This work offers a clear account of written discourse analysis. Hoey clearly sets out his own approach and compares it with other approaches. Each chapter introduces key concepts and analytical techniques, describes important parallel work and major issues, and suggests how to apply the ideas to the teaching and learning of reading and writing. In this activity-based book, Hoey analyses a wide variety of narrative texts: fairytales, novels, poems, short stories and jokes; and non narrative texts: posters, timetables, and till receipts. He shows how much these very differerent text types have in common with each other and argues that, in the interaction between writer and reader, the reader has as much power as the writer.