The writing process: A concise rhetoric

by John M. Lannon

This writing guide/reader/handbook demystifies writing by presenting the writing process as a series of critical thinking decisions about audience and purpose. Widely admired for its clear, readable style, The Writing Process focuses on writing as decision-making, with a wealth of student samples in various draft stages and a strong selection of professional readings to illustrate writing strategies.

Helps readers understand the writing process. Writing process, research process. Anyone who wants to learn to write well.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction

418 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Such an uninspired book! Generic advice, mostly useless, along the lines "if you have to write, you have to write well" without even bothering to define what writing well would imply. The whole thing, including the teacher using this handbook, can be done for free with the help of blogs / videos who rehash the same dated information Lannon copied for his book.

[Christy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was forced to teach a freshman writing course from this book. It was awful (the course and the book). The book claims to be a reader, a rhetoric, and a handbook. What it really is? Unsatisfactory on all three parts. There's not enough in it for it to be an effective reader, and the selections are all very, very short, not demanding or challenging at all. The rhetoric portions are dull as dirt. Granted, it's hard to make rhetoric and argument theory interesting to freshmen, but it wasn't interesting to me, either, and I've chosen this as my profession. That should indicate a problem. The handbook information is clear enough, but only gets in the way of the other parts of the book. If you want your students to have a handbook, have them buy a handbook, or, as I do, point them to reliable online resources for the same information. (Purdue's online writing lab is wonderful for this very purpose.)

Maybe others have had better luck with it than I have, but it would require a LOT of outside materials to make up for the deficiencies of this text. Overall, this book deserves to be done away with.