本书是英语写作的初级教材。内容涵盖英语句子的类型与写法，标点的使用与书写格式，词的风格与词汇的准确使用，段落的整体性及连贯性，铺陈段落的各种手法等英语写作的基本知识与技巧，其特点是语言简单，论述通信，寓理论于实例中。
本书适用于大学英语专业、非英语专业初学写作的学习者，对参加各类写作测试的考生亦是一本极好的参考书。

Part One The Sentence
Chapter One Sentence Sense
Elements of a Sentence
Kinds of Sentences
General Idea About Coordination and Subordination
Chapter Two Effective Sentences
Unity
Coherence
Shifts
Reference of Pronouns
Emphasis
Variety
Chapter Three Sentence Skills
Sentence Fragments
Fused Sentences and Comma Splices
Subject-Verb Agreement
Misplaced Modifiers and Dangling Modifiers
Faulty Parallelism
Part Two Diction
Chapter For Appropriateness
Levels of Words
Nonstandard English
Consistency
Chapter Five Exactness
Denotation and Connotation
General and Specific,Abstract and Concrete Words
Effective Word Choice
Idioms
Chapter Six Dictionaries
Dictionary Use
Some Good Dictionaries
Part Three the Paragraph
Chapter Seven Introduciton to the Paragraph
What Is a Paragraph
The Form of a Pargraph
Guidelines for Paragraph Writing
The Importance to Learn to Write Paragrphs
Chapter Eighet Unity
What Is Unity
How to Make a Paragraph Unified
Basic Principles of Paragraph Unified
Chapter Nine Coherence
What Is Coherence
How to Make a Paragraph Coherent
……
Part Four Mechanics and Punctuation
Key to the Exercises
Glossary
Bibliography