"As the title suggests, The Bare Essentials covers only those points of gramma, usage, and mechanics that are indispensible to clear expository writing: organization of ideas, sentence structure, grammar, spelling, diction, and punctuation. This book teaches the basic skills, leaving the teacher free to supplement the text according to the special needs of the class or the specfic objectives of the course.

Each "essential" is presented in a discrete unit. A glance at the table of contents will show that we have arranged the units in what be called the "order of visibility" of composition errors - starting with spelling and ending with organzation and diction - but the instructors may introduce the units in any order. The chapters within a unit should, however, be recovered in the order in which they appear. " from Preface, pg. 5

Contents

UNIT 1: SPELLING
Chapter 1 Three Suggestions for Quick Improvement 2
Chapter 2 Sound-Alikes, Look-Alikes, and Spoliers

UNIT 2: SENTENCES STRUCTURE
Chapter 3 Cracking the Sentence Code
Chapter 4 Still More about Verbs (For Those Who Need It)
Chapter 5 Solving Sentence-Fragment Problems
Chapter 6 Solving Run-On Problems
Chapter 7 Solving Modifier Problems
Chapter 8 The Paralellism Principle
Chapter 9 Refining by Combining

UNIT 3: GRAMMAR
Chapter 10 Subject-Verb Agreement
Chapter 11 Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement
Chapter 12 Tense Agreement
Chapter 13 Refining by Combining

UNIT 4: PUNCTUATION
Chapter 14 The Apostrophe
Chapter 15 Question and Exclamation Marks
Chapter 16 Quotation Marks
Chapter 17 The Colon
Chapter 18 The Comma
Chapter 19 The Semicolon
Chapter 20 Capital Letters and Punctuation Review

UNIT 5: ORGANIZING YOUR WRITING
Chapter 21 Finding Something To Write About
Chapter 22 Writing the Thesis Statement
Chapter 23 Writing the Outline
Chapter 24 Writing the Paragraph
Chapter 25 Revising the Paper

UNIT 6: BEYOND THE BARE ESSENTIALS
Introduction
Chapter 26 Levels of Usage
Chapter 27 Cliché, Jargon, and Slang
Chapter 28 Wordiness
Chapter 29 Abusages

Apprendices 225

Appendix A: Reading
"Writing a Good Businesss Letter,"
by Brian Green "What I Have Lived For,"
by Bertrand Russell
"Flunking with Style,"
by Neil Waldman
"Surviving Your Daughter's Adolescence,"
by Janet Read "A Flock of Freshmen,"
by Marty J. Chan

Appendix B: Answer

Appendix C: List of Grammatical