Other Incompatibles

4 Mismanaged Numbers and References

Subject-Verb Disagreement
Pronoun-Antecedent Disagreement
Other Disagreement Problems
Faulty References

5 Problems with Punctuation

Commas–Good, Bad, and Indifferent
Semicolons, Colons, and Dashes and Parentheses

Afterword
Appendix A: The Parts of a Sentence
Appendix B: A Glossary of Questionable Usage
Selected Bibliography
Index