Writing Made Easy: Just the Basics

Timothy Sharkey

May 2022 · Deus Ex Machina

About this ebook

Writing Made Easy: Just the Basics by Timothy Sharkey explains how to make writing easy. It provides a “just-the-basics” approach to writing and it eliminates the complicated information that gets in the way. It includes expert definitions and helpful examples of what is really needed in writing – with professional scholarship and a literary sensibility – from an author who has taught English 101 and English 102 classes in college for over 15 years. Writing Made Easy: Just the Basics is the culmination of Timothy Sharkey’s 15-year effort to put the good information about writing into one book.

Writing Made Easy: Just the Basics covers the following information:

—Grammar, Syntax, Usage, Diction, Etymology

—Mechanics: abbreviations, capitalization, spelling

—Agreement Tips: past, present, and future; singular and plural; first, second, and third person voices

—Using whom correctly

—Punctuation Marks: apostrophe, brackets, colon, comma, dash, ellipsis, exclamation point, hyphen, parentheses, quotation marks, semicolon, slash

—Sentences: required ingredients, sentence mistakes (sentence fragments, run-on sentences, and comma-splice sentences – and how to correct them)

—Paragraphs: required ingredients; introduction, body, and concluding paragraphs; transition words

—Rhetorical Techniques: alliteration, allusion, hyperbole, metaphor, onomatopoeia, irony, parallel construction, personification

—Arguing Well: critical thinking, dialectics; Aristotle’s ethos, pathos, & logos; the Socratic Method, common ground

—Fallacies: ad hominem attack, begging the question, coded language, double-edged sword, hasty analogy, red herring, slippery slope, straw man, etc.

—Research Tips: advanced Google searches, Boolean operators, databases, Google Scholar, Google News, WolframAlpha, the CIA Factbook, etc.

—Research Paper (MLA 9th Edition): direct quotes, indirect quotes, interpolations, in-text citations, works cited page, hanging indents, correct formatting

—Writing Terms defined: bombastic, cliche, colloquial, concise, diction, etymology, euphemism, figure of speech, hyperbole, jargon, metaphor, oxymoron, redundant, rhetoric, slang, succinct, verbose, etc.

—Latin Terms for Writers defined: a priori, ad hoc, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, alumnus, bona fide, de facto, ibidem (ibid.), ipso facto, non sequiter, per se, prima facie, quasi, reductio ad absurdem, sic, summa cum laude, magna cum laude, verbatim, etc.

—Sample Essays included: descriptive essay, argumentative essay, research paper (MLA 9th Edition)

—Writing approaches, insights, and advice

Timothy Sharkey (author) has a Master of Liberal Arts degree in English & American Literature & Language from Harvard University. He has a Bachelor of General Studies degree (with a concentration in Film) from The University of Michigan. He has taught English 101 and English 102 classes in college in Chicago for over 20 years, and he has succeeded in taking complicated information and simplifying it for the demanding students in his classes.

Ratings and reviews

As a lifelong journalist I like that Mr. Sharkey sticks to "just the basics." My father, also a journalist, used to remind me that when you write "you are trying to tell somebody something."

About the author

Timothy Sharkey has taught English 101 and English 102 classes in college for over 15 years. He has a Master of Liberal Arts degree in English & American Literature & Language from Harvard University. He has developed a skill in taking the complicated information about writing and simplifying it for the demanding students enrolled in his classes. He believes that the good information about writing should be easy to find in one book, and he has compiled that information throughout his 15 years of teaching. Writing Made Easy: Just the Basics is the culmination of Timothy Sharkey’s 15-year effort to put the good information about writing into one book.