School Supplies (AP English/Lang.) question. Which book?

Question

I purchased two different writing handbooks from my local bookstore and can only keep ONE. We're required to purchase our own, dated 2003 or later, for the class. We were also told we'd be working quite a bit with MLA style.

The first is Rules For Writers, Fifth Edition by Diana Hacker.

As I flipped through this, it seemed easy enough to comprehend (not just large on-going paragraphs) and covers a range of topics, including MLA & APA. It's not quite in-depth though.

The second is MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Sixth Edition by Joseph Gibaldi.

Don't be misleaded by the title. This handbook covers an astonishing amount of information, though it devotes a good portion of the book to research/citations - related content. This book is highly indepth, but hard to comprehend. As in, most of the book is straight paragraphs of information, with occasional breaks to fit in examples. However, there is are two sample pages at the very end, showing how a proper research paper should look.

Both cover a large range of English/grammar topics.

Not taking into account the publishing date or cost, which do you think would be a better handbook for me to keep (ONE only)? I searched and found that both have received positive reviews. This is for my AP English/Language Composition class, the first AP class I've ever taken, so I'd really appreciate some helpful feedback. Thanks!

Answer 1

First of all, good to hear you're taking AP English. That was my 1st AP class and I was pretty scared, until a few weeks into it and it wasn't that bad.

Anywho, the 1st one would be better, because of all the examples. But it depends, are you better at learning from seeing how something is done (visual learner)? Or are you better at learning from reading about it? When I took AP English/Language I had a book similar to the 1st one you described, and it helped me cause I'm a visual learner.