The introduction outlines the kind of attention to prose techniques that forms the basis for the chapters that follow. It claims that prose is all too infrequently granted this kind of attention. In part, this is because of the claims to ordinariness that prose writing often proposes for itself, where prose comes to seem either prosaic or prosy. Critical and philosophical traditions have reinforced the view that prose is at its best when it effaces itself, when it conceals its own wording. But this principle has tended to distract from the craft of prose. The introduction outlines the parts of prose (punctuation, words, sentences, and so on) and the various genres (realism, comedy, Gothic, science fiction, and creative non-fiction) that subsequent chapters take up for inspection as regards the techniques of prose themselves.