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THIS TITLE HAS BEEN UPDATED TO REFLECT THE 2016 MLA UPDATES! Our editorial team has updated this text based on content from The MLA Handbook, 8th Edition. Browse our catalog or contact your representative for a full listing of updated titles and packages, or to request a custom ISBN. Thorough and practical, Writing from Sources is an indispensable guide to source-based composition. Using a skills-based approach, students begin with the building blocks of research writing—annotating a passage and summarizing a source—then progress through more complex steps, such as synthesizing multiple sources and writing a full-length research essay. Along the way, dozens of readings by professional writers and clear, helpful exercises provide models for practice and proficiency. Known for its clear and helpful advice, Writing from Sources teaches the fundamentals of research writing that students will use throughout their college careers.

Writing from Sources provides students with a complete guide to the skills of doing research and integrating the results confidently and effectively into their own prose, while providing instructors with all the readings and prompts they need for a complete course in source-based writing. To teach students a reliable process for working with sources, the book builds systematically from simpler skills such as finding a topic and looking for sources to more demanding ones such as choosing appropriate sources and integrating them smoothly with the writer's own ideas, providing detailed guidance and examples for each step. Many exercises and writing assignments, supported by numerous readings ranging from brief excerpts to full essays, provide ample practice in every skill.

Helping you to read critically and analyze well, Writing from Sources provides detailed, step-by-step coverage of every aspect of the research and writing process. The book equips you with the skills you need to integrate source materials into your own writing, preparing you to produce confident, college-level work.

- A systematic approach to using sources introduces research and writing skills gradually, in lessons of progressive difficulty, with 32 exercises and 13 writing assignments so that students can master each skill (such as finding sources) before moving on to the next one (evaluating sources). Separate chapters on single-source and multiple-source essays let students work with the simpler demands of a single source before introducing them to the more complex skills of multiple-source writing.- Covering more than just research, the book provides detailed guidance for each step of the writing process, including brainstorming a topic, formulating a thesis, developing an argument, paraphrasing and quoting, and integrating source material appropriately and smoothly into an essay. To illustrate these steps, 53 reading selections appear throughout the text in exercises and assignments as well as in explanations of writing and research skills.- Extensively revised chapters on electronic research give students updated and more detailed explanations and examples of searching for sources, deciding which ones are worth pursuing, and using computers to take notes and facilitate other stages of the research and writing process.