How to Write

Modified: 2025-08-10 1:46 PM CDST

Writing takes time; it is a process
Reviews and revisions, often painful, will improve your writing
Writing styles change depending on the audience

Basics of Writing

Drafts
- Exploratory writing is for you to develop your thoughts
- Drafts may be composed by:
  - pencil and paper
  - pen and paper
    - There's a difference and a preference
  - typewriter!!!
    - Rare today
  - word processor
    - Word, Pages, Google Docs
- Explanatory writing evolves from exploratory writing
  - Exploratory:
    - Focus ideas
    - Investigate issues
    - Understand course concepts
    - In other words, using writing to understand thinking
      - This is why colleges encourage students to write; to help them clarify their thinking
  - Explanatory
    - Help reader understand
    - Answer questions
    - Selecting and presenting examples
    - (As someone once told me, "You know you know something when you can explain it to your mother.")
Topics for writing
- Creative part of writing
  - Assigned topics
    - Instructor provides topics (easier)
  - Self-selected topics
    - Writer provides topics (harder)

Steps to Better Writing

Prewriting
- Getting ready to write
  - know your audience
    - Usually your instructor
    - What should your instructor already know?
    - What might instructor not know?
  - break writing into smaller pieces
    - Use words written or time allotted
      - For instance, 500 words or two hours
    - Make writing part of your routine
  - find a place or places to write
    - Fortunately, laptops make moving easy
Drafting (or Composing)
- Actually writing thoughts down
- Write something! You can always delete it later
- Start a new draft from time to time, I use titles such as:
  - honorswriting.docx, honorswritingA.docx, honorswritingB.docx...
  - That was I can keep old ideas and retrieve them if need be
- Save your drafts
Revising (or Editing)
- Self editing
  - meaning
    - Are you writing what you mean to write
  - style
    - Styles are ideosyncratic. Often, readers can identify writers by their style alone
    - Expository
      - "Just the facts, m'am."
      - Little or no bias evident
    - Descriptive
      - Describe a person or thing or event in great detail.
      - E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime:
        
        "The afternoon was a blue haze. Tidewater seeped into his footprints. He bent down and found a perfect shell specimen, a variety not common to western Long Island Sound. It was a voluted pink and amber shell the shape of a thimble, and what he did in the hazy sun with the salt drying on his ankles was to throw his head back and drink the minute amount of sea water in the shell. Gulls wheeled overhead, crying like oboes, and behind him at the land end of the marsh, out of sight behind the tall grasses, the distant bell of the North Avenue streetcar tolled its warning."
    - Persuasive
      - Argues points, attempts to change minds
    - Narrative
      - Telling a story, spinning a yarn.
      - The story is central
  - grammar
    - Usually should follow convention
    - Sometimes, however, grammar is distorted intentionally
      - e. e.. cummings:
      anyone lived in a pretty how town
      (with up so floating many bells down)
      spring summer autumn winter
      he sang his didn’t he danced his did.
      
      Women and men (both little and small)
      cared for anyone not at all
      they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same
      sun moon stars rain
    - Very hard to do and get away with, avoid
  - spelling
    - Use the spell checker!
    - History of English spelling
- Editing by others
  - social aspect of writing
    - No one is going to accept your writing as is
    - Developing a thick skin
  - give-and-take
    - Editing is a two-way street
    - You need not accept all suggestions for changes
Eats, Shoots, and Leaves
- Lynne Truss' best selling book on grammar!
- See: http://eatsshootsandleaves.com/
  - A scientific paper reported: pandas eat, shoots, and leaves
  - It should have read: pandas eat shoots and leaves
- Truss got rich off of commas and other punctuation marks (apostrophes, semicolons, colons, and the rest)
English is tough
Emailing and Texting
- A different kind of writing
- Less formal
- Can be troublesome in terms of meaning
- Suggestions include:
  - Avoid abbreviations
  - Stick to usual rules of language and grammar (capitalization, spelling, and punctuation)
  - Identify the recipient with a salutation (John, Class, Dr. England...)
  - Be polite
  - Reply promptly
  - Don't keep the back and forth going once the subject is decided
Body language is absent in writing (compared to face-to-face conversation)
- Includes:
  - Facial expression
  - Posture
  - Gestures
  - Eye contact
  - (all of which are not possible when writing)
- "Reading between the lines"
- Emoticons- :-) ;-) :-0 :-( <g> lol, help (a little)
Practice helps you become a better writer
More Hints on Writing
- Time Management
  - Know the deadline.
  - Block out time for writing.
  - Write often in short chunks of time.
- Where to Write
  - Set up a place, if possible
  - Otherwise, pack a bag with all of your necessary materials
- Save What You Write
  - Hard drive
  - Floppy disks
  - CDs
  - Flash drives
  - e-mail copy to your account
  - Losing your work is BAD!
- Drafts and Revisions
  - Wait
  - Read drafts aloud
  - Use spell checker
  - Check logical structure
  - Save previous drafts
- Check and Edit
  - Let someone else proofread
  - I've done a little :-)

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