This is a rhetoric primarily for freshman English， but it has also<br >proved useful to others-advanced or struggling-who have found<br >themselves facing a blank page and the problems of exposition. From<br >the freshman s first essay through the senior s last paper (and on<br >through the doctoral dissertation and the corporate annual report)， the<br >expository problems are always the same. Indeed， they all come down<br >to two fundamental questions: one of form， one of style. And even<br >form is spatial styling. Since， in general， writing well is writing in<br >style， I have found it practical to teach writing ahnost as a tactile art， in<br >which students learn how to shape their material and bring out the<br >grain to best advantage. Hence The Practical Stglist-again revised<br >extensively.<br > In this Fifth Edition， I have strengthened the first chapter con-<br >cerning the student s overwhelming problem of getting started， add-<br >ing help with discovering a subject， with sharpening a thesis， with<br >projecting one s private responses into written validity， and finding<br >one s written voice. I have similarly strengthened the essential stra-<br >tegies of structure and the ways of coherent paragraphing. I have writ-<br >ten， in Chapter 4， a new treatment of rhetorical tactics， relying on such<br >durable organizational patterns as cause and effect， comparison-and<br >contrast， classification， and definition. I have strenghtened the chapter<br >on "evidence" by considering the basic inductive and deductive pat-<br >