New Concise Handbook, Second Edition, is a compact guide to written composition. It is realistically focused on the needs of today's classrooms and provides balanced treatment of the larger elements of composition, graphic demonstration of how preparation techniques pay off in better student writing, an exceptionally accessible writer's grammar with plain-English explanations to grasp essential grammatical concepts, a treatment of punctuation that stresses the functions they serve in a sentence, an exceptionally clear and comprehensive guide to the mysteries of documentation, and a word processing section with instructions and exercises for the beginner.