Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers

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Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers

• Chapter Two The Writing Situation and The
  Writing Process

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The Writing Situation

• Topic
• Audience
• Purpose
• Point

A useful ritual for writers is to begin by
clarifying the four aspects of the writing
situation.
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Topic

• Remember to clarify the topic for each
  assignment.
• Wide open topics allow writers to choose areas of
  interest or expertise, but force writers to work
  harder to develop a topic.
• Sharply focused topics give writers a specific
  goal for each assignment, but these topics are
  difficult to adapt (or bluff your way through).

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Audience

• Analyzing an intended audience is a useful
  ritual.
• Audience analysis determines
• Content
• Vocabulary
• Tone
• Word choice
• And most of the other decisions made by a writer.

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Audience

• Unlike a politician who analyzes an audience in
  order to simply tell them what they want to hear,
  a good writer analyzes his or her audience in
  order to tailor the message to effectively reach
  them.
• Rhetoric means reaching your audience reaching
  your audience means knowing where (and who) they
  are.

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Purpose

• To inform
• To persuade
• To entertain
• Remember that these purposes usually work best in
  combination.

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Point (Thesis Statement)

• A thesis statement should be
• A single, declarative sentence
• In the introduction of an essay
• Authoritative
• Narrow and specific
• Clear

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The Writing Process

• Collecting
• Shaping
• Drafting
• Revising

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Collecting

• Try to gather as many ideas as possible
• Remember that ideas can only come from
• Inside your head, using memory or imagination
• Outside your head, by research
• Use the rituals of brainstorming, clustering, and
  freewriting

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Shaping

• Shaping involves two basic activities.
• Focusing your ideas
• Organizing your ideas

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Remember that in the collecting stage, you can
never have too many ideas, but when it comes to
the shaping stage, its time to select the best
ideas for your topic.
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In selecting the ideas for your paper, always
remember Sturgeons Law.
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Sturgeons Law

• 90 of everything is crap.

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This applies to everything the ideas you have
gathered by brainstorming or some other internal
technique as well as the ideas you have collected
by researching the topic.
This doesnt mean those ideas are bad it just
means that they wont be suitable for a
particular assignment.
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When organizing ideas, one of the most useful
rituals is to utilize three part form in all of
your writing. This form works for most forms of
writing, both short and long, formal and informal.
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Three Part Form

• Introduction
• Tells the reader the point of the essay
• Gets the readers attention
• Often previews the body of the essay
• Body
• Develops the thesis statement with examples,
  explanations, descriptions, and other kinds of
  support
• Conclusion
• Summarizes the essay
• Ends the essay

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Drafting

• Drafting is perhaps the least important stage in
  the writing process.
• Dont try to create a perfect first draft
  someone once said that writing is actually 90
  rewriting.
• However, go ahead and correct any mistakes along
  the way.

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Revising

• Understand the difference between proofreading
  (looking for technical errors) and editing
  (looking at the content and organization of a
  text).
• Use the gestation approach (allow time between
  drafting and revising a paper).
• Proofread your essay out of order.
• Use a proofing card.
• Get help (peer editing).

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Getting Help

• Make sure that you understand any peer editing
  advice that you are given.