Introduction

This is a free and open textbook for college composition, particularly for the range of first-year writing courses. The focus is on expository essays, such as academic argumentation, analysis, comparison, critique, synthesis, and so forth. This is as opposed to the many other types of writing in college, such as fiction, poetry, journalism, business/technical writing, personal reflection, etc., which are not covered here.

The primary aim of this textbook is to help students achieve clarity and correctness in their writing. A secondary aim is to help students with strategies that can make their writing more effective.

This textbook is essentially an edited, altered, and expanded version of another free and open textbook, Writing for Success, by an author whose name was removed at the request of the original publisher. Josh Woods edited, altered, and expanded this version, The Writing Textbook. The creative-commons license for this textbook allows you to access and use it as you see fit–except where otherwise noted–with fairly liberal protocols, such as offering basic attribution if you take from it, not monetizing it, etc. Please see the section titled Publisher Information for details about and links to the original text and the license for this and the original.