[citation needed] At the time of the book’s publication, Shaughnessy was the director of the Instructional Resource Center and an associate dean of CUNY, having previously worked both as a basic writing (BW) instructor and the director of basic writing at City College in New York.
The book grew out of Shaughnessy’s nine years’ experience teaching basic writing to open admissions students.
Although more than forty years have passed since the book’s original publication date, the majority of the information remains pertinent and insightful today.
Shaughnessy discusses the background of the open admissions movement, detailing her own experience when she begins to grade the essays produced by her first group of open admissions students and finds herself unprepared to proceed in spite of previous years of experience in teaching composition.
After briefly discussing handwriting, the bulk of the chapter (27 of 29 pages) focuses on the myriad ways in which basic writers use and misuse punctuation.
In order to understand the logic behind the errors, Shaughnessy explores the concept of the sentence and the differences between spoken and written English.
Shaughnessy provides examples in the primary problem areas of verbs, nouns, pronouns, and subject-verb agreement before discussing the discouragement felt by teachers and students alike as they approach the recurring common errors present in student writing.
Basic writing students enter college without having developed the vocabulary of academia, a slow-growing task that generally takes years to accomplish.
She also indicates basic writing students’ needs as they approach vocabulary-rich courses (such as biology or anatomy).