WRITING ANALYTICALLY treats writing as a tool of thought, offering prompts that lead students through the process of analysis and help them to generate original, well-developed ideas. The authors of this brief, popular rhetoric believe that learning to write well requires learning to use writing as a tool to think well. Rosenwasser and Stephen emphasize analysis as a mode of enriching understanding that precedes and in some cases supplants argument. Materials in the eighth edition are better integrated, more contextualized and--when possible--condensed. A new chapter, "Thinking Like a Writer," contains strategies for integrating opportunities for writing into a course. It makes explicit a subtext that pervades the book: that to think of yourself as a writer is to see more, to think differently and to engage the meaning of things more earnestly.

Unit I: THE ANALYTICAL FRAME OF MIND.
1. The Five Analytical Moves.
2. Reading Analytically.
3. Interpretation: Moving from Observation to Implication.
4. Responding to Traditional Writing Assignments More Analytically.
5. Thinking Like a Writer.
Unit II: WRITING THE ANALYTICAL PAPER
6. Reasoning from Evidence to Claims.
7. Finding and Evolving a Thesis.
8. Conversing with Sources: Writing the Researched Paper.
9. Finding, Evaluating, and Citing Sources.
Unit III: MATTERS OF FORM.
10. From Paragraphs to Papers: Forms and Formats Across the Curriculum.
11. Style: Choosing Words, Shaping Sentences.
12. Nine Basic Writing Errors (BWEs) and How to Fix Them.

WRITING ANALYTICALLY treats writing as a tool of thought, offering prompts that lead students through the process of analysis and help them to generate original, well-developed ideas. The authors of this brief, popular rhetoric believe that learning to write well requires learning to use writing as a tool to think well. Rosenwasser and Stephen emphasize analysis as a mode of enriching understanding that precedes and in some cases supplants argument. Materials in the eighth edition are better integrated, more contextualized and--when possible--condensed. A new chapter, "Thinking Like a Writer," contains strategies for integrating opportunities for writing into a course. It makes explicit a subtext that pervades the book: that to think of yourself as a writer is to see more, to think differently and to engage the meaning of things more earnestly. Chapters are organized into three units to better distinguish phases of the writing process and different levels of concern. Unit One contains the book's primary observation heuristics along with definition of the aims and methods of analysis. Unit Two addresses issues relevant to writing analytical papers such as finding and developing a thesis and putting sources into conversation in research-based writing. Unit Three explains forms and formats across the curriculum. The interpretation chapter (Chapter 3) now comes immediately after and is better connected with the first two chapters: "The Five Analytical Moves" and "Reading Analytically." Chapter 1 and 2's focus on moving from observation to implication--what the authors call asking and answering the "so what?" question--now leads logically into Chapter 3's discussion of the basic cognitive moves involved in interpretation, such as establishing an interpretive context. The thesis chapter is re-arranged to make its primary heuristic--the six steps for making a thesis evolve--more prominent. Chapter 8, "Conversing with Sources," is extensively rewritten with new and more accessible examples of effective student writing about sources. Chapter 9, "Finding, Evaluating, and Citing Sources" (including online sources) is revised and updated to reflect the most current MLA standards. The table of contents more clearly flags each chapter's heuristics, Try This exercises, and Voices from Across the Curriculum sections. A two-page chart of the book's heuristics appears on the inside back cover. Every chapter is aimed at helping students develop an analytical frame of mind. While analysis often leads to an argumentative claim, the book suggests that too much argument-based writing leaps too swiftly to judgments, resulting in overly general or clichéd positions. By concentrating on concrete and step-by-step ways to sharpen observation and move to implication, the book seeks to remedy this pervasive problem in student writing. Chapters 1 and 2 offer habits for entering the analytical frame of mind so that students can learn to do what strong thinkers do when they're confronted with data. The chapters also discuss counterproductive habits of mind to help students identify and work through common problems such as the premature leap and the judgment reflex.