Baxter 1

Thomas Baxter
English 103-014
Mrs. Rayne
3 September 2014
RR 1
Before I even opened the handbook The Everyday Writer, I had a good idea about what
was going to be in it, given that I have already used a different edition of the book during my
junior year of high school. Regardless, at first glance the tabs seem to highlight the broad
subjects on what the handbook will help to teach to the reader. The first color-coded section of
the book is called Analyzing and Composing. From this title, I can infer that these tabs explain
some of the approaches that one must take in order to get started on their essay.
The first green tab seems to explain the importance of possessing good writing skills and
how it will benefit one in the future. In most cases, it does not matter what you are going to end
up being, some writing is involved. When applying for a job, good writing skills can be the
difference between you and somebody else. With this, there are expectations for the learning
process in a college English classroom. Some of the tips that it gives readers are to plan ahead
for online assignments, to be an active member in class discussions, and to read actively when
the teacher is reading something from a passage or book.
The third section of chapter 1 deals with Critical Thinking and Argument. This section
highlights the importance of creating a well-constructed argument when writing a paper. Your
argument is everything in a paper. It is the ideas that you will base the entire paper off of, so

Baxter 2

putting a lot of thought into developing your argument is very important. It first tackles how to
obtain arguments from a reading, such as annotating and summarizing the main ideas of certain
portions of the reading. After an argument has been constructed, it explains to be objective to
every ones view across cultures, recognize alternative points of view, and use effective logical
appeals.
In the first chapter of The Everyday Writer, it features a section on research notes, and the
syllabus mentions a research project, making this section particularly relevant. It explains the
different kinds of sources that students may come across when researching, where the best place
is to start conducting your research, and creating a correct and working bibliography. It clarifies
the best times to use summaries and paraphrases as opposed to direct quotes.
The red colored chapter of The Everyday Writer focuses more on grammar and syntax as
a whole, This is equally as important as the first section because if you have prepared yourself
with a great guideline on a paper but cannot express it correctly then it will ruin your whole
effort, and vice versa. Both are equally important. This could be compared to something else,
lets say football. If you have a great playbook, but do not have the players to properly execute
the plays, then it all goes to waste. On the other hand, if you have great players on your team but
the coaches have not constructed a worthy playbook, then you can expect to fail.
The Sentence Style section highlights the importance of sentence structure in creating
an essay. One could have the same points in an essay, but if one features better sentence structure
than the other, it will seem as if it explained some of the supporting details of the essay better.
The section first goes through some of the ways to join ideas together through coordinating and
subordinating a sentence. Later on, the section emphasizes the importance to having parallel
structures to your sentences and paragraphs.

Baxter 3