Acknowledgements usually appear at the ends of prefaces, but those who contributed to The Rinehart Workbook for Writers deserve recognition at the very beginning. The uniquesness of their contribution explains the vitality of the book. The embryo of The Rinehart Workbook was English Basics, a departmentally produced text focusing, as stressed in its own preface, on elements of grammar and mechanics absolutely basic to comprehensible writing. Even before it was classroom tested, it represented a wide response, over a period of about six years, to the needs of nearly 4000 composition student a year.