The Concise Canadian Writer's Handbook Student Workbook

This workbook accompanies The Concise Canadian Writer's Handbook. It provides exercises covering the topics in the main book, from the mechanics of building strong sentences and paragraphs to the intricacies of writing, formatting, and documenting full-length research papers. With over 150 exercises, the workbook helps students gain a firm grasp of grammatical concepts and other topics. Exercises also help students improve their writing through practical application of the effective writing techniques discussed in the text.

William E. Messenger (now deceased) and Jan de Bruyn, both emeritus professors of the University of British Columbia, produced the first edition of The Canadian Writer's Handbook in 1980. Judy Brown joined the project as an editorial consultant on the third edition; she is a senior instructor in the English department at UBC, where she teaches courses in Canadian and children's literature. Ramona Montagnes, also a member of UBC's English department, has been the director of the university's writing centre since 1992 and is responsible for the development of new courses and programs for the centre.

Part I: Principles of Composition
1. 1-7 Working with paragraphs
2. 9a-b Finding and limiting subjects
3. 9c Thinking about audience and purpose
4. 9d Generating material
5. 9e Classifying and organizing data
6. 9f-j (1) Writing thesis statements and outlines
7. 9f-j (2) Revising weak outlines
8. 9f-j (3) Constructing and using outlines
9. 9-l Evaluating beginnings
10. 10 (1) Detecting faulty reasoning
11. 10 (2) Analyzing arguments and recognizing persuasive techniques
12. 10 (3) Including the opposition
Part II: Understanding Sentences
13. 12a-b (1) Subject and predicate
14. 12a-b (2) Subject and predicate with modifiers and articles
15. 12d-e Sentence patterns 2A and 2B
16. 12f Sentence pattern 3
17. 12g-k Sentence patterns 4A, 4B, 5A, 5B, and 6
18. 12k Sentence pattern 6
19. 12c-k (1) Identifying sentence patterns
20. 12c-k (2) Identifying sentence elements and patterns
21. 12m-n Dependent and independent clauses
22. 12-o Functions of subordinate clauses
23. 12p Recognizing phrases
24. 12m-p (1) Recognizing phrases and clauses
25. 12m-p (2) Recognizing phrases and clauses
26. 12q (1) Writing appositives
27. 12q (2) Using appositives
28. 12q-r Identifying appositives and absolutes
29. 12w-x Recognizing minor sentences and fragments
30. 12x Recognizing and correcting sentence fragments
31. 12z (1) Recognizing kinds of sentences
32. 12z (2) Recognizing kinds of sentences
33. 12z (3) Constructing different kinds of sentences
34. 12z (4) Constructing different kinds of sentences
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Part III: Parts of Speech
35. 13b (1) Recognizing nouns
36. 13b (2) Recognizing nouns
37. 14e Using correct pronouns
38. 14 Identifying pronouns
39. 15d Avoiding gender bias
40. 15 (1) Pronoun-antecedent agreement
41. 15 (2) Correcting agreement errors
42. 16 (1) Correcting faulty pronoun reference
43. 16 (2) Correcting faulty pronoun reference
44. 17a (1) Identifying verb types
45. 17a (2) Recognizing subjective complements
46. 17c (1) Using irregular verbs
47. 17c (2) Using irregular verbs
48. 17e Modal auxiliary verbs
49. 17g Verb tense
50. 17-l (1) Revising passive voice
51. 17-l (2) Revising passive voice
52. 18 (1) Subject-verb agreement
53. 18 (2) Choosing correct verbs
54. 18 (3) Correcting faulty subject-verb agreement
55. 19a-b Adjectives
56. 19c Using articles
57. 19e Order of adjectives
58. 20 Identifying adverbs
59. 19-20 (1) Recognizing adjectives and adverbs
60. 19-20 (2) Correcting misused adjectives and adverbs
61. 19-20 (3) Using adjectival and adverbial modifiers
62. 21a Identifying infinitive phrases
63. 21d-e Using participles
64. 21 (1) Identifying verbal phrases
65. 21 (2) Recognizing verbals
66. 21 (3) Using verbals
67. 21 (4) Writing with verbals
68. 21 (5) Reducing clauses
69. 21 (6) Reducing clauses to infinitive phrases
70. 21 (7) Using absolute phrases
71. 21 (8) Using absolute phrases
72. 22a-c (1) Identifying prepositions
73. 22a-c (2) Recognizing prepositional phrases
74.22a-c (3) Using prepositional phrases
75. 23a Using coordinating conjunctions
76. 23c (1) Recognizing subordinate clauses
77. 23c (2) Using subordinating conjunctions
78. 23c (3) Writing subordinate clauses
79. 23 (1) Identifying conjunctions
80. 23 (2) Writing with conjunctions
81. 13-24 Recognizing parts of speech
82. Review exercises: Part III
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Part IV: Writing Effective Sentences
83. 27a Lengthening sentences
84. 27b Shortening sentences
85. 28 Sentence variety
86. 27-29 Sentence length, variety, and emphasis
87. 32 (1) Correcting sentence fragments
88. 32 (2) Correcting sentence fragments
89. 35 (1) Correcting misplaced modifiers
90. 35 (2) Correcting misplaced modifiers
91. 36 (1) Correcting dangling modifiers
92. 36 (2) Correcting dangling modifiers
93. 32-36 Review of common sentence errors
94. 37 (1) Correcting mixed constructions
95. 37 (2) Correcting mixed constructions
96. 38 (1) Improving alignment
97. 38 (2) Improving alignment
98. 39 Eliminating shifts
99. 40 (1) Correcting faulty parallelism
100. 40 (2) Correcting faulty parallelism
101. 41 (1) Using subordination
102. 41 (2) Correcting faulty coordination
103. 42 Improving logic
104. Review exercises: Parts II, III, and IV
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Part V: Punctuation
105. 43a-b The comma, independent clauses, and coordinating conjunctions
106. 43c-d Punctuating parallel adjectives and series
107. 43e (1) Punctuating adverbial clauses
108. 43e (2) Punctuating opening and closing words and phrases
109. 43e (3) Punctuating words, phrases, and adverbial clauses
110. 43f (1) Punctuating nonrestrictive elements
111. 43f (2) Identifying and punctuating nonrestrictive and restrictive elements
112. 43 (1) Using commas
113. 43 (2) Extra punctuation practice: the comma
114. 44 The semicolon
115. 43-45 Comma, semicolon, or colon
116. 44-46 Using the semicolon, colon, and dash
117. 43g, 46, 47 Punctuating sentence interrupters
118. 54a-b (also 33-34) (1) Correcting comma splices and run-on sentences
119. 54a-b (also 33-34) (2) Correcting comma splices and run-on sentences
120. 54a-b (also 33-34) (3) Correcting comma splices and run-on sentences
121. 43-46 Extra punctuation practice
122. 52 Quotation marks
123. 43-54 (1) Punctuation review
124. 43-54 (2) Punctuation review
125. Review exercises: Part V
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Part VI: Mechanics and Spelling
126. 56 Using abbreviations correctly
127. 57-59 Capitalization, titles, and italics
128. 61k (1) Using hyphens
129. 61k (2) Using hyphens
130. 62-l Forming plurals
131. 61-l-n (1) Using apostrophes
132. 61-l-n (2) Using apostrophes
133. 62 Correcting misspellings
134. Review exercise: Part VI
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Part VII: Diction
135. 64a-b (1) Using formal diction
136. 64a-b (2) Slang, colloquialisms, and informal expressions
137. 64c (1) Thinking about "big" words
138. 64c (2) Eliminating pretentious diction
139. 66 (1) Using specific diction
140. 66 (2) Being concrete and specific
141. 67 Recognizing connotation
142. 68 Avoiding euphemisms
143. 69 (1) Avoiding wrong words
144. 69 (2) Avoiding wrong words
145. 70 (1) Correcting idioms
146. 70 (2) Correcting idioms
147. 71c Cutting redundancy
148.71a-c (1) Reducing wordiness
149. 71a-c (2) Reducing wordiness by combining sentences
150. 71a-d Reducing wordiness, redundancy, and ready-made phrases
151. 71e Eliminating cliches
152. 71g Evaluating nouns used as adjectives
153. 72 Usage
154. 63-72 Sentence revisions
155. Review exercise: Part VII
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Part VIII: Research, Writing, and Documentation
156. 78 Paraphrasing and summarizing
157. 79a Documenting in MLA
158. 79b Documenting in APA
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