Start Writing
There is no single best way to begin a writing project. What's best is what gets you going and builds momentum for the journey ahead. You may want to start right in on a draft or do some pre-planning.
Often, simply Choosing a Subject can be a challenge. You could start Freewriting to locate your subject and generate ideas. Or you might prefer to first gather information from Outside Sources, or to brainstorm using The Journalists' Questions.
Whether you're writing an informal essay, a technical report, or the next great American novel, the suggestions in Discovering What to Write will help you get going.
Write Strong Sentences
Effective sentences are vital to your writing. They are fundamental carriers and shapers of meaning—the pulse of style. If you want to work on your sentences, try the following Paradigm sections: Basic Sentence Concepts, Expanding the Basic Pattern, Six Problem Areas, Designing Effective Sentences.
For help with punctuation, try Basic Punctuation.
Pyramid Power
Many organizational patterns, especially outlines, are built on a hierarchical structure that classifies ideas and facts according to their level of generalization. At the top level is the thesis. Below this are the major conceptual divisions, each of which may be further divided along paragraph lines. This is the essential pattern of the Thesis/Support Essay, which takes the pyramidal structure through four levels (thesis, topic sentence, support sentence, detail).
Read more ...A Note on Spelling
There's no quick, easy way to overcome spelling problems. This is true partly because our English spelling system is complex and difficult to explain logically.
Read more ...Global and Local Perspectives
Revision means "re-seeing." Strong revisers develop a "critical zoom lens" that allows them to shift perspective from broad overview to minute detail, and to see how these levels of composition relate. To revise well, then, you must become a perceptive and imaginative reader of your own work, a reader who can anticipate another reader's response and see new ways the writing might evolve.
Read more ...Constructing a Montage
A quilt maker looks at scraps of cast-off fabric strewn about the attic floor and sees a design. Something—some juxtaposition of red beside lavender, some connection of past and present, facts and memories—triggers an impulse, starts an intuitive process. The quilt is both many and one—many individual pieces and one single object.
Read more ...Immersion and Interaction
At the start, you need to get authentically and personally involved with your subject. You need to get inside the subject and get the subject inside of you. Let go of preconceived notions about proper or expected ways to respond. Instead, connect the subject with your own world of experience and understanding. Identify issues you care about.
Read more ...Occasions for Argumentative Essays
Argumentation is everywhere—in congress and courtrooms, in corporate board rooms, at garden club meetings, and in millions of essays, reports, theses, and dissertations written at colleges and universities throughout the world.
Read more ...Supporting Your Thesis
Think of your thesis as a statement that remains to be proved. It commits you to showing your reader that it's founded upon good evidence and sound reasoning. That is, you want to show that you know what you're talking about, that you've investigated the matter thoroughly, have considered the implications of your findings, and are offering in your thesis not mere opinion, but a carefully thought-out conclusion. This job of uncovering and displaying your reasoning is the next step in writing a thesis/support essay.
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