...this situation sounds familiar, you may find it reassuring to know that many professionals undergo these same strange compulsions before they begin writing. Jean Kerr, author of Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, admits that she often finds herself in the kitchen reading soup-can labels—or anything—in order to prolong the moments before taking pen in hand. John C. Calhoun, vice president under Andrew Jackson, insisted he had to plow his fields before he could write, and Joseph Conrad, author of Lord Jim and other novels, is said to have cried on occasion from the sheer dread of sitting down to compose his stories. To spare you as much hand-wringing as possible, this chapter presents some practical suggestions on how to begin writing your short essay. Although all writers must find the methods that work best for them, you may find some of the following ideas helpful. But no matter how you actually begin putting words on paper, it is absolutely essential to maintain two basic ideas concerning your writing task. Before you write a single sentence, you should always remind yourself that 1. You have some valuable ideas to tell your reader, and 2. More than anything, you want to communicate those ideas to your reader. These reminders may seem obvious to you, but without a solid commitment to your own opinions as well as to your reader, your prose will be lifeless and boring. If you don’t care about your subject, you can’t very well expect anyone else to. Have confidence that your ideas are...
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...updated: April 26, 2016 Logical Reasoning Bradley H. Dowden Philosophy Department California State University Sacramento Sacramento, CA 95819 USA ii iii Preface Copyright © 2011-14 by Bradley H. Dowden This book Logical Reasoning by Bradley H. Dowden is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. That is, you are free to share, copy, distribute, store, and transmit all or any part of the work under the following conditions: (1) Attribution You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author, namely by citing his name, the book title, and the relevant page numbers (but not in any way that suggests that the book Logical Reasoning or its author endorse you or your use of the work). (2) Noncommercial You may not use this work for commercial purposes (for example, by inserting passages into a book that is sold to students). (3) No Derivative Works You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. An earlier version of the book was published by Wadsworth Publishing Company, Belmont, California USA in 1993 with ISBN number 0-534-17688-7. When Wadsworth decided no longer to print the book, they returned their publishing rights to the original author, Bradley Dowden. The current version has been significantly revised. If you would like to suggest changes to the text, the author would appreciate your writing to him at dowden@csus.edu. iv Praise Comments on the earlier 1993 edition...
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...POLICY MAKING IN THE REAL WORLD Evidence and Analysis Michael Hallsworth, with Simon Parker and Jill Rutter 1 Contents About this report Executive summary 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Introduction: The Institute’s Better Policy Making theme Why look at policy making? The drive to professionalise policy making The gap between theory and practice Process Qualities Structures Politics Improving policy making 3 4 15 16 22 30 38 46 64 80 100 103 104 10. Annex A: Methodology for survey of policy characteristics 11. Annex B: The Policy Skills Framework Contents 2 About this report This report is one of three that the Institute for Government is releasing as part of its research into policy making in government. It provides both an in-depth look at attempts to reform policy making over the last fourteen years and draws on both interviews with senior civil servants and ministers, in the last government, to look at the experience of policy making. It also draws on our analysis of government’s own evaluations of policy, our ‘Policy Reunions’ looking at the factors behind policy success and the extensive academic literature on policy making. As such, it forms the evidential and analytic base for our recommendations report, Making Policy Better. This report is largely the work of the Institute for Government’s Senior Researcher Michael Hallsworth. In its early stages, the research was led by former Institute Fellow, Simon Parker, and in the later stages was overseen...
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