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 contains 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

–All 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

–Please Note: the paperback version of Writing Made Easy: Just the Basics features professional typography designed in the tradition of the Fine Press movement in England and America – especially the book designs of Bruce Rogers – and it uses Bruce Rogers’ own Centaur typeface.



Timothy Sharkey (author) has a Master of Liberal Arts degree in English & American Literature & Language from Harvard University. He has taught English 101 and English 102 classes in college for over 15 years. He has developed a skill in taking 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.