Oxford Paperback Reference – serie

Plain English is the art of writing clearly, concisely, and in a way that precisely communicates your message to your intended audience. This book offers expert advice to help writers of all abilities improve their written English. With 30 chapters, each centred around a practical guideline, its coverage is extensive, including lessons on vocabulary, punctuation, grammar, layout, proofreading, and organization. There are also hundreds of real examples to show how it's done, with handy 'before' and 'after' versions. All this is presented in a straightforward and engaging way.This new edition has been fully revised, reorganized, and updated to make its content even more accessible. There are new chapters discussing customer-service writing and common blunders in the workplace, while other sections have been amended to update examples and provide easier routes through the book. The chapter on sexism, in particular, has been heavily expanded to advise on the use of inclusive language in general. A new appendix has also been added, summarising the history of plain English from Chaucer to the present day.

For nearly half a century, James D. Hart's Oxford Companion to American Literature has offered a matchless guided tour through American literary culture, both past and present. Hart now presents the first abridgement of the Companion in a paperback edition, making the entries of the greatest general interest from the original volume available to a much wider audience.Compact and affordable, The Concise Oxford Companion to American Literature contains over 2,000 entries, including brief biographies of important authors, plot summaries of individual works, descriptions of important literary movements, and a wealth of information on other aspects of American literary life and history from the Colonial period to the modern era. It devotes approximately 325 of the biographical entries to contemporary writers, introducing such newcomers to the Companion as William Kennedy, Grace Paley, and Raymond Carver. The more specialized and esoteric entries from the original have been omitted.Like its predecessor, The Concise Oxford Companion contains a thorough system of cross references to guide the reader to related information on a given topic, as well as a chronological Index outlining significant events in the literary and social history of the United States.