Are you looking for a short, simple, systematic approach to writing? Pick up any other writing book, for any ability level, and you'll find a labyrinth of options, nuances, and caveats when straight-forward explanations would better serve most writers. In "How to Write an Essay like an Equation," Eric Sentell (PhD, Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse Studies) distills over a decade of experience teaching college writing into covering only writing's essentials with only the necessary amount of detail and explanation. In this book, you will learn about the types of audiences every writer faces, the power of purpose in writing, the main genres of academic and professional writing, the BLUF and how to find it, PEE Paragraph Structure, Content-Lexical Ties, editing for clarity and concision, using sentence boundaries, a short and practical style guide, the power of diction, and simple strategies for improving the writing process. Each chapter concludes with thought-exercises and writing activities to reinforce and build on what you learn. This is a book for busy people who need practical, straight-forward solutions to the challenges of writing: people who write at work; students who struggle with writing; students whose professors don’t (or can’t) teach writing; students preparing for college entrance exams; international students who need to prepare for Western writing; high school teachers preparing students for college; home-schooling parents who want to provide excellent instruction; and anyone who craves the “one right answers” of writing. Customer and Editorial Reviews: “The book will teach you how to highlight your main ideas, link thoughts and sentences, and edit your own work. You want this book if you find writing to be a fuzzy, amorphous activity and want clear steps to follow for creating solid written work.” — Rebecca Helton, Edge for Scholars “An essay can be quite similar to an algebra equation in terms of development and structure.” This statement helped me to realize that I was actually making writing an essay harder than it needed to be. If you pick up any other book on writing it is long and drawn out. It complicates things and you leave not understanding what you just read. This book isn’t like that. Not only is it short, but it is easy to comprehend. Eric Sentell also states in the very beginning that this book is for those who are busy and need a straight-forward explanation. I am a college student and I don’t have time to scour the internet for an explanation of how to write the essay that I waited until the last minute to write (don’t pretend you haven’t done it). This book is easy to read and comprehend, short and cheap. It is totally worth the money. My only complain is that I didn’t have this earlier in my college journey!! -- Sherry Peppers As a homeschool mom of 4, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand the basics of writing as well as to anyone who wants to improve their writing. The book covers a broad range of writing topics that help in understanding who you’re writing to, how to develop a paragraph, and how to make your paragraph more interesting and concise. Most of the paragraphs are short which helps the reader understand and retain the information better. I also liked the use of bullet points. It made the material direct, concise, and easier to learn. I personally learned different writing tricks with this book, and I gained a better understanding of basic concepts and writing techniques that I had heard over and over in traditional English books but never fully grasped before. Good writing still takes time and practice, but this book helps lay a good foundation of how to get started and how to develop skills to improve your writing. -- Lisa Reavey This was excellent for me. I felt like it created simple, direct way to write professionally. Would definitely recommend. -- Kristin McKinnis