The Longman Pocket Writer's Companion - Softcover

The journey to better grades starts here.

Since writing and research is part of almost every college course, you need an accessible, easy-to-understand reference guide that can provide answers to the many grammar, writing, researching and documentation questions you’ll have. The Longman Pocket Writer’s Companion is an inexpensive, pocket-sized guide that answers all your writing questions and more.  Offering a distinctive focus on writing for different audiences ― academic, public, and workplace ― this handbook enables you to communicate more effectively, while its superior support for writing across the curriculum and up-to-date documentation coverage will help you get better grades in all of your courses.

Why You Need this New Edition

A new Ten Serious Errors section helps you recognize and correct major errors that make it hard for readers to understand your writing, including fragments, run-ons, unnecessary commas, and more.

A new chapter on Assessing Writing (Ch. 10) offers you strategies for seeing your own writing objectively as well as tips for anticipating how others might evaluate your work. 

A new chapter on Writing for General Education Courses (Ch. 8) helps you analyze your college assignments.  You’ll also find tips to help you with the most common writing tasks across the General Education curriculum (such as writing summaries, annotated bibliographies, and essay exams) helping you to write more effectively in all your courses.  

A new chapter on Writing in the Disciplines (Ch. 9) will help you write papers common in the majors (such as interpretations, textual and visual analyses, abstracts, lab reports, and researched reports) to set you up for success as your college career progresses.

New documentation entries illustrate how to cite sources such as blogs and podcasts, genres so new that they aren’t covered in many texts. 

New student sample pages in the CMS and CSE Style chapters (Chs 19, 20) ensure that you see sample student research writing in all four of the major academic documentation styles.

New Source Samples in the MLA and APA Style chapters (Chs 17, 18) show you where in the original source you can find all the information you need for citation.