The School of Letters & Tongues · language, literature & writing
Composition & Rhetoric
Writing as thinking made visible — how to build a sentence, a paragraph, and an argument that holds.
Subjects, verbs, and the discipline of saying one thing well before saying the next.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~12 hours
Unit I — The Sentence, Anatomized
Subjects, verbs, and the weight they carry · Right-branching sentences and why they read fast · Nominalizations and how to undo them
Unit II — Cutting Clutter
Throat-clearing openers · Redundant pairs and empty modifiers · The passive voice: when it earns its keep
Unit III — Rhythm and Emphasis
End-weight: putting the news last · Sentence length as pacing · Reading your draft aloud
How a question becomes a thesis, a thesis becomes paragraphs, and paragraphs become a finished essay.
The structure of a sound argument, the weighing of evidence, and persuasion that respects its audience.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~18 hours
Unit I — What an Argument Is
Claim, reasons, evidence · Warrants: the unstated bridge · Arguable and unarguable claims
Unit II — Evidence and Its Limits
Kinds of evidence and when each persuades · Weighing sources · Statistics without deception
Unit III — The Other Side
Steelmanning the opposition · Concession and rebuttal · Rogerian argument
Unit IV — Fallacies and Rhetorical Ethics
Common fallacies in the wild · Ethos, pathos, logos in honest hands · Writing the full argumentative essay
Finding sources worth trusting, taking notes worth keeping, and writing the paper that uses them well.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~24 hours
Unit I — The Research Question
Narrowing a topic until it can be answered · Primary and secondary sources · Starting a working bibliography
Unit II — Reading and Note-Making
Skimming for structure, reading for argument · Quotation, paraphrase, summary · Avoiding accidental plagiarism
Unit III — Drafting the Long Paper
Organizing by argument, not by source · Integrating quotations · Signal phrases and attribution
Unit IV — Finishing
Citation styles: MLA, APA, Chicago · The abstract and the title · Final proofreading passes
The machinery under the sentence — clauses, agreement, and punctuation — taught for people who write.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~15 hours
Unit I — Parts of Speech, Revisited
Nouns to particles: an honest tour · Verbs: tense, aspect, mood · Modifier placement
Unit II — The Clause
Independent and dependent clauses · Fragments and run-ons · Coordination and subordination
Unit III — Punctuation as Signal
Commas that clarify · Semicolons, colons, dashes · Apostrophes and the possessive
Unit IV — Usage and Judgment
Agreement problems worth fixing · Rules, superstitions, and house styles · When to break a rule on purpose
Developmental, line, and copy editing — how to improve a text without erasing its writer.
Syllabus · 3 units · ~16 hours
Unit I — Levels of Edit
Developmental, line, and copy editing · Diagnosing before treating · Writing editorial queries
Unit II — Line Editing in Practice
Tightening without flattening · Preserving a writer's voice · Fact-checking basics
Unit III — Proofreading and Style
House style and style guides · Proofreading marks and passes · Editing your own work — the hardest case