Frank L. Cioffi

Generations of student writers have been subjected to usage handbooks that proclaim, "This is the correct form. Learn it"—books that lay out a grammar, but don't inspire students to use it. By contrast, this antihandbook handbook, presenting some three hundred sentences drawn from the printed works of a single, typical day in the life of the language—29 December 2008—tries to...

More than merely a writing text, The Imaginative Argument offers writers instruction on how to use their imaginations to improve their prose. Cioffi shows writers how they can enliven argument—the organising rubric of all persuasive writing—by drawing on emotion, soul, and creativity, the wellsprings of imagination. While Cioffi suggests that argument should become a natural habit of mind for writers,...

An indispensable guide to essential principles of English grammar and usage. Stellar English lays out the fundamentals of effective writing, from word choice and punctuation to parts of speech and common errors. Frank Cioffi emphasises how formal written English—though only a subdialect of the language—enables writers to reach a wide and heterogeneous audience. Cioffi's many example sentences illustrating grammatical principles...