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 ...Capitalization
Our language, unlike German and a few others, uses capital letters sparingly; and usually writers who have trouble with capitalization use too many rather than too few capital letters. Of the guidelines below, the two general ones are the most important. The others, while worth studying and learning, can be considered special conventions because their use is limited to a relatively small number of specialized situations.
Read more ...Designing Effective Sentences
Basic Sentence Concepts explains the subject-verb/complement pattern and shows how you can expand that pattern almost indefinitely with a few simple principles such as coordination and subordination. Now we'll look at some more advanced sentence strategies. Again the aim is to increase your versatility as a writer, to help you see the full range of options for solving writing problems. As your flexibility increases, you'll not only satisfy minimal standards of clarity and correctness, you'll express yourself with new-found energy and power.
Read more ...Following a Metaphor
A metaphor makes a comparison, and in doing so shapes our perception. If we say, "Time is a river," we're noting a certain similarity between the two. Yet we know they aren't identical. We may mean that time is fluid, has currents and eddies, empties into some vast ocean, but not that it's composed of water. If we say, "Time is a stone," we may mean it's silent, still, indifferent, but not that it's a mineral.
Read more ...Revising for Readers
Up to this point, most of your writing has been informal, maybe somewhat personal. If you've produced a draft at all, it's probably quite rough and will need revision on both global and local levels.
Read more ...Arguing in Context
Like other types of writing, arguments respond to specific situations: a need is not being met, a person is being treated unfairly, an important concept is misunderstood, an outdated policy needs to be reexamined. Strong arguments respond effectively to such writing contexts.
Read more ...Develop Your Paragraphs
Your topic sentences indicate the major support areas for your thesis, and the guide sentences show how you can develop each paragraph. Still, your paper is far from complete. While you've opened up your main idea to expose its parts, you have yet to get down to giving the specifics, the precise details that will help your reader feel the full weight of your thought. You must show the foundation of specific evidence that your general ideas are built upon. The following suggestions for paragraph development will help you coax forth details that will make your writing solid and substantial.
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