The Art of Writing Well

(Companion course for the Proofreading and Copy Editing short course)

Duration: 27 hours (three evenings for three weeks)

Description: The Art of Writing Well is a short course for persons who want to refresh their grammar
and improve their writing. This course will help your writing become clearer, more concise and better
organised. The Art of Writing Well explores audience, context, tone, structure and language awareness
as they apply to a range of writing projects.

Applicants to this course must write a brief essay of between 100 and 200 words to answer the following
question: Why do you want to do this course?

Students may also find the short course in Proofreading and Copy Editing a useful companion course.

Objectives
At the end of this course students will be able to:
identify and correct some sentence-level grammatical and punctuation errors
write a well-organized, detailed paragraph
understand the value of brevity, in writing, and develop skills to get maximum value from only a
few words

Content
Purpose: The Rhetorical Situation
Audience: Writing for Whom?
Deciding on a Format
Determining Voice/Tone: formal vs casual; active vs passive; using appropriate language
Structure: writing topic sentences; transitions and signposting; paragraph development
Composition and Style: making your sentences concise; punctuation; spelling; commonly
confused words; playing on words for emphasis; maintaining coherence; grammar
The Modern Writer: How to maintain standards in the digital age

Format
Lectures, writing exercises, critiques and discussions

Suggested Materials
Video: In Defense of Rhetoric
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYMUCz9bHAs&feature=youtu.be&hd=1



The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr and E.B White.
http://www.bartleby.com/141/

Alexander Communications Style Guide
http://www.alexcommunications.com/style_guide.htm#proverbs

Topic Sentences and Signposting by Elizabeth Abrams, for the Writing Center at Harvard University
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr/documents/TopicSentences.html

Transitioning by Maxine Rodburg, for the Writing Center at Harvard University
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr/documents/Transitions.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks3/english/writing/

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/

Instructor
Robert Lalah is Features Editor at The Gleaner newspaper, in Kingston. He is in charge of all feature
articles in the daily Gleaner and Sunday Gleaner publications. He has worked for close to a decade at
The Gleaner, in different areas including hard news and commentary. Robert is the author of two
bestselling books: Roving with Lalah and More Slices of Roving, both released by Ian Randle
Publishers. These two books are record sellers for the publisher. The books are compilations of Roberts
extremely popular Roving with Lalah feature stories, which are published on Tuesdays in The Gleaner.
At the 2008 launch of Roving with Lalah, at the Jamaican High Commission in London, England, scores
of Jamaicans living in England and neighbouring countries turned out to show their support. At the
popular Word Power Book Fair, held at the Emirates Stadium in North London, Roving with Lalah was
among the top selling books by Caribbean writers. Along with Roving with Lalah, Robert currently
writes an opinion column published every Monday in The Gleaner. It is called Lalah Land and in a short
time has developed a strong and loyal readership. Robert is a graduate of the Department of Literatures
in English, University of the West Indies, Mona, and a current postgraduate student in the same
department. In addition to local papers and magazines, his writing has appeared in the UK Voice, and
The Toronto Star.