essay composition process

How to Write an Essay

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Essay Writing Fundamentals

How to prepare to write an essay, how to edit an essay, how to share and publish your essays, how to get essay writing help, how to find essay writing inspiration, resources for teaching essay writing.

Essays, short prose compositions on a particular theme or topic, are the bread and butter of academic life. You write them in class, for homework, and on standardized tests to show what you know. Unlike other kinds of academic writing (like the research paper) and creative writing (like short stories and poems), essays allow you to develop your original thoughts on a prompt or question. Essays come in many varieties: they can be expository (fleshing out an idea or claim), descriptive, (explaining a person, place, or thing), narrative (relating a personal experience), or persuasive (attempting to win over a reader). This guide is a collection of dozens of links about academic essay writing that we have researched, categorized, and annotated in order to help you improve your essay writing. 

Essays are different from other forms of writing; in turn, there are different kinds of essays. This section contains general resources for getting to know the essay and its variants. These resources introduce and define the essay as a genre, and will teach you what to expect from essay-based assessments.

Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab

One of the most trusted academic writing sites, Purdue OWL provides a concise introduction to the four most common types of academic essays.

"The Essay: History and Definition" (ThoughtCo)

This snappy article from ThoughtCo talks about the origins of the essay and different kinds of essays you might be asked to write. 

"What Is An Essay?" Video Lecture (Coursera)

The University of California at Irvine's free video lecture, available on Coursera, tells  you everything you need to know about the essay.

Wikipedia Article on the "Essay"

Wikipedia's article on the essay is comprehensive, providing both English-language and global perspectives on the essay form. Learn about the essay's history, forms, and styles.

"Understanding College and Academic Writing" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

This list of common academic writing assignments (including types of essay prompts) will help you know what to expect from essay-based assessments.

Before you start writing your essay, you need to figure out who you're writing for (audience), what you're writing about (topic/theme), and what you're going to say (argument and thesis). This section contains links to handouts, chapters, videos and more to help you prepare to write an essay.

How to Identify Your Audience

"Audience" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This handout provides questions you can ask yourself to determine the audience for an academic writing assignment. It also suggests strategies for fitting your paper to your intended audience.

"Purpose, Audience, Tone, and Content" (Univ. of Minnesota Libraries)

This extensive book chapter from Writing for Success , available online through Minnesota Libraries Publishing, is followed by exercises to try out your new pre-writing skills.

"Determining Audience" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

This guide from a community college's writing center shows you how to know your audience, and how to incorporate that knowledge in your thesis statement.

"Know Your Audience" ( Paper Rater Blog)

This short blog post uses examples to show how implied audiences for essays differ. It reminds you to think of your instructor as an observer, who will know only the information you pass along.

How to Choose a Theme or Topic

"Research Tutorial: Developing Your Topic" (YouTube)

Take a look at this short video tutorial from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to understand the basics of developing a writing topic.

"How to Choose a Paper Topic" (WikiHow)

This simple, step-by-step guide (with pictures!) walks you through choosing a paper topic. It starts with a detailed description of brainstorming and ends with strategies to refine your broad topic.

"How to Read an Assignment: Moving From Assignment to Topic" (Harvard College Writing Center)

Did your teacher give you a prompt or other instructions? This guide helps you understand the relationship between an essay assignment and your essay's topic.

"Guidelines for Choosing a Topic" (CliffsNotes)

This study guide from CliffsNotes both discusses how to choose a topic and makes a useful distinction between "topic" and "thesis."

How to Come Up with an Argument

"Argument" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

Not sure what "argument" means in the context of academic writing? This page from the University of North Carolina is a good place to start.

"The Essay Guide: Finding an Argument" (Study Hub)

This handout explains why it's important to have an argument when beginning your essay, and provides tools to help you choose a viable argument.

"Writing a Thesis and Making an Argument" (University of Iowa)

This page from the University of Iowa's Writing Center contains exercises through which you can develop and refine your argument and thesis statement.

"Developing a Thesis" (Harvard College Writing Center)

This page from Harvard's Writing Center collates some helpful dos and don'ts of argumentative writing, from steps in constructing a thesis to avoiding vague and confrontational thesis statements.

"Suggestions for Developing Argumentative Essays" (Berkeley Student Learning Center)

This page offers concrete suggestions for each stage of the essay writing process, from topic selection to drafting and editing. 

How to Outline your Essay

"Outlines" (Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill via YouTube)

This short video tutorial from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill shows how to group your ideas into paragraphs or sections to begin the outlining process.

"Essay Outline" (Univ. of Washington Tacoma)

This two-page handout by a university professor simply defines the parts of an essay and then organizes them into an example outline.

"Types of Outlines and Samples" (Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab)

Purdue OWL gives examples of diverse outline strategies on this page, including the alphanumeric, full sentence, and decimal styles. 

"Outlining" (Harvard College Writing Center)

Once you have an argument, according to this handout, there are only three steps in the outline process: generalizing, ordering, and putting it all together. Then you're ready to write!

"Writing Essays" (Plymouth Univ.)

This packet, part of Plymouth University's Learning Development series, contains descriptions and diagrams relating to the outlining process.

"How to Write A Good Argumentative Essay: Logical Structure" (Criticalthinkingtutorials.com via YouTube)

This longer video tutorial gives an overview of how to structure your essay in order to support your argument or thesis. It is part of a longer course on academic writing hosted on Udemy.

Now that you've chosen and refined your topic and created an outline, use these resources to complete the writing process. Most essays contain introductions (which articulate your thesis statement), body paragraphs, and conclusions. Transitions facilitate the flow from one paragraph to the next so that support for your thesis builds throughout the essay. Sources and citations show where you got the evidence to support your thesis, which ensures that you avoid plagiarism. 

How to Write an Introduction

"Introductions" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This page identifies the role of the introduction in any successful paper, suggests strategies for writing introductions, and warns against less effective introductions.

"How to Write A Good Introduction" (Michigan State Writing Center)

Beginning with the most common missteps in writing introductions, this guide condenses the essentials of introduction composition into seven points.

"The Introductory Paragraph" (ThoughtCo)

This blog post from academic advisor and college enrollment counselor Grace Fleming focuses on ways to grab your reader's attention at the beginning of your essay.

"Introductions and Conclusions" (Univ. of Toronto)

This guide from the University of Toronto gives advice that applies to writing both introductions and conclusions, including dos and don'ts.

"How to Write Better Essays: No One Does Introductions Properly" ( The Guardian )

This news article interviews UK professors on student essay writing; they point to introductions as the area that needs the most improvement.

How to Write a Thesis Statement

"Writing an Effective Thesis Statement" (YouTube)

This short, simple video tutorial from a college composition instructor at Tulsa Community College explains what a thesis statement is and what it does. 

"Thesis Statement: Four Steps to a Great Essay" (YouTube)

This fantastic tutorial walks you through drafting a thesis, using an essay prompt on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter as an example.

"How to Write a Thesis Statement" (WikiHow)

This step-by-step guide (with pictures!) walks you through coming up with, writing, and editing a thesis statement. It invites you think of your statement as a "working thesis" that can change.

"How to Write a Thesis Statement" (Univ. of Indiana Bloomington)

Ask yourself the questions on this page, part of Indiana Bloomington's Writing Tutorial Services, when you're writing and refining your thesis statement.

"Writing Tips: Thesis Statements" (Univ. of Illinois Center for Writing Studies)

This page gives plentiful examples of good to great thesis statements, and offers questions to ask yourself when formulating a thesis statement.

How to Write Body Paragraphs

"Body Paragraph" (Brightstorm)

This module of a free online course introduces you to the components of a body paragraph. These include the topic sentence, information, evidence, and analysis.

"Strong Body Paragraphs" (Washington Univ.)

This handout from Washington's Writing and Research Center offers in-depth descriptions of the parts of a successful body paragraph.

"Guide to Paragraph Structure" (Deakin Univ.)

This handout is notable for color-coding example body paragraphs to help you identify the functions various sentences perform.

"Writing Body Paragraphs" (Univ. of Minnesota Libraries)

The exercises in this section of Writing for Success  will help you practice writing good body paragraphs. It includes guidance on selecting primary support for your thesis.

"The Writing Process—Body Paragraphs" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

The information and exercises on this page will familiarize you with outlining and writing body paragraphs, and includes links to more information on topic sentences and transitions.

"The Five-Paragraph Essay" (ThoughtCo)

This blog post discusses body paragraphs in the context of one of the most common academic essay types in secondary schools.

How to Use Transitions

"Transitions" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This page from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill explains what a transition is, and how to know if you need to improve your transitions.

"Using Transitions Effectively" (Washington Univ.)

This handout defines transitions, offers tips for using them, and contains a useful list of common transitional words and phrases grouped by function.

"Transitions" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

This page compares paragraphs without transitions to paragraphs with transitions, and in doing so shows how important these connective words and phrases are.

"Transitions in Academic Essays" (Scribbr)

This page lists four techniques that will help you make sure your reader follows your train of thought, including grouping similar information and using transition words.

"Transitions" (El Paso Community College)

This handout shows example transitions within paragraphs for context, and explains how transitions improve your essay's flow and voice.

"Make Your Paragraphs Flow to Improve Writing" (ThoughtCo)

This blog post, another from academic advisor and college enrollment counselor Grace Fleming, talks about transitions and other strategies to improve your essay's overall flow.

"Transition Words" (smartwords.org)

This handy word bank will help you find transition words when you're feeling stuck. It's grouped by the transition's function, whether that is to show agreement, opposition, condition, or consequence.

How to Write a Conclusion

"Parts of An Essay: Conclusions" (Brightstorm)

This module of a free online course explains how to conclude an academic essay. It suggests thinking about the "3Rs": return to hook, restate your thesis, and relate to the reader.

"Essay Conclusions" (Univ. of Maryland University College)

This overview of the academic essay conclusion contains helpful examples and links to further resources for writing good conclusions.

"How to End An Essay" (WikiHow)

This step-by-step guide (with pictures!) by an English Ph.D. walks you through writing a conclusion, from brainstorming to ending with a flourish.

"Ending the Essay: Conclusions" (Harvard College Writing Center)

This page collates useful strategies for writing an effective conclusion, and reminds you to "close the discussion without closing it off" to further conversation.

How to Include Sources and Citations

"Research and Citation Resources" (Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab)

Purdue OWL streamlines information about the three most common referencing styles (MLA, Chicago, and APA) and provides examples of how to cite different resources in each system.

EasyBib: Free Bibliography Generator

This online tool allows you to input information about your source and automatically generate citations in any style. Be sure to select your resource type before clicking the "cite it" button.

CitationMachine

Like EasyBib, this online tool allows you to input information about your source and automatically generate citations in any style. 

Modern Language Association Handbook (MLA)

Here, you'll find the definitive and up-to-date record of MLA referencing rules. Order through the link above, or check to see if your library has a copy.

Chicago Manual of Style

Here, you'll find the definitive and up-to-date record of Chicago referencing rules. You can take a look at the table of contents, then choose to subscribe or start a free trial.

How to Avoid Plagiarism

"What is Plagiarism?" (plagiarism.org)

This nonprofit website contains numerous resources for identifying and avoiding plagiarism, and reminds you that even common activities like copying images from another website to your own site may constitute plagiarism.

"Plagiarism" (University of Oxford)

This interactive page from the University of Oxford helps you check for plagiarism in your work, making it clear how to avoid citing another person's work without full acknowledgement.

"Avoiding Plagiarism" (MIT Comparative Media Studies)

This quick guide explains what plagiarism is, what its consequences are, and how to avoid it. It starts by defining three words—quotation, paraphrase, and summary—that all constitute citation.

"Harvard Guide to Using Sources" (Harvard Extension School)

This comprehensive website from Harvard brings together articles, videos, and handouts about referencing, citation, and plagiarism. 

Grammarly contains tons of helpful grammar and writing resources, including a free tool to automatically scan your essay to check for close affinities to published work. 

Noplag is another popular online tool that automatically scans your essay to check for signs of plagiarism. Simply copy and paste your essay into the box and click "start checking."

Once you've written your essay, you'll want to edit (improve content), proofread (check for spelling and grammar mistakes), and finalize your work until you're ready to hand it in. This section brings together tips and resources for navigating the editing process. 

"Writing a First Draft" (Academic Help)

This is an introduction to the drafting process from the site Academic Help, with tips for getting your ideas on paper before editing begins.

"Editing and Proofreading" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This page provides general strategies for revising your writing. They've intentionally left seven errors in the handout, to give you practice in spotting them.

"How to Proofread Effectively" (ThoughtCo)

This article from ThoughtCo, along with those linked at the bottom, help describe common mistakes to check for when proofreading.

"7 Simple Edits That Make Your Writing 100% More Powerful" (SmartBlogger)

This blog post emphasizes the importance of powerful, concise language, and reminds you that even your personal writing heroes create clunky first drafts.

"Editing Tips for Effective Writing" (Univ. of Pennsylvania)

On this page from Penn's International Relations department, you'll find tips for effective prose, errors to watch out for, and reminders about formatting.

"Editing the Essay" (Harvard College Writing Center)

This article, the first of two parts, gives you applicable strategies for the editing process. It suggests reading your essay aloud, removing any jargon, and being unafraid to remove even "dazzling" sentences that don't belong.

"Guide to Editing and Proofreading" (Oxford Learning Institute)

This handout from Oxford covers the basics of editing and proofreading, and reminds you that neither task should be rushed. 

In addition to plagiarism-checkers, Grammarly has a plug-in for your web browser that checks your writing for common mistakes.

After you've prepared, written, and edited your essay, you might want to share it outside the classroom. This section alerts you to print and web opportunities to share your essays with the wider world, from online writing communities and blogs to published journals geared toward young writers.

Sharing Your Essays Online

Go Teen Writers

Go Teen Writers is an online community for writers aged 13 - 19. It was founded by Stephanie Morrill, an author of contemporary young adult novels. 

Tumblr is a blogging website where you can share your writing and interact with other writers online. It's easy to add photos, links, audio, and video components.

Writersky provides an online platform for publishing and reading other youth writers' work. Its current content is mostly devoted to fiction.

Publishing Your Essays Online

This teen literary journal publishes in print, on the web, and (more frequently), on a blog. It is committed to ensuring that "teens see their authentic experience reflected on its pages."

The Matador Review

This youth writing platform celebrates "alternative," unconventional writing. The link above will take you directly to the site's "submissions" page.

Teen Ink has a website, monthly newsprint magazine, and quarterly poetry magazine promoting the work of young writers.

The largest online reading platform, Wattpad enables you to publish your work and read others' work. Its inline commenting feature allows you to share thoughts as you read along.

Publishing Your Essays in Print

Canvas Teen Literary Journal

This quarterly literary magazine is published for young writers by young writers. They accept many kinds of writing, including essays.

The Claremont Review

This biannual international magazine, first published in 1992, publishes poetry, essays, and short stories from writers aged 13 - 19.

Skipping Stones

This young writers magazine, founded in 1988, celebrates themes relating to ecological and cultural diversity. It publishes poems, photos, articles, and stories.

The Telling Room

This nonprofit writing center based in Maine publishes children's work on their website and in book form. The link above directs you to the site's submissions page.

Essay Contests

Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards

This prestigious international writing contest for students in grades 7 - 12 has been committed to "supporting the future of creativity since 1923."

Society of Professional Journalists High School Essay Contest

An annual essay contest on the theme of journalism and media, the Society of Professional Journalists High School Essay Contest awards scholarships up to $1,000.

National YoungArts Foundation

Here, you'll find information on a government-sponsored writing competition for writers aged 15 - 18. The foundation welcomes submissions of creative nonfiction, novels, scripts, poetry, short story and spoken word.

Signet Classics Student Scholarship Essay Contest

With prompts on a different literary work each year, this competition from Signet Classics awards college scholarships up to $1,000.

"The Ultimate Guide to High School Essay Contests" (CollegeVine)

See this handy guide from CollegeVine for a list of more competitions you can enter with your academic essay, from the National Council of Teachers of English Achievement Awards to the National High School Essay Contest by the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Whether you're struggling to write academic essays or you think you're a pro, there are workshops and online tools that can help you become an even better writer. Even the most seasoned writers encounter writer's block, so be proactive and look through our curated list of resources to combat this common frustration.

Online Essay-writing Classes and Workshops

"Getting Started with Essay Writing" (Coursera)

Coursera offers lots of free, high-quality online classes taught by college professors. Here's one example, taught by instructors from the University of California Irvine.

"Writing and English" (Brightstorm)

Brightstorm's free video lectures are easy to navigate by topic. This unit on the parts of an essay features content on the essay hook, thesis, supporting evidence, and more.

"How to Write an Essay" (EdX)

EdX is another open online university course website with several two- to five-week courses on the essay. This one is geared toward English language learners.

Writer's Digest University

This renowned writers' website offers online workshops and interactive tutorials. The courses offered cover everything from how to get started through how to get published.

Writing.com

Signing up for this online writer's community gives you access to helpful resources as well as an international community of writers.

How to Overcome Writer's Block

"Symptoms and Cures for Writer's Block" (Purdue OWL)

Purdue OWL offers a list of signs you might have writer's block, along with ways to overcome it. Consider trying out some "invention strategies" or ways to curb writing anxiety.

"Overcoming Writer's Block: Three Tips" ( The Guardian )

These tips, geared toward academic writing specifically, are practical and effective. The authors advocate setting realistic goals, creating dedicated writing time, and participating in social writing.

"Writing Tips: Strategies for Overcoming Writer's Block" (Univ. of Illinois)

This page from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Center for Writing Studies acquaints you with strategies that do and do not work to overcome writer's block.

"Writer's Block" (Univ. of Toronto)

Ask yourself the questions on this page; if the answer is "yes," try out some of the article's strategies. Each question is accompanied by at least two possible solutions.

If you have essays to write but are short on ideas, this section's links to prompts, example student essays, and celebrated essays by professional writers might help. You'll find writing prompts from a variety of sources, student essays to inspire you, and a number of essay writing collections.

Essay Writing Prompts

"50 Argumentative Essay Topics" (ThoughtCo)

Take a look at this list and the others ThoughtCo has curated for different kinds of essays. As the author notes, "a number of these topics are controversial and that's the point."

"401 Prompts for Argumentative Writing" ( New York Times )

This list (and the linked lists to persuasive and narrative writing prompts), besides being impressive in length, is put together by actual high school English teachers.

"SAT Sample Essay Prompts" (College Board)

If you're a student in the U.S., your classroom essay prompts are likely modeled on the prompts in U.S. college entrance exams. Take a look at these official examples from the SAT.

"Popular College Application Essay Topics" (Princeton Review)

This page from the Princeton Review dissects recent Common Application essay topics and discusses strategies for answering them.

Example Student Essays

"501 Writing Prompts" (DePaul Univ.)

This nearly 200-page packet, compiled by the LearningExpress Skill Builder in Focus Writing Team, is stuffed with writing prompts, example essays, and commentary.

"Topics in English" (Kibin)

Kibin is a for-pay essay help website, but its example essays (organized by topic) are available for free. You'll find essays on everything from  A Christmas Carol  to perseverance.

"Student Writing Models" (Thoughtful Learning)

Thoughtful Learning, a website that offers a variety of teaching materials, provides sample student essays on various topics and organizes them by grade level.

"Five-Paragraph Essay" (ThoughtCo)

In this blog post by a former professor of English and rhetoric, ThoughtCo brings together examples of five-paragraph essays and commentary on the form.

The Best Essay Writing Collections

The Best American Essays of the Century by Joyce Carol Oates (Amazon)

This collection of American essays spanning the twentieth century was compiled by award winning author and Princeton professor Joyce Carol Oates.

The Best American Essays 2017 by Leslie Jamison (Amazon)

Leslie Jamison, the celebrated author of essay collection  The Empathy Exams , collects recent, high-profile essays into a single volume.

The Art of the Personal Essay by Phillip Lopate (Amazon)

Documentary writer Phillip Lopate curates this historical overview of the personal essay's development, from the classical era to the present.

The White Album by Joan Didion (Amazon)

This seminal essay collection was authored by one of the most acclaimed personal essayists of all time, American journalist Joan Didion.

Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace (Amazon)

Read this famous essay collection by David Foster Wallace, who is known for his experimentation with the essay form. He pushed the boundaries of personal essay, reportage, and political polemic.

"50 Successful Harvard Application Essays" (Staff of the The Harvard Crimson )

If you're looking for examples of exceptional college application essays, this volume from Harvard's daily student newspaper is one of the best collections on the market.

Are you an instructor looking for the best resources for teaching essay writing? This section contains resources for developing in-class activities and student homework assignments. You'll find content from both well-known university writing centers and online writing labs.

Essay Writing Classroom Activities for Students

"In-class Writing Exercises" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This page lists exercises related to brainstorming, organizing, drafting, and revising. It also contains suggestions for how to implement the suggested exercises.

"Teaching with Writing" (Univ. of Minnesota Center for Writing)

Instructions and encouragement for using "freewriting," one-minute papers, logbooks, and other write-to-learn activities in the classroom can be found here.

"Writing Worksheets" (Berkeley Student Learning Center)

Berkeley offers this bank of writing worksheets to use in class. They are nested under headings for "Prewriting," "Revision," "Research Papers" and more.

"Using Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism" (DePaul University)

Use these activities and worksheets from DePaul's Teaching Commons when instructing students on proper academic citation practices.

Essay Writing Homework Activities for Students

"Grammar and Punctuation Exercises" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

These five interactive online activities allow students to practice editing and proofreading. They'll hone their skills in correcting comma splices and run-ons, identifying fragments, using correct pronoun agreement, and comma usage.

"Student Interactives" (Read Write Think)

Read Write Think hosts interactive tools, games, and videos for developing writing skills. They can practice organizing and summarizing, writing poetry, and developing lines of inquiry and analysis.

This free website offers writing and grammar activities for all grade levels. The lessons are designed to be used both for large classes and smaller groups.

"Writing Activities and Lessons for Every Grade" (Education World)

Education World's page on writing activities and lessons links you to more free, online resources for learning how to "W.R.I.T.E.": write, revise, inform, think, and edit.

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Table of Contents

Collaboration, information literacy, writing process, the ultimate blueprint: a research-driven deep dive into the 13 steps of the writing process.

• © 2023 by Joseph M. Moxley

This article provides a comprehensive, research-based introduction to the major steps , or strategies , that writers work through as they endeavor to communicate with audiences . Since the 1960s, the writing process has been defined to be a series of steps , stages, or strategies. Most simply, the writing process is conceptualized as four major steps: prewriting , drafting , revising , editing . That model works really well for many occasions. Yet sometimes you'll face really challenging writing tasks that will force you to engage in additional steps, including, prewriting , inventing , drafting , collaborating , researching , planning , organizing , designing , rereading , revising , editing , proofreading , sharing or publishing . Expand your composing repertoire -- your ability to respond with authority , clarity , and persuasiveness -- by learning about the dispositions and strategies of successful, professional writers.

Like water cascading to the sea, flow feels inevitable, natural, purposeful. Yet achieving flow is a state of mind that can be difficult to achieve. It requires full commitment to the believing gam e (as opposed to the doubting game ).

What are the Steps of the Writing Process?

Since the 1960s, it has been popular to describe the writing process as a series of steps or stages . For simple projects, the writing process is typically defined as four major steps:

• drafting  

This simplified approach to writing is quite appropriate for many exigencies–many calls to write . Often, e.g., we might read an email quickly, write a response, and then send it: write, revise, send.

However, in the real world, for more demanding projects — especially in high-stakes workplace writing or academic writing at the high school and college level — the writing process involve additional  steps,  or  strategies , such as 

• collaboration
• researching
• proofreading
• sharing or publishing.  

Related Concepts: Mindset ; Self Regulation

Summary – Writing Process Steps

The summary below outlines the major steps writers work through as they endeavor to develop an idea for an audience .

1. Prewriting

Prewriting refers to all the work a writer does on a writing project before they actually begin writing .

Acts of prewriting include

• Prior to writing a first draft, analyze the context for the work. For instance, in school settings students may analyze how much of their grade will be determined by a particular assignment. They may question how many and what sources are required and what the grading criteria will be used for critiquing the work.
• To further their understanding of the assignment, writers will question who the audience is for their work, what their purpose is for writing, what style of writing their audience expects them to employ, and what rhetorical stance is appropriate for them to develop given the rhetorical situation they are addressing. (See the document planner heuristic for more on this)
• consider employing rhetorical appeals ( ethos , pathos , and logos ), rhetorical devices , and rhetorical modes they want to develop once they begin writing
• reflect on the voice , tone , and persona they want to develop
• Following rhetorical analysis and rhetorical reasoning , writers decide on the persona ; point of view ; tone , voice and style of writing they hope to develop, such as an academic writing prose style or a professional writing prose style
• making a plan, an outline, for what to do next.

2. Invention

Invention is traditionally defined as an initial stage of the writing process when writers are more focused on discovery and creative play. During the early stages of a project, writers brainstorm; they explore various topics and perspectives before committing to a specific direction for their discourse .

In practice, invention can be an ongoing concern throughout the writing process. People who are focused on solving problems and developing original ideas, arguments , artifacts, products, services, applications, and  texts are open to acts of invention at any time during the writing process.

Writers have many different ways to engage in acts of invention, including

• What is the exigency, the call to write ?
• What are the ongoing scholarly debates in the peer-review literature?
• What is the problem ?
• What do they read? watch? say? What do they know about the topic? Why do they believe what they do? What are their beliefs, values, and expectations ?
• What rhetorical appeals — ethos (credibility) , pathos (emotion) , and logos (logic) — should I explore to develop the best response to this exigency , this call to write?
• What does peer-reviewed research say about the subject?
• What are the current debates about the subject?
• Embrace multiple viewpoints and consider various approaches to encourage the generation of original ideas.
• How can I experiment with different media , genres , writing styles , personas , voices , tone
• Experiment with new research methods
• Write whatever ideas occur to you. Focus on generating ideas as opposed to writing grammatically correct sentences. Get your thoughts down as fully and quickly as you can without critiquing them.
• Use heuristics to inspire discovery and creative thinking: Burke’s Pentad ; Document Planner , Journalistic Questions , The Business Model Canvas
• Embrace the uncertainty that comes with creative exploration.
• Listen to your intuition — your felt sense — when composing
• Experiment with different writing styles , genres , writing tools, and rhetorical stances
• Play the believing game early in the writing process

3. Researching

Research refers to systematic investigations that investigators carry out to discover new  knowledge , test knowledge claims , solve  problems , or develop new texts , products, apps, and services.

During the research stage of the writing process, writers may engage in

• Engage in customer discovery interviews and  survey research  in order to better understand the  problem space . Use  surveys , interviews, focus groups, etc., to understand the stakeholder’s s (e.g., clients, suppliers, partners) problems and needs
• What can you recall from your memory about the subject?
• What can you learn from informal observation?
• What can you learn from strategic searching of the archive on the topic that interests you?
• Who are the thought leaders?
• What were the major turns to the conversation ?
• What are the current debates on the topic ?
• Mixed research methods , qualitative research methods , quantitative research methods , usability and user experience research ?
• What citation style is required by the audience and discourse community you’re addressing? APA | MLA .

4. Collaboration

Collaboration  refers to the act of working with others to exchange ideas, solve problems, investigate subjects ,  coauthor   texts , and develop products and services.

Collaboration can play a major role in the writing process, especially when authors coauthor documents with peers and teams , or critique the works of others .

Acts of collaboration include

• Paying close attention to what others are saying, acknowledging their input, and asking clarifying questions to ensure understanding.
• Expressing ideas, thoughts, and opinions in a concise and understandable manner, both verbally and in writing.
• Being receptive to new ideas and perspectives, and considering alternative approaches to problem-solving.
• Adapting to changes in project goals, timelines, or team dynamics, and being willing to modify plans when needed.
• Distributing tasks and responsibilities fairly among team members, and holding oneself accountable for assigned work.
• valuing and appreciating the unique backgrounds, skills, and perspectives of all team members, and leveraging this diversity to enhance collaboration.
• Addressing disagreements or conflicts constructively and diplomatically, working towards mutually beneficial solutions.
• Providing constructive feedback to help others improve their work, and being open to receiving feedback to refine one’s own ideas and contributions.
• Understanding and responding to the emotions, needs, and concerns of team members, and fostering a supportive and inclusive environment .
• Acknowledging and appreciating the achievements of the team and individual members, and using successes as a foundation for continued collaboration and growth.

5. Planning

Planning refers to

• the process of planning how to organize a document
• the process of managing your writing processes

6. Organizing

Following rhetorical analysis , following prewriting , writers question how they should organize their texts. For instance, should they adopt the organizational strategies of academic discourse or workplace-writing discourse ?

Writing-Process Plans

• What is your Purpose? – Aims of Discourse
• What steps, or strategies, need to be completed next?
• set a schedule to complete goals

Planning Exercises

• Document Planner
• Team Charter

7. Designing

Designing refers to efforts on the part of the writer

• to leverage the power of visual language to convey meaning
• to create a visually appealing text

During the designing stage of the writing process, writers explore how they can use the  elements of design  and  visual language to signify , clarify , and simplify the message.

Examples of the designing step of the writing process:

• Establishing a clear hierarchy of visual elements, such as headings, subheadings, and bullet points, to guide the reader’s attention and facilitate understanding.
• Selecting appropriate fonts, sizes, and styles to ensure readability and convey the intended tone and emphasis.
• Organizing text and visual elements on the page or screen in a manner that is visually appealing, easy to navigate, and supports the intended message.
• Using color schemes and contrasts effectively to create a visually engaging experience, while also ensuring readability and accessibility for all readers.
• Incorporating images, illustrations, charts, graphs, and videos to support and enrich the written content, and to convey complex ideas in a more accessible format.
• Designing content that is easily accessible to a wide range of readers, including those with visual impairments, by adhering to accessibility guidelines and best practices.
• Maintaining a consistent style and design throughout the text, which includes the use of visuals, formatting, and typography, to create a cohesive and professional appearance.
• Integrating interactive elements, such as hyperlinks, buttons, and multimedia, to encourage reader engagement and foster deeper understanding of the content.

8. Drafting

Drafting refers to the act of writing a preliminary version of a document — a sloppy first draft. Writers engage in exploratory writing early in the writing process. During drafting, writers focus on freewriting: they write in short bursts of writing without stopping and without concern for grammatical correctness or stylistic matters.

When composing, writers move back and forth between drafting new material, revising drafts, and other steps in the writing process.

9. Rereading

Rereading refers to the process of carefully reviewing a written text. When writers reread texts, they look in between each word, phrase, sentence, paragraph. They look for gaps in content, reasoning, organization, design, diction, style–and more.

When engaged in the physical act of writing — during moments of composing — writers will often pause from drafting to reread what they wrote or to reread some other text they are referencing.

10. Revising

Revision  — the process of revisiting, rethinking, and refining written work to improve its  content ,  clarity  and overall effectiveness — is such an important part of  the writing process  that experienced writers often say  “writing is revision” or “all writing is revision.”  

For many writers, revision processes are deeply intertwined with writing, invention, and reasoning strategies:

• “Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what one is saying.” — John Updike
• “How do I know what I think until I see what I say.” — E.M. Forster

Acts of revision include

• Pivoting: trashing earlier work and moving in a new direction
• Identifying Rhetorical Problems
• Identifying Structural Problems
• Identifying Language Problems
• Identifying Critical & Analytical Thinking Problems

11. Editing

Editing  refers to the act of  critically reviewing  a  text  with the goal of identifying and rectifying sentence and word-level problems.

When  editing , writers tend to focus on  local concerns  as opposed to  global concerns . For instance, they may look for

• problems weaving sources into your argument or analysis
• problems establishing  the authority of sources
• problems using the required  citation style
• mechanical errors  ( capitalization ,  punctuation ,  spelling )
• sentence errors ,  sentence structure errors
• problems with  diction ,  brevity ,  clarity ,  flow ,  inclusivity , register, and  simplicity

12. Proofreading

Proofreading refers to last time you’ll look at a document before sharing or publishing the work with its intended audience(s). At this point in the writing process, it’s too late to add in some new evidence you’ve found to support your position. Now you don’t want to add any new content. Instead, your goal during proofreading is to do a final check on word-level errors, problems with diction , punctuation , or syntax.

13. Sharing or Publishing

Sharing refers to the last step in the writing process: the moment when the writer delivers the message — the text — to the target audience .

Writers may think it makes sense to wait to share their work later in the process, after the project is fairly complete. However, that’s not always the case. Sometimes you can save yourself a lot of trouble by bringing in collaborators and critics earlier in the writing process.

Doherty, M. (2016, September 4). 10 things you need to know about banyan trees. Under the Banyan. https://underthebanyan.blog/2016/09/04/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-banyan-trees/

Emig, J. (1967). On teaching composition: Some hypotheses as definitions. Research in The Teaching of English, 1(2), 127-135. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED022783.pdf

Emig, J. (1971). The composing processes of twelfth graders (Research Report No. 13). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Emig, J. (1983). The web of meaning: Essays on writing, teaching, learning and thinking. Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc.

Ghiselin, B. (Ed.). (1985). The Creative Process: Reflections on the Invention in the Arts and Sciences . University of California Press.

Hayes, J. R., & Flower, L. (1980). Identifying the Organization of Writing Processes. In L. W. Gregg, & E. R. Steinberg (Eds.), Cognitive Processes in Writing: An Interdisciplinary Approach (pp. 3-30). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.  

Hayes, J. R. (2012). Modeling and remodeling writing. Written Communication, 29(3), 369-388. https://doi: 10.1177/0741088312451260

Hayes, J. R., & Flower, L. S. (1986). Writing research and the writer. American Psychologist, 41(10), 1106-1113. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.41.10.1106

Leijten, Van Waes, L., Schriver, K., & Hayes, J. R. (2014). Writing in the workplace: Constructing documents using multiple digital sources. Journal of Writing Research, 5(3), 285–337. https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2014.05.03.3

Lundstrom, K., Babcock, R. D., & McAlister, K. (2023). Collaboration in writing: Examining the role of experience in successful team writing projects. Journal of Writing Research, 15(1), 89-115. https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2023.15.01.05

National Research Council. (2012). Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century . Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.https://doi.org/10.17226/13398.

North, S. M. (1987). The making of knowledge in composition: Portrait of an emerging field. Boynton/Cook Publishers.

Murray, Donald M. (1980). Writing as process: How writing finds its own meaning. In Timothy R. Donovan & Ben McClelland (Eds.), Eight approaches to teaching composition (pp. 3–20). National Council of Teachers of English.

Murray, Donald M. (1972). “Teach Writing as a Process Not Product.” The Leaflet, 11-14

Perry, S. K. (1996).  When time stops: How creative writers experience entry into the flow state  (Order No. 9805789). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I; ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (304288035). https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/when-time-stops-how-creative-writers-experience/docview/304288035/se-2

Rohman, D.G., & Wlecke, A. O. (1964). Pre-writing: The construction and application of models for concept formation in writing (Cooperative Research Project No. 2174). East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University.

Rohman, D. G., & Wlecke, A. O. (1975). Pre-writing: The construction and application of models for concept formation in writing (Cooperative Research Project No. 2174). U.S. Office of Education, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Sommers, N. (1980). Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers. College Composition and Communication, 31(4), 378-388. doi: 10.2307/356600

Brevity - Say More with Less

Clarity (in Speech and Writing)

Coherence - How to Achieve Coherence in Writing

Flow - How to Create Flow in Writing

Inclusivity - Inclusive Language

The Elements of Style - The DNA of Powerful Writing

Recommended

Academic Writing – How to Write for the Academic Community

Structured Revision – How to Revise Your Work

Professional Writing – How to Write for the Professional World

Credibility & Authority – How to Be Credible & Authoritative in Research, Speech & Writing

Citation Guide – Learn How to Cite Sources in Academic and Professional Writing

Page Design – How to Design Messages for Maximum Impact

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The Writing Process

The writing process is something that no two people do the same way. There is no "right way" or "wrong way" to write. It can be a very messy and fluid process, and the following is only a representation of commonly used steps. Remember you can come to the Writing Center for assistance at any stage in this process. 

Steps of the Writing Process

Step 1: Prewriting

Think and Decide

• Make sure you understand your assignment. See  Research Papers  or  Essays
• Decide on a topic to write about. See   Prewriting Strategies  and  Narrow your Topic
• Consider who will read your work. See  Audience and Voice
• Brainstorm ideas about the subject and how those ideas can be organized. Make an outline. See  Outlines

Step 2: Research (if needed) 

• List places where you can find information.
• Do your research. See the many KU Libraries resources and helpful guides
• Evaluate your sources. See  Evaluating Sources  and  Primary vs. Secondary Sources
• Make an outline to help organize your research. See  Outlines

Step 3: Drafting

• Write sentences and paragraphs even if they are not perfect.
• Create a thesis statement with your main idea. See  Thesis Statements
• Put the information you researched into your essay accurately without plagiarizing. Remember to include both in-text citations and a bibliographic page. See  Incorporating References and Paraphrase and Summary  
• Read what you have written and judge if it says what you mean. Write some more.
• Read it again.
• Write some more.
• Write until you have said everything you want to say about the topic.

Step 4: Revising

Make it Better

• Read what you have written again. See  Revising Content  and  Revising Organization
• Rearrange words, sentences, or paragraphs into a clear and logical order. 
• Take out or add parts.
• Do more research if you think you should.
• Replace overused or unclear words.
• Read your writing aloud to be sure it flows smoothly. Add transitions.

Step 5: Editing and Proofreading

Make it Correct

• Be sure all sentences are complete. See  Editing and Proofreading
• Correct spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.
• Change words that are not used correctly or are unclear.
• APA Formatting
• Chicago Style Formatting
• MLA Formatting  
• Have someone else check your work.

You, Writing! A Guide to College Composition

(26 reviews)

Alexandra Glynn, North Hennepin Community College

Kelli Hallsten-Erickson, Lake Superior College

Amy Jo Swing, Lake Superior College

Copyright Year: 2018

Publisher: Alexandra Glynn

Language: English

Formats Available

Conditions of use.

Learn more about reviews.

Reviewed by Kole Matheson, Lecturer, Old Dominion University on 5/22/24

The text covers areas and ideas relevant to Aristotle's rhetorical canon, which is to say it reflects a process-driven approach to communication. I find process to be essential to the composition classroom, but other outcomes are important too... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

The text covers areas and ideas relevant to Aristotle's rhetorical canon, which is to say it reflects a process-driven approach to communication. I find process to be essential to the composition classroom, but other outcomes are important too such as information literacy and rhetorical awareness. The final chapter on research allows a moment's focus on information literacy; chapter three's focus on audience similarly introduces rhetorical awareness at the introductory level.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

The content is accurate and error-free from the current-traditional perspective. Some scholars (Vershawn Ashanti Young, April Baker-Bell) may find that the overview on Standard American English forms as "fixing grammar" (p. 12) reveals a level of bias among academic and professional readerships.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

The content is relevant in a traditional sense. Aristotle is a permanent fixture in the academy, especially in terms of rhetoric and composition. As I suggested on the text's comprehensiveness, I would require some supplementation of materials to fully develop outcomes beyond process in an English Composition I course.

Clarity rating: 5

The text is written clearly enough for its intended audience, an English Composition I class.

Consistency rating: 5

The text is internally consistent with Aristotle's Rhetorical Canon. Considering the organization within each chapter, section headings do well to guide the reader through content.

Modularity rating: 4

Skimming through the text becomes a bit difficult, as chapters are not clearly offset from one another. It might be more easily divisible if some design strategies were employed across chapter breaks.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The topics in the text are presented logically and in a clear, process-driven fashion.

Interface rating: 5

The interface is sound and presents the text somewhat like a thesis or dissertation.

Grammatical Errors rating: 4

The text is written grammatically, despite the oft neglected objective pronoun, "whom," which might have been more strategically deployed on page 17.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

I did not find the text to be culturally insensitive or offensive.

I plan to utilize sections of the book in both my English Composition I classroom and its corequisite support course, Composition Studio. Thank you for making it available.

Reviewed by Tara Montague, Part-time instructor, Portland Community College on 3/6/22

The text is comprehensive; it covers all of the topics I would expect it to. It has a lengthy (10-page) glossary, but no index. I am undecided as to how useful the glossary is. read more

The text is comprehensive; it covers all of the topics I would expect it to. It has a lengthy (10-page) glossary, but no index. I am undecided as to how useful the glossary is.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

I have no concerns about the accuracy or bias of the content.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

For the most part, I feel like the content is up-to-date, though I believe the website and app litmus test (148) could be revisited. I believe any updates would be easy and straightforward to implement.

This text does a great job of speaking to students with accessible, conversational prose and of defining terms and concepts.

I don’t have any concerns with the consistency of the text in terms of terminology and framework.

Modularity rating: 5

I think the modularity is strong, which makes this text a great candidate for one of the online reading formats with hyperlinked contents. There are many subtopics within larger topics within larger sections. I will likely use this text by selecting sections to assign; the modularity makes this easy to do.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

The authors have used the “Basic Writing Process Chart” (page 12) to organize the chapters of the text. For the most part that makes sense as an organizational principle. If I were designing the organization, I think I’d have Exploration before Audience and Purpose, but I can also see that the authors’ arrangement makes sense. I also felt like the very long Modes of Writing section (pp. 56-79) was a little out of balance and out of pace with the rest of the text.

Interface rating: 3

The only available format for this text is PDF, and I don’t think it’s marked up or accessible. The 170-page text is a long, word-processed document. This creates navigation issues as the text is long and linear, with no hyperlinks from the table of contents. Word maps are used to add some color and graphic appeal, but the fonts are difficult to read. (Captions are, however, included.) The use of a few icons here and there is a little confusing. The interface is a big barrier to me because I believe it would create a barrier to learning for many of my students.

While I didn’t notice grammatical errors, I found some editing errors, including incomplete links, some typos, and a misspelling.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

There is some diversity in examples. I didn’t notice anything exclusive or offensive. Many of the examples are related to life experiences that everyone would have. I am not sure that the “Anglo-Saxon” vs. “Latinate” distinction is helpful or relevant at this point..

This text is a solid choice for an introductory writing course. I found the editing and proofreading sections especially useful; they have impressively accessible and clear (and not over-long) discussions. I particularly like the breakdown of style. My biggest issue with this text is that the only format it’s available in is a continuous essay-style document converted to a PDF without hyperlinks. This makes it a bit difficult to work with and not the most accessible or appealing for students.

Reviewed by Lindsay Tigue, Assistant Professor, Eastern New Mexico University on 12/31/21

This book covers most of the topics I cover in my Composition courses and it includes a lot of helpful information on the topic of writing. read more

This book covers most of the topics I cover in my Composition courses and it includes a lot of helpful information on the topic of writing.

I did not notice any errors in my review of this textbook.

This book contains relevant examples, but overall the suggestions of writing, editing, and revision do not feel as if they will go out of date.

The text is written in accessible and readable language without talking down to students in any way.

I found the texts quality and terminology to be consistent throughout.

I could definitely see pulling relevant chapters and using them as stand-alone resources in a course as the text is designed to be used whole or in parts. I found several parts especially useful--like the chapter on thesis statements and titling the essay. I definitely see myself pulling specific chapters to use with students.

This text is well-organized and the table of contents lays out a clear organization for the text.

Interface rating: 4

The text is clean and easy to read and includes helpful images. It would be even more helpful if the table of contents sections were linkable to that part of the text.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

I did not notice any grammatical errors in the text.

I found the text inclusive.

I appreciate the clear, helpful information on college writing in this text. I found the parts about thesis statements, introductions and conclusions, and titling especially helpful. I don't think I have ever seen a Composition textbook tackle titling an essay in such a clear, helpful way for students. I appreciate the visuals and how even handwritten examples of things like mind mapping are included to show students what that would really look like in their notes. The only thing I would like to see is the chapters linked in the table of contents to that part of the pdf. At least in the download I was looking at, there were no links. The text doesn't have a very designed look and could be more visually interesting. However, the information is useful and easy to read so that is fine. Overall, I found this text useful and I will definitely pull chapters of it for my Composition course.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Bidinger, Professor, Worcester State University on 7/7/21

This textbook provides excellent coverage of the fundamental topics that are covered in most FYW courses, and is especially well-suited for one that doesn't emphasize writing with sources and research. It is unusually thorough on the basics of... read more

This textbook provides excellent coverage of the fundamental topics that are covered in most FYW courses, and is especially well-suited for one that doesn't emphasize writing with sources and research. It is unusually thorough on the basics of the writing process, such as planning, drafting, organizing, and revising, which I find very helpful. Clearly written sections beautifully explain and illustrate skills like organizing paragraphs and writing introductions and conclusions. Especially useful is the chapter on revision, which includes a student essay with inserted suggestions for revision, followed by a revised draft. This text provides the most thorough and instructive discussion of audience of any FYW textbook that I can recall, which I find a perfect place to start. No index, but a comprehensive glossary defines virtually every composition and rhetoric term that might be used in a FYW course. While this book covers the basics in fluid, highly accessible prose, some of its discussions are perhaps too general and even elementary. The section on different modes of writing provides such superficial descriptions of different types of writing that it manages to make them all sound fairly uniform and lacking in the distinctiveness that should make them sound fun to write. It would be an ideal FYW textbook if there was an attempt to supplement the basics with some sophisticated and challenging discussions on critical thinking and cultural criticism, as well as a wider range of examples of writing in different modes. The troubling implication of a college text that covers basic writing skills in depth but totally omits intellectually and aesthetically engaging materials is that students who need to review essay and paragraph organization wouldn't be inspired by reading, or capable of producing, prose that is rich with irony, humor, nuance, or difficult truths. The student example of a report is titled, "What I Did on My Summer Vacation" (Chapter 7: Drafting), which I fear many college students would find offensively rudimentary. I would have also really liked some exercise prompts.

The information in the book is accurate, error-free, and completely responsible and sound.

The authors do a fine job of keeping the focus on the fairly timeless basics of how to craft effective prose, so very little would become outdated in the near future and the few timely cultural references to things like BLM are presented in a way that makes them relevant now and, I would guess, for many years.

One of the great strengths of this book is its clear, conversational, highly readable prose. The explanations are easy to follow and every potentially unfamiliar term is provided with adequate context.

This text is consistent in form, approach, structure, and authorial voice. It conveys professionalism and expertise.

The book's chapters are designed so that each provides a detailed discussion of a discrete skill set, so that it would be very easy to assign a single chapter within a module or unit. I'm giving it a 4 rating instead of a 5 in this area because I would have really liked self-contained chapters on a few different modes of writing that included planning strategies for each kind of essay described. A discussion of the process of finding a topic could be more illustrative and inspiring if it's geared towards a specific kind of writing, but also, it would be nice to have a self-contained chapter on writing a narrative essay that could be used by itself for a unit focused on that assignment.

The book is thoughtfully organized to follow the steps of the writing process, so for a first-semester, FYW course, the organization works very well. The single chapter on research being added at the end might seem a troubling suggestion, in the view of others, that research is completely separate from the writing process, but I personally find the approach of separating writing skills from research skills to be less intimidating to new college students.

I had no problems accessing or navigating any section or component of this text. I do think it could be presented in a more visually engaging and accessible way, with more highlighted text boxes that separate and emphasize key takeaways.

I found the text to be grammatically sound and effectively written.

There is certainly nothing insensitive or offensive in this book. However, a casual glance at the works cited in each chapter shows how overwhelmingly canonical and traditional the majority of the textual examples and references are: D. H. Lawrence, Steinbeck, Jefferson, Melville, R. L. Stevenson, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Nietsche, Steven Pinker, and G. K. Chesterton. There's a brief excerpt from a children's book by James Baldwin, and a couple examples that refer, in fairly generic ways, to works by Angelou and Douglass. The text would be greatly enlivened, deepened, and culturally enriched by textual examples from a wider range of cultures, communities, literatures, and Englishes.

This is an exceptionally useful book for first-semester, first-year college students, because of its patient, in-depth, and generous explanations of basic writing skills for college writing. For this reason, it would be an excellent resource for a FYW course if it were supplemented with additional readings that helped students see how their own experience and perspective can be transformed into energetic and powerful prose.

Reviewed by Danielle Santos, Adjunct Professor, University of Massachusetts Lowell on 6/14/21

For an introductory Composition course, this text covers what I teach. I like the examples given, and many of the diagrams are helpful & similar to what I already use. However, I wouldn't have minded more prompts for practice exercises as I... read more

For an introductory Composition course, this text covers what I teach. I like the examples given, and many of the diagrams are helpful & similar to what I already use. However, I wouldn't have minded more prompts for practice exercises as I tend to gravitate towards texts that include those. I do think the text lends itself well to developmental instruction (which I also teach), so while accessible and easy to read for all students, I could see myself using it more for certain Composition courses than others.

I do think the material accurately covers the concepts presented. I am happy to see a short section on annotated bibliographies (because I typically require these when I assign research papers), but I noticed the example wasn't structured correctly in alphabetical order/presented in the appropriate way. A small detail, but something that I would still have to provide my own example for.

The concepts covered are certainly relevant to the times. It's possible that some examples will be outdated in a couple of years and more relevant examples could be substituted.

The conversational, friendly tone is definitely an asset of this text. The authors present the concepts in a straightforward manner with solid explanations, all the while avoiding excessive jargon. This is an accessible text for all levels of learners.

The text is consistently organized and presented, and the voice of the text carries through each chapter.

I think the information is sectioned out well and clearly presented. There are some chapters where the material is more dense; others seem rather short. Chapter 7 is particularly lengthy, but one could easily refer to only the information necessary (specific modes of writing, for example). Chapter 11 is also a long one, and it seemed to be especially text-heavy for the first half of it. I think that chapter would've benefitted from further visuals when discussing how to find sources, using keywords, etc.

"You, Writing!" takes a pretty traditional organization for a Composition text. It starts with the writing process and situation, progresses through topics, thesis statements, and organization, and rounds out with grammar and research. For courses that typically structure basic writing skills early in the semester followed by a research project, this organization works well; however, one could also assign the reading out of sequence and it would be fine.

The interface looks good. I appreciate the additional resources in the form of web links, but a few did not work (I feel this can be common for this type of resource).

There are a few errors in the text, but the writing is clear and consistent. Grammatical errors are minor (though I do believe they should be fixed for a textbook on writing!).

The text is culturally sensitive and inclusive. It includes examples, names, and current events that are culturally-attuned.

Overall, there are a lot of aspects of this text that I liked. I would most likely use it in my course, supplementing with readings and exercises. I appreciate the fact that it is comprehensive and easy to read.

Reviewed by David Beach, Associate Professor, Radford University on 5/21/21

Glynn's text serves as a comprehensive rhetoric to help first-year college students navigate the expectations of expository college writing. A good supplemental text for any FY expository writing course. read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

Glynn's text serves as a comprehensive rhetoric to help first-year college students navigate the expectations of expository college writing. A good supplemental text for any FY expository writing course.

Most information on rhetoric and composition are on the mark. I always struggle with the traditional way of teaching "thesis." In FYC, we interpret "thesis" as the controlling idea of an essay. However, the way it is often taught is to develop the controlling idea, then find supporting evidence to that idea. This is not how college students should approach research. Granted, a working thesis may help point students in a particular direction, but if we want our students to be good researchers and writers, then they need to grapple with ideas to come to some conclusion (thesis), and they do this by working from the inside out, not starting with a thesis.

Everything in Glynn's text is relevant...until MLA and APA publish new editions! However, the fundamental information on MLA and APA will be able to stand.

Clarity rating: 4

Glynn's text is overall lucid and accessible, with mostly clear explanations of jargon and technical terminology. By their nature, rhetoric, grammar, and mechanics are not native languages to most FY college students, and I think Glynn does a good job helping FY college students become proficient in the language of writing.

"You, Writing!" reinforces ideas throughout the text through scaffolding and by being consistent in terminology and framework.

Modularity rating: 3

While there are some good infographics throughout the text, there are meaningless graphics peppered throughout in an attempt to make the text visually appealing. As it is, the book is a bit text-heavy, despite it being a book about rhetoric and composition! Today's students are visually oriented, so more infographics definitely helps.

Clear, logical organization throughout the text, exploring how we come to writing, how we can write, and the tools and skills needed to write effectively.

As a PDF, the text is solid, with the ability to move to pages easily. It would be helpful to have a hyperlinked sidebar menu so the students can move to sections based on topic instead of page number.

The only grammatical errors are those that were intended to show as examples.

Glynn uses a diverse and wide variety of references throughout the text. Though not a fan of Stanley Fish, I understand using his points for the sake of argument!

I plan to use this text in my first-semester FY writing courses as it is a strong, open-source resource that students can use throughout their college careers and later.

Reviewed by Michele Ren, Associate Professor, Radford University on 5/4/21

The book is certainly comprehensive and provides a glossary; I wish I could give 4.5 because a clickable table of contents would be wonderful. read more

The book is certainly comprehensive and provides a glossary; I wish I could give 4.5 because a clickable table of contents would be wonderful.

Caught a typo pretty early on (page 12 "conclusionn"), but the content itself is accurate and unbiased. Re. accuracy, I especially appreciated that the list of "transition words" is specifically discussed as a way to make transitions within a paragraph rather than between paragraphs. Many texts simply list those words but do not discuss ways of using them and students inevitably will insert a "furthermore" when adding something that is neither further nor more.

Uses specific contemporary detail for writing examples in a way that makes the text relevant for students, but not in a way that it would seem outdated any time soon.

Easy to read, short sections, lots of spacing and bold and graphics to break up chunks of text in ways that are not distracting.

Chapters follow a similar format with subtitles, bulleted information, graphics, and spacing between paragraphs when larger chunks of text are needed to explain a concept. Fonts and font styles (bold, italics) and justification are used consistently from chapter to chapter.

Chapters are short and subdivided in ways that would make creation of handouts or assigning small passages/sections easy.

The placement of thesis and research in different places gives me pause, especially when research is used after an argument is created (I worry about confirmation bias rather than doing research and then formulating a topic), but, the book is set up in a way that sections could be assigned in different order, and the authors address the difficulty in defining one specific writing process in the graphics they provide on pages 12 and 13.

Again, a clickable table of contents would have been so lovely!

These are composition instructors, so errors are minimal. But, again, "conclusionn" page 12 did jump out at me. Also: "Black Lives Matters" should be "Black Lives Matter"

I appreciated the attention to diversity in examples (Black Lives Matter - in spite of the misspelling, Native American traditions), although maybe not college women trying to avoid the "freshman fifteen."

My university has an older OER composition handbook that I have been using for awhile; I am actually considering replacing it with this one because examples are newer and it may work for both freshman courses. I would love to see a clickable TOC, though!

Reviewed by Erica Braverman, Part-time instructor, Portland Community College on 1/12/21

This book is great for a writing class geared toward academic writing. It covers the basics of instructing a first-year student of how to go through the writing process and what they can expect while doing so. I especially liked the section on... read more

This book is great for a writing class geared toward academic writing. It covers the basics of instructing a first-year student of how to go through the writing process and what they can expect while doing so. I especially liked the section on revision, which clearly laid out critical questions the student can ask themself when making decisions. I also liked the attention to different processes, giving students information about what they are and encouraging students to find the one that works for them.

This book has credible, clear information. The information is presented in a non-prescriptive way, giving agency to students to try things out and find what works for them. The authors also include sources for students to do further research on their own if they want.

The book includes cultural, historical and literary examples to explain concepts. The authors were shrewd in choosing cultural references that are relevant to students now but will also age well (e.g., Google). I also appreciated the attention to writing that has real-world relevancy for students, such as writing resumes or a letter or email to a manager. I thought some of the examples used, however, would not be as interesting to students who aren't as focused on academic studies or obtaining a four-year degree (Shakespeare; Moby Dick; latinate used in Abraham Lincoln's speech). I thought the authors missed an opportunity to engage students who might not make writing, research, or academia their career, but are still interested in learning to write and communicate better in real-world situations outside of the classroom.

The authors explain concepts well, but perhaps a bit too thoroughly. The chapters contain long blocks of text that might seem intimidating to beginner-level students. Again, the examples given tend toward "high-culture," and might not help students connect concepts to their lived experiences.

The book is consistent and easy to navigate.

Instructors can break up the information as they want with relative ease.

It's designed with the student in mind, taking them through the writing process step-by-step. The chapter on editing, though, consists of a lot of information on grammar, sentence structure, etc., which students might find overwhelming. I wanted the information to first be more succinct, before getting into the specifics and details.

The text is easy to read and navigate. I especially liked the way the authors explained how the steps of the writing process may not always be linear. They first listed out the steps, and then marked them up in a graphic to show how the order might be different.

The text is clean and clear of errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

I personally would not use this textbook with my community college students because I don't think the examples would particularly interest them or pertain to them (mostly literary, historical, scholarly examples--very few cultural or real-world examples they could relate to their lived experience).

Reviewed by Matthew Chelf, Adjunct Instructor, Portland Community College on 12/9/20

You, Writing! wonderfully covers the whole of the writing process in 170 pages of approachable, audience-friendly language. Like many contemporary texts on first year college composition, You, Writing! stresses writing as a process, not a product.... read more

You, Writing! wonderfully covers the whole of the writing process in 170 pages of approachable, audience-friendly language. Like many contemporary texts on first year college composition, You, Writing! stresses writing as a process, not a product. In addition to covering academic writing, the text also includes other modalities such as professional writing (emails, resumes) and social media postings. What unites the text is a consistent focus on writing as audience-focused.

The text participates in many of the themes you find in first-year college composition texts. With that said, I did not find anything inaccurate or that I would be uncomfortable sharing with students.

In the text’s introduction, the authors seem to anticipate a common criticism of writing, and the humanities in general: why is writing relevant to more lucrative and pursued careers that require a STEM degree? Given the relationship between writing and reading, I found this to be a relevant note to start on, and the authors answer the question “why write?” by demonstrating how many of the skills within writing (critical thinking, communication) transfer to real world applications and careers, like Google for instance. To get their point across, the text is organized in quick, pithy sections laden with different formats that will appeal to students coming of age in the digital era.

The language and sentences are clear and straightforward. There is nothing confusing or complicated. For example, the authors do a great job explicating thesis writing. Often, we teachers treat the components of thesis writing as cumbersome moving parts, but here the elements of a good thesis are three: interesting, limited, specific (32). Using the previous discussion of audience-centered writing, the authors demonstrate in three subsequent subsections how the three qualities of thesis writing play out in unique examples.

The tone, language, and format remains consistent yet dynamic throughout the text. One major theme in particular--audience-focused writing--reminds the reader of previous passages in the text, so as the reader moves forward they integrate new knowledge with previous information. This repetition is wonderful, and each chapter builds upon itself.

I enjoy the brief, concise chapter-and-subchapter format and find them student-friendly. Paragraphs are never more than several sentences. Examples, images, subheadings often follow paragraphs so there is rarely more than 3-4 paragraphs grouped at a time. The table of contents is very thorough, which makes it simple to pick what you want to assign and what you may want to skip. The text is holistic enough, though, that I could see myself assigning the text as a whole.

As I stated, I enjoy the brief, concise chapter-and-subchapter format and find them student-friendly. The chapters build upon each other in a logical fashion. At the end of chapters, there are resources for further reading.

The authors include graphics, charts, bulleted lists, and illustrations to accompany ideas, themes, and lessons in the text without cluttering the page or the meaning. I found the text easy on the eyes and presented in a very streamlined fashion.

I did not find grammar mistakes. In fact, there are even chapters later in the text about grammar.

Sprinkled with references to contemporary life like Twitter, Black Lives Matter, and the intricacies of identity like gender and socio-economic background, part of the success of You, Writing! is that it recontextualizes first year college composition to the current cultural landscape. Moreover, the organization of the text in its streamlined, modular fashion is well suited to the cultural reading style that young students seem to have owing to growing up with the Internet. In other words, I think this text is well suited, culturally, to digitally fluent students.

Reviewed by Charles Prescott, Professor of English, Berkshire Community College on 6/28/20

The text effectively and comprehensively covers the main topics and strategies included in an introductory composition course. I especially appreciate the Basic Writing Process Chart as a graphic introduction of the key steps of the writing... read more

The text effectively and comprehensively covers the main topics and strategies included in an introductory composition course. I especially appreciate the Basic Writing Process Chart as a graphic introduction of the key steps of the writing process, immediately followed by hand-drawn arrows indicating how messy and recursive that process can be. There are also good examples of how to come up with ideas to write about, how to establish organization, and how to revise. The glossary of key terms, like the rest of the text, is both thorough and approachable to guide new college students through the writing process.

The book is accurate in dealing with the subject matter. I did not find any material I would consider inaccurate.

The strategies presented in the text for brainstorming, drafting, and revising are highly relevant and broad enough so that they should not need updating. The sections on research strategies and citation, especially in APA, may need more frequent updating. However, the less-is-more approach to the basics of citation, should make it relatively easy to update in the text. The text presents enough information so that the individual instructor can easily fill in any holes or mention updated strategies while teaching the course.

The clear, approachable writing style the authors use is by far the best feature of this text! Not only is the writing process presented in a clear, step-by-step manner, the text is actually fun and funny to read! Examples of how to brainstorm topics and how to compose drafts of specific types of essays are clear and approachable. I expect my students to get a lot out of this text, and to enjoy reading it as well!

The text uses the Basic Writing Process Chart to create consistency, explaining each of those steps thoroughly with examples. Visual cues like handwritten annotations also help to build a strong sense of consistency throughout the text. Some of the transitions between sections in the Drafting chapter are a bit clunky, but overall the presentation is consistent.

Modularity is a strength of this text. Smaller sections on brainstorming techniques and grammar could easily be inserted into discussion of other composition topics.

For the most part the organization of this text is fine, but including discussion of different rhetorical modes in the Drafting chapter is a bit odd. I would prefer to see discussion of different styles of writing (narrative, informative, persuasive) as separate chapters, rather than listed as part of Drafting. However, I acknowledge that’s more of a personal preference than a real critique.

I did not notice any interface problems.

I did not notice any distracting grammatical errors. The text is clean, clear, and approachable, making it an ideal model of what good writing can do in the context of an introductory composition course.

The text includes some discussion and examples of culturally relevant topics, such a Black Lives Matter. I did not specifically notice Cultural Relevance as a strength or weakness of the text.

I find You, Writing! to be a fun and flexible, unintimidating introduction to composition. Its combination of a playful tone, emphasis on process, and explanation that writing should not be too bound by that process strikes me as just the right mix. I anticipate that the students will find it a very helpful resource, and that I’ll enjoy teaching with it.

Reviewed by Caroline Stanley, Associate Professor, Bridgewater State University on 6/22/20

The text is comprehensive in covering the major topics pertaining to basic writing. It provides many useful tips about the writing process including proofreading, correcting run-on sentences, and overcoming writer’s block. Likewise, the glossary... read more

The text is comprehensive in covering the major topics pertaining to basic writing. It provides many useful tips about the writing process including proofreading, correcting run-on sentences, and overcoming writer’s block. Likewise, the glossary is comprehensive and well-written.

The content appears to be accurate and error-free.

The content is up-to-date and rife with examples that are relevant for the college population. Examples are not likely to become obsolete or else can be easily updated.

Readers will appreciate the fact that the paragraphs are short, and the writing is concise. There is little jargon or technical terminology used and new terms are defined very clearly. The authors provide interesting examples and the writing style is casual, relatable, and humorous.

Consistency rating: 4

The text is consistent in terms of its terminology and framework. Likewise, the writing style remains consistent across the chapters.

The text is modular in that each chapter “stands on its own” and can be assigned separately from the others. Each chapter is useful regardless of the order in which it is assigned and the length of each chapter is manageable.

The text is well-organized and the chapters are presented in a logical order.

Some of the “charts” (see page 45) presented are actually lists of words. These lists would be more effective if displayed in a table.

Grammatical Errors rating: 3

There are some grammatical errors, some pertaining to tense or subject-verb agreement (i.e., “psychologist Abraham Maslow describe,” pg. 19; “The most important section are,” pg. 19). Though these errors do not obscure meaning, they could (and should) be corrected.

The text is inclusive of a variety of races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. It may be of interest to some instructors that, when discussing how to write a strong thesis statement in chapter 5, the author briefly discusses the Black Lives Matters Movement. In doing so, the author provides content that may be especially relevant for those wishing to expose students to the concept of racial bias.

I find the language to be simple and easy to understand. Some may consider it too elementary for a college sample and more suitable for high school readers.

Reviewed by Colin Rafferty, Associate Professor, University of Mary Washington on 6/19/20

Covers the full spectrum of introductory writing studies, including big picture things like generating ideas and organizing them as well as more local issues like style and grammar. A glossary of commonly used terms is helpful, as the discussion... read more

Covers the full spectrum of introductory writing studies, including big picture things like generating ideas and organizing them as well as more local issues like style and grammar. A glossary of commonly used terms is helpful, as the discussion of citations and research. It's a book that's clearly rooted in theory but avoids getting the reader bogged down in it--perfect for the general academic writing class.

Very little in the book is inaccurate; perhaps it might have addressed the emergence of the singular "they" in recent years, but beyond that, the book is almost entirely error-free.

Its focus on the writing process rather than the end product, while still emphasizing its importance, allows the book to stay fresh for generations of students. I was very pleased to see that the book notes the existence of multiple drafts between the first and final ones. Barring a seismic shift in the world of writing pedagogy, this book will remain useful for years to come.

Incredibly accessible to the general audience. The voice is familiar and welcoming without trying too hard to be on the level of the students. As I stated before, it's a book that has done the theoretical work so that the reader doesn't have to get caught up in jargon and esoterica.

The three authors have managed a consistent voice throughout the entire book, and nothing transitions jarringly or confusingly. They remain constant throughout in how they refer to the elements of writing, and at no point do they introduce new knowledge without explaining to the reader just what it means.

Even as I was reading the book, I was thinking about how I could use certain chapters and sections in my existing composition course. The book is easily adaptable to a variety of situations, and the authors are careful to make sure that the chapters, while informing each other, can stand alone, which allows for the professor to use as she sees fit.

Despite the book's potential for modularity, the best way to encounter it is to read it straight through. The ideas follow logically upon one another, and the authors build the sense of writing as a process through their own organization of the text.

Easily readable and clear throughout, even when graphics enter the text.

Nothing that obscures meaning.

Inclusive throughout, whether in the choices of examples--BLM shows up at one point, which is appropriate for my Fall 2020 classes--or in the names used in the text. A good book for all. (Now, about that singular "they"...)

A solid book for the composition classroom. I look forward to adopting it for my general writing seminar this fall.

Reviewed by Katie Durant, Adjunct Professor, Middlesex Community College on 6/17/20

This book covers all the major topics I teach in my class currently. It is written clearly with many interesting examples to help students understand the concepts. The index is very helpful and the glossary in the back defines many of the key... read more

This book covers all the major topics I teach in my class currently. It is written clearly with many interesting examples to help students understand the concepts. The index is very helpful and the glossary in the back defines many of the key terms in an easy to read format.

This book is accurate in dealing with the subject matter. I covers much of what I have taught for years in a clear and comprehensive way. I found no bias or errors (besides one typo).

This book is relevant as it mentions only cultural happenings and figures that are significant like lasting political movements and figures as well as well-read authors. There is one mention of a writer who is referred to as living but is now deceased, but that does not affect the relevance of the text. Because the book focuses on basics, it is unlikely that it will need any content updates besides possibly the mention of the author.

The book demonstrates a relatable voice without using vocabulary and sentence complexity that is out of reach for a developmental or beginning-college level. It is easy to read and has a comfortable pacing. There is little jargon or technical terminology in this book, but where new terms are introduced, the definitions are provided in a comprehensive way.

The book retains its consistency throughout. From the beginning to the end the voice of the author is relatable, and the book's vocabulary is not overbearing.

Because each section of the book is self reliant, the book is modular and each chapter can be used alone or in conjunction with other chapters. The self-contained nature of this book makes it more useful in different classes.

The flow of topics in the text is logical and effective with one topic building onto the previous ones. The only exception is the section on basic grammar skills like making complete sentences. This information is found in the last chapter on proofreading. While proofreading does require these skills, It would be more logical to move this section to the beginning chapters and refer back to the basic grammar in the revising section.

The author was careful to create a simple interface without distracting of confusing diagrams and images. One can navigate it easily.

I only found one typo on the text. The rest of it retains the grammatical standards that it teaches.

This book used examples from real life when making points, and I found these to be culturally relevant, inclusive, and effective. The author mentions the Black Lives Matter movement and discusses the writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. to cite two examples of inclusivity and cultural relevance.

I will be picking up this book to teach a composition course and portions of it for a developmental writing course. Its clear and conversational tone as well as its modularity make it an ideal OER resource for my class.

Reviewed by Matthew Gilbert, Adjunct Instructor, East Tennessee State University on 4/16/20

This book provides a comprehensive approach for all levels of writers for a range of writing projects. The text works effectively in providing a breakdown of all major aspects of composition: how to determine the audience or purpose of the... read more

This book provides a comprehensive approach for all levels of writers for a range of writing projects. The text works effectively in providing a breakdown of all major aspects of composition: how to determine the audience or purpose of the assignment, how to develop a thesis statement and supporting arguments, and how to write a draft and follow through development and revisions from start to finish. The text is targeted towards beginning college writers, though it is not limited to beginners. The text approaches a wide range of assignments/academic tasking, including but not limited to, professional email etiquette, argumentation, and critical analysis. While the book does demonstrate a wide representation of college writing expectations and skills, the generality of it requires instructors to supplement other materials to further develop student understanding beyond the basic levels. The table of contents provides precise detailing of the materials throughout and I found the glossary incredibly useful.

The book is surprisingly accurate and well-composed. The writers demonstrate a wide and thorough understanding of the writing process conventions of language, style, tone, etc., and they provide informative lessons on where to find current formatting instruction. The grammar section of the text is quite brief but effectively introduces students to many of the major areas of concern in academic writing; However, if a teacher wants to focus highly on grammar, supplemental information or a different text would be more beneficial.

Majority of the information provided works universally and provides a strong foundation to students without experience in writing academically or professionally. The text provides a strong overview or how to brainstorm and develop ideas, how to organize and structure an essay around a claim, how to pitch your idea to an audience, how to properly use subordinating clauses, and how to write introductions and conclusions. The authors provide resources for further studies like Online Writing Labs, where students can find up-to-date APA formatting for example. The writing seems contemporary and addressed composition from current pedagogical approaches.

The writer does well to not only instruct students with their precise writing styles and examples but to showcase these lessons through the text writing itself. The writing is concise, concrete, and easy to read. As an example of the clear writing that sets this book apart from more commercial texts: “Some instructors will also call the clause, ‘As I walked down the store’ an introductory phrase that needs a comma after it. Whatever the instructor calls it, the comma needs to be there.” This passage not only provides clear instruction but highlights the authors’ understanding of diverse terminology that teachers may use in the classroom.

The book maintains its terminology and framework throughout the chapters. Each chapter addresses key steps in the writing process, which works comprehensively with previous chapters to build on developed knowledge.

Structurally the book works well in the order that the lessons and chapters are positioned, though I find that students learn better when they have positive examples to learn from. For this reason, I would recommend that proofreading skills are moved closer to the front, but this can easily be addressed with supplemental lessons and instruction. The text works well in order, but it can be adapted to suit the needs of the instructor and the classroom with a little foresight.

The writing process steps are quite organized in a manner that is easy to scaffold. As mentioned in the structure, I think that proofreading could be moved sooner in the text so that students can learn from seeing proper usage. I also feel that the research, plagiarism, and citation section could have been moved closer to the front; however, the text can be adapted to suit the classroom needs with a little planning. The authors make an excellent point that the writing process is not linear; therefore, the text can be taught out of order to a similar effect as teaching from start to finish of the text.

The text was quite legible so I had no difficulty reading lessons or examples. The images and charts are visually appealing and very contemporary. I think the overall approach to text construction works well to appeal to students regardless of their learning types.

The grammar is excellent and works well to instruct students by example!

The writing samples illustrate a diverse range of writers and backgrounds. This will work well to avoid intimidating students, especially beginner writers.

Overall, I find this text to be written with precision. It seems like an appropriate way to approach composition/ writing instruction for beginner writers and writers who need to broaden their range of writing approaches.

Reviewed by Susan Pesti-Strobel, Adjunct Instructor, Linn-Benton Community College on 1/12/20

_You, Writing!_ by Glynn et al. guides the student writer through successful moves of academic writing. This book would be a very useful companion for both students and instructors. It is clear that the writers have extensive experience with... read more

_You, Writing!_ by Glynn et al. guides the student writer through successful moves of academic writing. This book would be a very useful companion for both students and instructors. It is clear that the writers have extensive experience with teaching college composition and, accordingly, they cover the writing process for a collection of generally assigned types of papers in early writing courses. They also provide a multi-modal, visually accessible format with plenty of white space to keep it from an overwhelming experience for student writers. The same student writers get a lot of encouragement to build on what they already know and have practiced during their career so far, but they also get plenty of friendly nudges toward taking it to the next level. The authors offer writing samples, ranging from phrases or sentences to paragraph-length samples to sample essays, each of which is a quite helpful teaching tool. Chapter 9 on revising, one of the tougher concepts in freshman composition classes, is a particularly welcome overview of helpful ways to tackle the final stages of the writing process. The relatively detailed section on style is an especially welcome discussion, again, a concept that often gets scant attention in comprehensive composition textbooks. A useful glossary completes the book. I would be tempted to adopt this textbook for my classes, but the one element that gives me pause is the rather belated discussion of research.

The textbook is readable, clear, and for the most part, error-free. It appears, though, that the promised discussion of comma splices, something I find myself addressing heavily in my classes, is missing (see p. 123 and on).

The content is absolutely relevant and reflects the current take on teaching college composition, but without the danger of becoming obsolete soon. It looks to me that it would be relatively easy to update and implement the text.

The text is indeed written in an accessible language that is easy to comprehend by its intended audience. The authors use technical terminology necessary to the content.

The text is internally consistent in terms of terminology. The visual framework could, however, be more consistent throughout. The style - color, format, etc. - of call-outs could be made more consistent for the whole text.

As with most of us teaching college composition, assigning units from a writing textbooks will usually follow the schedule of actual writing assignments. This text lends itself to short, select reading assignments to complement the curriculum.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 3

Overall, the topics are organized in a logical pattern. The one snag for me is the belated discussion of research - it is one of the last chapters. Consider the mantra of college writing across the curriculum: "Research everything!" With that thought in mind, I would prefer this chapter earlier in the book, especially because, and inevitably, the authors do reference the importance of research throughout.

The text is free of significant interface issues. I do suggest a more consistent usage of textboxes throughout, however.

The text is free of grammatical errors.

Even though the text refrains from addressing particularly sensitive social/cultural topics, it provides a good springboard for a variety of topics that can inspire student writers to branch out on their own.

I recommend this text for consideration in freshman composition courses. I am definitely putting it on my list of "promising titles."

Reviewed by Sheri Anderson, Composition Instructor, Colorado State University on 12/24/19

"You, Writing!" comprehensively addresses the basics of writing in a casual, easily-accessible way. It would be an extremely useful textbook in a freshman composition class. It covers a variety of writing genres, as well as some basics that we, as... read more

"You, Writing!" comprehensively addresses the basics of writing in a casual, easily-accessible way. It would be an extremely useful textbook in a freshman composition class. It covers a variety of writing genres, as well as some basics that we, as instructors, often assume that our students already know (yet they often don't), such as how to title your paper and how to annotate a text.

There are many writing samples throughout this textbook which make it a great reference for students. The examples of "high," "casual," and "low" writing styles, and rewrites to make famous excerpts a different writing style, are a smart way to demonstrate to students what academic writing is (and isn't). The lessons on grammar are framed rhetorically by being placed within a chapter about proofreading at the end of the (Ch. 10). I found this textbook to be clearly written and comprehensive in covering the basics of freshman composition.

The copy in this textbook is clean and error-free, which makes it easy to read and understand.

The information in this book is relevant and reliable for composition classes. It is clearly organized, making it easy to use and reference.

This text is particularly clear and easily to read and understand, without trying too hard to be hip and young. Students will appreciate the clear descriptions and examples within the text, as well as the inclusion of an appendix at the end of the textbook, which offers a glossary of terms which they might need to

This text uses a rhetorical framework for teaching writing, while simplifying the basics of tone and genre to make them more accessible for the student writer.

This textbook lends itself to smaller readings within a class curriculum very well. It could be used out of chapter order while still maintaining its integrity, and chapters can be easily broken into smaller, daily readings.

The chapters within this text are well-organized.

This book's text is easy to navigate, and its text and visuals are easy to read both online or as a pdf download.

The text within this textbook is clean and error-free.

This book is relevant across cultural boundaries and makes use of examples that cross a variety of backgrounds.

Reviewed by Kristin Macintyre, Instructor of Composition, Colorado State University on 12/21/19

This text appears in eleven chapters, and each chapter covers an important component in the writing process. The chapters cover basic (but important) steps such as defining audience and purpose (chapter 3), finding a topic (chapter 4), and writing... read more

This text appears in eleven chapters, and each chapter covers an important component in the writing process. The chapters cover basic (but important) steps such as defining audience and purpose (chapter 3), finding a topic (chapter 4), and writing a thesis statement (chapter 5). In addition, the text acknowledges writing in different modes (or genres), such as persuasive writing, informative writing, and professional writing. The text also covers brainstorming, drafting, editing, revising, and organizing, as well as citation and research strategies and gives plenty of specific tips on engaging with meaningful writing practices.

I didn't notice any glaring errors!

I think the items in this textbook are very relevant. The concepts are simple yet foundational. There are some links to additional resources that I can see changing over time, but I do appreciate the additional references and plan to use them! (Thinking here about the links to Purdue OWL slides/videos on page 23). Overall, I think the text is relevant, and where it makes outside reference, the text is easily able to be updated or modified.

I found this textbook very clear. The text does a nice job delivering its points in a concise manner, and it doesn't require the reader to infer meaning. Each chapter is complete with clear headings and digestible paragraphs, and the text makes frequent use of examples to illustrate its points. I think that this text would prove accessible for many students in the first-year composition classroom, regardless of their writing proficiencies.

I found this textbook very consistent. At no point did I feel that the quality of the text was compromised, and I do appreciate the consistent tone throughout. Overall, I think the text is wonderfully self-contained and does not require much modification or elaboration in any of its chapters.

I very much plan to borrow portions of this textbook. I think its ability to be divided and adapted to other lessons is a particular strength, since I am often looking to scaffold and grow my own lessons. I've already begun to mark impressive/clear examples, definitions, and explanations that I'm excited to invite into my classroom next semester.

Organization is another strength of this text. This, of course, goes hand-in-hand with the text's clarity. As I mentioned above, I'm impressed by the text's ability to divide writing into digestible, understandable components. Nothing here feels convoluted or unnecessarily complex. I enjoyed the logic of the book and think its chapters are clear and easily accessible. This also makes jumping around the book easy--a quality that lends itself to both teachers and students of writing.

The formatting of the textbook does feel a bit elementary or unthoughtful at times. There are just a few diagrams that are hand-drawn, which makes a few spots in the book feel a bit underdeveloped. Otherwise, the interface is very workable.

I didn't notice any grammatical missteps.

Though I'm not sure this book would be considered culturally inclusive, I certainly did not find it culturally exclusive. Its focus is primarily the writing process, and its examples do not venture into culturally offensive territory. I would feel very comfortable assigning this textbook on diverse campuses.

I really enjoyed this textbook and am planning to borrow lots of material from it! Thank you to the authors; I've struggled to find a book that feels adaptable to my courses. The information here feels relevant, consistent, and complete. I will be recommending the book to my colleagues!

Reviewed by Jessica Kane, Assistant Professor, Michigan State University on 11/14/19

The book covers the major steps for academic writing, and while it had some examples of non-academic sources, it seemed to focus pretty overwhelmingly on "essays" in various formats. That's exactly what some programs want, though a bit limited for... read more

The book covers the major steps for academic writing, and while it had some examples of non-academic sources, it seemed to focus pretty overwhelmingly on "essays" in various formats. That's exactly what some programs want, though a bit limited for others.

I generally found the content to be accurate

The book steers away from examples that will quickly become obsolete, and uses writing from a variety of time periods to help illustrate its point.

The definitions of different terms at the beginning of the chapters is especially helpful.

Consistency rating: 3

I was surprised to find that the text devoted (for example) eight pages to audience and 40-something pages to specific grammar details. While the organization went from higher-order concerns to lower-order concerns, meaning that all the editing and grammar information came towards the end, it felt lopsided in that respect. The chapter about research/finding sources came at the very end, perhaps because the authors were trying to make the discussion of organization, argument, audience, etc. relevant for projects that don't involve research, but that also surprised me.

The different sections are well-contained and easily readable.

As with consistency, I found the amount of space given to different elements of writing to be strange. The text is set up to be chronological, to take the reader through the steps of writing, beginning with audience and ending with proofreading. The first eight chapters flowed logically from one to the next, the ninth and tenth chapters ("Editing" and "Proofreading") came at a chronologically logical time but just took up so much space, and the eleventh chapter ("Research Process") seemed strangely tacked on to the end

Text interface is clear

The book's grammar is sound

The text did a good job bringing in multiple voices

An overall strong text, particularly for classes or programs that are very focused on teaching students academic writing. It generally did a good job explaining why different elements of writing and the writing process matter, it used both professional and student writing examples, and it is written to be easy to read. My major critique is the overwhelming focus on academic writing, which is an important element of first-year writing courses but not (I believe) the only element. The "professional writing" section is limited and less helpful, I would generally point students to other resources when we discuss professional writing.

Reviewed by Megan Morris, Adjunct professor, Richard Bland College on 10/16/19

The textbook thoroughly covers the subject of writing, including differences between high school and college writing, generating ideas, developing a thesis, different modes of paragraph development, research and citation, and sentence skills. The... read more

The textbook thoroughly covers the subject of writing, including differences between high school and college writing, generating ideas, developing a thesis, different modes of paragraph development, research and citation, and sentence skills. The amount of space devoted to these areas is not e even, however. While much detailed attention is given to the specific terminology of Greek logic, for example, the text might have benefited from more extensive concrete examples of critical reading and how it plays out in practice in student writing. While I really liked the sample annotations of the poems, many student writers in introductory English classes are working with prose rather than poetry. Furthermore, simply seeing the annotations would not necessarily help struggling students see how to write an essay or a paragraph that develops their critical reading of the text. Likewise, I would have liked to see more concrete examples of paraphrasing and introducing quotations later in the text; the section that discusses those issues seemed somewhat abbreviated, and those are typically major areas of student concern. All of that being said, however, the textbook's coverage of most areas of first-year writing was quite comprehensive, and the introduction of a few outside texts would easily remedy gaps such as the one I mentioned above.

I observed no problems with the text's accuracy, and I also noticed no bias in the way that it's written.

The text is up-to-date, including the most recent changes in MLA formatting, and --particularly as the conventions of English don't change very fast--I don't foresee any difficulty with updating this textbook as necessary. The social and cultural references I noticed in the textbook (such as Twitter and Steven Colbert) are up-to-date and seem likely to resonate well with students for some time to come.

The language of the textbook is generally very clear and easy to follow. I see numerous efforts throughout to make readings and examples relevant and accessible to students, and the authors also integrate a variety of useful charts and diagrams for students who prefer to think graphically.

In a few places, I did have a few concerns about clarity. In the chapter on argumentation, for instance, some of the distinctions made between different types of argument seemed to specific or arcane to be particularly useful to many English 100 and English 101 student. While distinguishing between inductive and deductive reasoning is very useful, for instance, distinguishing between "rhetorical argument" and "academic argument" seems a bit superfluous for the target audience. While that particular section is short, it distracts students a bit from the major issues at hand.

While the text generally lays out clear steps--the diagrams that outline writing processes are particularly nice--a few of the lists of steps seem somewhat cumbersome. In the Critical Reading chapter, for instance, the number of steps may be intimidating to many students.

The textbook is consistent throughout; I noticed no disparities in the use of terminology, for instance.

While the chapters themselves are long, they include useful divisions throughout, all of which are hyperlinked from the menu. It would be easy for an instructor to hyperlink only certain sections of the chapter for use in class. The sections seemed to stand quite well independently; it would be easy, for instance, to read the chapter on the writing process before the one on argumentation.

Generally, the book's organization is logical and in keeping with the typical flow of college composition textbooks. The only major exception was the chapter on the writing process. I'd at first thought that the editors had placed the chapter on argumentation first because it might cover issues like thesis and topic sentences, but that isn't the case;those topics appear most clearly--and, importantly, most accessibly for student writers--in the section on the writing process. I did feel that following the textbook in sequential order would result in students writing an essay before they'd been fully prepared to do so. I would be more inclined to place "The Writing Process" immediately after "Critical Reading," then assign the chapter on argumentation immediately before the discussion of the research process. That being said, however, it's easy to separate chapters into their component sections and assign them to fit smoothly within the broad structure of the course.

The text's interface looks really strong. I particularly liked the way that the text integrates links to a variety of media, including YouTube videos, to help student readers further explore concepts that they find either interesting or difficult.

I observed no major grammatical problems or typos.

The textbook appears to me to to be inclusive, and I didn't observe any issues with cultural sensitivity. Both issues are important to me because my college's student body is very diverse.

It's worth noting that I'd originally considered assigning this textbook for a developmental class, but I think that it's pitched too high. It would work better in the regular freshman English sequence.

Reviewed by Erica Heim, Graduate Employee / Composition Instructor, University of Oregon on 6/14/19

This text outlined all basic steps to the writing composition process, and then some. The entirety of the traditional writing process was outlined, from reading to brainstorming to organizing to drafting to revising and proofreading, but it... read more

This text outlined all basic steps to the writing composition process, and then some. The entirety of the traditional writing process was outlined, from reading to brainstorming to organizing to drafting to revising and proofreading, but it acknowledged that these stages can change order or recur; it just depends on the student. It also provided a thorough look at citations in different formats.

Besides a few intentional incomplete sentences (I believe constructed as a colloquial mechanism to relate to the pedestrian reader), the book was accurate both in content and in style.

This text is absolutely relevant to our era, and looks ahead to where we are going. It makes explicit the significance of writing in many different spheres, including social media posts and cover letters for resumes. This ubiquitous applicability ensures that the student may readily connect lessons to his or her everyday life.

The clarity might be what I appreciated most about this book. Some texts leave the student to infer their meanings, but this one made lessons crystal clear. In its clarity this text is also widely accessible, which is significant for students whose first language is not English or for whom high school English classes did not provide them with an adequate introductory education. Overall the clarity of this book makes it ideal for teaching in first-year college composition courses.

This book was certainly consistent. There were no surprises in any chapters, and students can follow along easily where the book is taking them.

The modularity is another thing I really appreciated about this text. Having sections with subsections makes it easier as an instructor to reconfigure reading assignments and construct a lesson out of several different (but relevant) subsections. Also each section was a feasible length so that different lessons could be combined without the reading assignment being too time-consuming.

Organization can always be improved, but the way this text presented its ideas was logical and clear. Readers can follow along easily without getting lost or needing to reference back to other sections.

This text's interface was easily navigable.

As mentioned previously, the grammar and syntactical structure of this text was 'correct' for the most part. There were a few instances of incomplete sentences or colloquial expressions, but those were likely intentional as a way to underscore a point or relate to the student reading.

This book was not culturally offensive. I am hyper-aware of those kinds of instances wherein an implicit cultural bias is made, and I am always looking for those instances - whether consciously or not. This text did not raise any alarms.

Overall this text was both accessible for students and moldable for teachers. It covers the basics of writing composition in college and demonstrates not only that anyone is capable of writing, but also that everyone is already writing in some way in their lives. It was crystal clear in communicating the processes of reading and writing, and also covered the ever-important topic of citations quite thoroughly. With a plethora of examples, this text illustrated the different shapes writing can take, and the different mechanisms writers can choose to employ. Ultimately, this text is thorough in content, accessible in style, and organized in such a way that an instructor can make it her own.

Reviewed by Margaret LaFleur, Instructor, Minnesota State on 5/29/19

This was quite comprehensive for a general overview of Composition. The authors don't get too deep into any given style of essay, which is helpful for instructors designing their own courses as it would allow them to build off of the general... read more

This was quite comprehensive for a general overview of Composition. The authors don't get too deep into any given style of essay, which is helpful for instructors designing their own courses as it would allow them to build off of the general examples. It also covers the Research Essay, which is key for any comprehensive Composition guide.

The authors took obvious care to write an accurate guide. There are a few instances that are accurate, if brief. The grammar chapters, for instance, are helpful but not overly detailed. This makes it helpful as a reference or starting point, but may not address all of student concerns. However, this would just require instructors to supplement, as all the information is accurate.

Good writing is somewhat timeless, even as language and styles evolve. There is a lot of discussion of process, which is the timeless aspect of good writing. Students need to be encouraged to work through the act of writing, not get hung up on a perfect finished process. In this sense the book is very relevant and helpful.

The authors make an evident effort to be clear and direct in the writing. It is definitely accessible to a wide range of readers. Additionally the authors take time to define words and ideas for students. For example, when discussing style they take time to explain "denotation" and "connotation" which are great concepts (and vocabulary!) words for students to learn as they are also learning to write.

Very consistent! In addition to a similar tone and framework the book also includes many familiar listing techniques and terminology that is common to other Composition books out there.

Like many Composition books this textbook follows the general outline of a Composition course. It starts at the beginning of the writing process, discusses drafting, then editing, and includes the Research Essay at the end of the book. These are broken up into smaller sections which would be easy to break down and assign. Generally the breakdown makes the most sense along the chapter breaks, as the chapters are clearly designed to be read in whole.

As noted above it follows an organizational pattern very familiar to Composition guides. Nothing ground breaking, but that's for the best.

I had no trouble navigating this book, and appreciated the use of simple and relevant images when they were included. The glossary and index help with the navigation as well.

Luckily the grammar is great, or it couldn't serve as a resource for those still learning grammar!

Because the language is straight forward and clear there are no accidental insensitive or offensive comments included. There are modern or current references, so it doesn't feel like students are reading dated work.

This is an excellent overview of Composition. It would require supplemental material and examples, I believe, but gives an instructor a very comprehensive basis to build off of.

Reviewed by Rebecca Owen, Adjunct Instructor , Chemeketa Community College on 5/6/19

This text is an excellent and conversational approach to college writing. It covers all the necessary topics, from styles of writing to grammar. The examples it uses are interesting and current, which makes it easy to read and follow. The glossary... read more

This text is an excellent and conversational approach to college writing. It covers all the necessary topics, from styles of writing to grammar. The examples it uses are interesting and current, which makes it easy to read and follow. The glossary in particular is quite effective! I also thought the explanations on logos, ethos, and pathos were well-defined for this level of writing student.

Nothing concerning in terms of accuracy and bias. This text could be adapted to suit any number of college composition courses.

Subject-wise, this book could be timeless. Some of the examples used (like in the grammar explanation chapters) were references to current pop culture events and figures. This could be something edited and shaped in future editions.

Very clear, very straightforward writing. It felt accessible, and it was written in such a way that might make a student nervous about writing feel more comfortable. The conversational style was a strength of this text.

Terminology and framework were acceptable. Some chapters might have benefited from explanations or activities to help boost students' understanding (especially in sentence types in the grammar sections).

Short, specific chapters that were easy to follow. I would definitely consider assigning portions of this text as supplementary reading for an online class, for instance.

The entire book is presented in an easy to read and follow fashion. The graphics are a nice touch that give it a bit of fun and personality, too.

I read this text on my iPad, and I had no trouble navigating through its entirety. Clear, streamlined writing that looked nice on the page.

I didn't see anything alarming in terms of grammatical errors.

Yes, this is definitely true--one example made mention of Trayvon Martin and Black Lives Matter in sample paragraphs. Others used songs or celebrities as subjects of sample essays and paragraphs. It felt relevant to this current era, and I think students would be comforted by how relevant it is.

I really liked how accessible and friendly this textbook seemed to me as the reader. Clear, specific explanations go a long way to make the writing process less of a mystery and more engaging and fun.

Reviewed by Tiffany Duet, Instructor, Nicholls State University on 4/29/19

The text includes pertinent content regarding writing processes and modes of writing. While it does an adequate job of explaining concepts regarding argumentation, the text neglects to provide logical fallacies (specifically ad populum) in... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

The text includes pertinent content regarding writing processes and modes of writing. While it does an adequate job of explaining concepts regarding argumentation, the text neglects to provide logical fallacies (specifically ad populum) in explaining methods of persuasion. Furthermore, some example essays in Chapter 7 lack the sophistication which is required in college-level assignments. Commentary on more challenging modes such as rhetorical and literary analysis, as well as research-based persuasion, seems underdeveloped. The text lacks an index but does include an extensive and informative glossary.

Overall, content concerning rhetorical strategies and writing style is accurate and informative. However, citations in examples of annotated bibliographies do not follow current APA or MLA guidelines, and the text includes other errors in MLA citation format.

Overall, the content is contemporary. A few examples which do pertain to the targeted age group may become obsolete within a few years. Yet, these examples should be relatively easy to update as they are isolated.

The authors avoid using advanced academic jargon. Terminology concerning the writing process is easily accessible to beginning composition students. Writing style is straight-forward and even conversational at times.

While the use of quoted material is not consistently formatted throughout the text, authors do use terminology consistently. Authors effectively use a “basic writing process chart” as both a visual aid and an organizational framework for content.

The text is divided into readable sections with appropriate heads and subheads.

The text is organized clearly around its “basic writing process” concept. Using running heads with chapter titles might help readers better comprehend the text’s organization.

The text includes helpful links to online resources. However, the “back button” returns the user to the table of contents instead of the pages containing the hyperlinks. This problem would be remedied if hyperlinks opened supplementary material in new windows. In addition, I discovered at least one invalid URL. Usability could also be improved by linking chapters on the table of contents to their corresponding pages.

While the text includes a few spelling/typographical errors, it is grammatically sound, overall.

The authors make a clear effort to include examples which are culturally inclusive. No offensive or insensitive material was detected.

The textbook does a very good job of showing the real processes of writing, messiness and all. This content should make those who struggle with the process comfortable in their own efforts to acquire or hone writing skills. Its readability will also prove helpful for the beginning composition student.

Reviewed by Jennifer Wilde, Adjunct instructor, Columbia Gorge Community College on 12/14/18

This book covers all the stages of a writing project, from determining the audience and purpose of a writing assignment, to developing a thesis statement and proofreading the final revision. It is geared to the beginning college writer and... read more

This book covers all the stages of a writing project, from determining the audience and purpose of a writing assignment, to developing a thesis statement and proofreading the final revision. It is geared to the beginning college writer and includes how to approach various assignments/academic tasks: emailing a professor about a missed quiz, constructing a literary argument, arguing a political position. Because it is so comprehensive and is generalist in its approach, there is not much time to dive deeply into any particular approach or assignment; however, because it is concisely written, the authors manage to give advice about just about everything an undergraduate may be asked to write, with a few exceptions. These include the general analytic essay, and the case report. The former assignment is useful for college writers because unlike the narrative or persuasive essays, it forces them to write with a specifically academic tone and to rely on data and logic. The book has an incredibly useful glossary, and the tablet of contents is extremely detailed.

The book is highly accurate. The writers are knowledgeable about the writing process, conventions of English, style, and where to locate up-to-date MLA and APA formatting information. The section on run-ons and sentence fragments is brief but informative. The list of subordinating conjunctions is not comprehensive. I find the phrase "dependent word" to be easier to use with writing students, but that's just a preference. The word "however" is listed as a conjunctive adverb, which it is, but not as a subordinating conjunction, which it also is (as in the sentence "However you look at it, English grammar is confusing". ) I think this whole grammar section is rather brief, trying to teach sentence skills in a few dozen pages; however, if it is meant as a review of the material for students who presumably have already learned it in a lower level class, it may be sufficient. (That "however" functions as a conjunctive adverb.) The passage of high versus low style is interesting, and not something I've seen before in writing texts. As opposed to the section on grammar, this part of the style section seems to go on too long.

Most of the material is timeless: how to generate ideas, how to organize an argument, how to pitch your writing to the audience and purpose, how to use semi-colons, how to approach introductions and conclusions, to name a few important sections. The authors helpfully provide resources such as the Online Writing Labs for students to locate and use as needed for information that is likely to change, such as the latest APA formatting rules. The writing samples feel very contemporary and not dated. (Well, except for the Gettysburg address, but that's a classic.)

The authors really lead by example here. The writing is unfussy, crystal-clear, highly specific and easy to read. Here is an example of the fine writing that sets this book apart from the oodles of writing books: "The technical way we use the word “argument” in writing simply means offering a written text into an ongoing debate with the hope of securing agreement among people of good will who currently disagree with you or hold a different view. This is the nature of deliberative democracy..." This passage exemplifies the way the authors define their terms as they go along; nothing feels like jargon because they explain their word choices.

The book is consistent in its terminology and the way the chapters are framed. Each chapter pertains to a step in the writing process. I have a small quibble with this because all the grammar and sentence skills are lumped into the chapter on proofreading, which seems too late.

It makes sense to read this book in order for the most part. I would recommend reading the section on proofreading earlier, so that writers can look at good sentences before they generate their own (that may just be me.) However, it is definitely possible to assign one chapter at a time and it is not strictly necessary to read them in order. Some students will not need to read about high and low style, while others may want to skip the section on ethos, logos and pathos (they shouldn't skip it, but if they aren't dealing with rhetoric it may not be necessary.)

I like how it is organized along the steps of the writing process: exploring, generating a thesis, writing, revising, proofreading, etc. The section on grammar perhaps should come a little earlier, and the section on research, citation and plagiarism also feels like it comes rather late in the process. However, the authors point out early in the book that the process is not linear, and student writers often loop back to where they started as research or writing alters their point of view.

I had to blow it up quite a bit to make the text legible. This was not difficult, however. The images and handwritten charts are charming and informative and they are visually pleasing. Navigation is no problem. I love the index and glossary!

The grammar is impeccable, as it should be!

The student writing samples appear to have been drawn from a diverse group of writers.

It is beautifully written. It seems just right for the young, early college writing student. It is too generalized to serve as an advanced writing text for a specific discipline. I would recommend that the section on conventions be turned into an appendix - it doesn't fit neatly into "proofreading" and it is more useful as a reference than as a chapter.

Reviewed by Michael Albright, Assistant Professor, MnSCU on 10/24/18

This text covers a range of composition and rhetoric topics, while allowing for the convenience of selecting concerns that are most relevant to particular courses or students. read more

This text covers a range of composition and rhetoric topics, while allowing for the convenience of selecting concerns that are most relevant to particular courses or students.

The authors are careful to attribute their sources and do so in a way that provides clear modeling for readers. The book is polished and accurate.

The text is refreshing in its relevance and timeliness. The authors include common cultural and social references to reinforce their ideas and main topics.

One of the text's virtues is its accessibility. It is crafted for students and addressed to readers in a non-threatening and approachable way.

The text maintains consistency in terms of formatting and content.

The text is blocked into chapters and subsections, and the Table of Contents allows for easy redirection. There are some rather large blocks of prose that span for several pages at a time, which could prove daunting for students who are not prepared or equipped to pore over large swaths of text.

The overall organization is logical and intuitive.

The text is navigable and free of any technical errors or distortions. Some of the work's most appealing aspects are its authentic screenshots, markups, and charts.

The text is cleanly written and polished.

The text is geared toward multiple readers of diverse backgrounds. It is neither biased nor insensitive.

You, Writing! provides a refreshing and accessible approach to first-year composition, as it sets out to present a range of useful and translatable concepts in a disarming manner. Students and instructors will benefit from clearly defined sections and authentic examples, which supplement extensive commentary on rhetorical issues ranging from thesis development to Anglo-Saxon or Latinate language use.

This text would serve as a fine primary reader for composition students, while certain sections would prove immensely valuable as supplementary content give the depth of the book as a whole.

Reviewed by Zachary Canter, Adjunct Faculty, East Tennessee State University on 10/10/18

The table of contents is very detailed, and a helpful glossary is included at the end of the book. A chapter on using logic and reasoning and avoiding logical fallacies would be helpful. There is no index. read more

The table of contents is very detailed, and a helpful glossary is included at the end of the book. A chapter on using logic and reasoning and avoiding logical fallacies would be helpful. There is no index.

Content Accuracy rating: 3

The content is both accurate and unbiased; however, the discussion of sources (pp. 138-143) is inadequate. Sources are only classified as “excellent,” “good,” and “other,” with very little information on how to evaluate them. Peer-reviewed journal articles are only briefly mentioned, and the quality of information from library databases over Internet search engines is not stressed enough.

The content of the text is relevant, and most examples come from classic literature, so they will not become dated. Writing is explored in a way that balances the use of technology with traditional methods.

The text is very accessible, being conversational and helpful in tone. The informative writing example, “What I Did on My Summer Vacation,” did seem somewhat elementary for a college text (pp. 53-54). The other examples were good, but I would have liked to have seen more, including a sample research paper.

Terminology is consistently used and defined throughout the text, and there is a logical framework to the whole.

The text is very adaptable to any freshman college or high school composition course. Readings on the writing process would work best if assigned chronologically, but each chapter could potentially stand on its own or be incorporated with additional readings.

The text is well-organized and offers a good overview of the writing process (especially planning).

The interface is adequate. An interactive table of contents with internal links to chapters and sections would be convenient. Links to outside sources work, but all links to the Purdue OWL only go to the homepage instead of the particular reference cited.

Grammatical Errors rating: 2

The text contains multiple minor errors, which is somewhat problematic for a writing textbook that stresses the need for editing. For example, “hear” should be “heard” (p. 11), “conclusion” is misspelled twice (pp. 12-13), “your” should be “you” (p. 20), there is an unnecessary parenthesis (p. 41), book titles are not italicized (p. 53), the word “to” should come after “Plato” (p. 54), “an” should be “and” (p. 57), there should be a comma instead of a period before “sin” and “put” should be capitalized (p. 60), there are problems with parallelism (pp. 69 and 71), the word “one” (for “tone”?) inside the parentheses of point 8 does not make sense (p. 81), the first sentence under the subheading “Style and Clarity” is incomplete (p. 91), there is a missing period (p. 96), “live” should be “life” (p. 100), and there is an extra indentation (p. 140). In addition, there is some inconsistency in the use of the Oxford comma.

The text is culturally sensitive, inoffensive, and inclusive. In addition, it is refreshingly apolitical, focusing on the kinds of writing students will need in their college courses and careers, rather than hot-button debates, activism, or extreme political correctness.

This book offers an excellent overview of the writing process, explains terms well, and maintains a very friendly tone throughout. Unfortunately, there are numerous minor errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation, which some careful editing would correct. As a composition textbook, it would benefit from a chapter on using logic and reasoning, while the chapter on research needs some further development.

Table of Contents

• Chapter One: Why Write?
• Chapter Two: A Writing Process for Every Writer
• Chapter Three: Defining Audience and Purpose
• Chapter Four: Exploring: Finding a Topic
• Chapter Five: Writing a Thesis
• Chapter Six: Organizing
• Chapter Seven: Drafting
• Chapter Eight: Revising
• Chapter Nine: Editing
• Chapter Ten: Proofreading
• Chapter Eleven: Research Process

Ancillary Material

About the book.

This text is meant to be used in any first year College Composition class or as a general guide to college writing. The book focuses on writing as a process, not a product. The goal is to help students discover their own writing process, tryin g out different methods and strategies to find what works best for them

About the Contributors

Alexandra Glynn has been teaching English for about ten years. She holds an M.A. in English Literature from St. Cloud State University. She sometimes publishes about teaching English in the Minnesota English Journal. She also translates lyrics into English as well.

Kelli Hallsten-Erickson has been teaching developmental writing, Composition I and II, and a variety of literature courses at the two-year level for fifteen years. She is currently at Lake Superior College, encouraging student s to stay warm during the long winter by keeping their fingers burning across their keyboards, constructing interesting essays.

Amy Jo Swing has been teaching writing and English since 1993. She holds a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from Purdue University and an M.F.A. in Poetry Writing from Texas State University San Marcos. She teaches all manner of writing at Lake Superior College in Duluth, Minnesota, where she is also a writer of poetry and middle grade fiction

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How to Write a Composition

Last Updated: December 6, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Christopher Taylor, PhD . Christopher Taylor is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Austin Community College in Texas. He received his PhD in English Literature and Medieval Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2014. There are 7 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 813,213 times.

You don't have to be a good writer to write well. Writing is a process. By learning to treat writing as a series of small steps instead of a big all-at-once magic trick you have to pull off will make writing a composition much easier and much more fun. You can learn to brainstorm main ideas before you start writing, organize a draft of those main ideas, and revise your composition into a polished essay. See Step 1 for more information.

Composition Template

Pre-Writing

• What is the purpose of the composition?
• What is the topic of the composition?
• What are the length requirements?
• What is the appropriate tone or voice for the composition?
• Is research required? These questions are good for you to ask.
• Pre-writing: gathering your thoughts or research, brainstorming, and planning the compositions
• Writing: actively writing your composition
• Editing: re-reading your paper, adding sentences, cutting unnecessary parts, and proofreading

• Try a timed writing by keeping your pen moving for 10 minutes without stopping. Don't shy away from including your opinions about a particular topic, even if your teacher has warned you from including personal opinions in your paper. This isn't the final draft!

• Write the topic in the center of the paper and draw a circle around it. Say your topic is "Romeo & Juliet" or "The Civil War". Write the phrase on your paper and circle it.
• Around the center circle, write your main ideas or interests about the topic. You might be interested in "Juliet's death," "Mercutio's anger," or "family strife." Write as many main ideas as you're interested in.
• Around each main idea, write more specific points or observations about each more specific topic. Start looking for connections. Are you repeating language or ideas?
• Connect the bubbles with lines where you see related connections. A good composition is organized by main ideas, not organized chronologically or by plot. Use these connections to form your main ideas.
• Don’t worry about coming up with a polished thesis statement or final argument now; that can come later in the process.

• Your thesis statement needs to be debatable. In fact, many thesis statements are structured as the answer to a well-formulated question about the topic. "Romeo & Juliet is an interesting play written by Shakespeare in the 1500s" isn't a thesis statement, because that's not a debatable issue. We don't need you to prove that to us. "Romeo & Juliet features Shakespeare's most tragic character in Juliet" is a lot closer to a debatable point, and could be an answer to a question like, “Who is Shakespeare’s most tragic character?” [4] X Research source
• Your thesis statement needs to be specific. "Romeo & Juliet is a play about making bad choices" isn't as strong a thesis statement as "Shakespeare makes the argument that the inexperience of teenage love is comic and tragic at the same time" is much stronger.
• A good thesis guides the essay. In your thesis, you can sometimes preview the points you'll make in your paper, guiding yourself and the reader: "Shakespeare uses Juliet's death, Mercutio's rage, and the petty arguments of the two principal families to illustrate that the heart and the head are forever disconnected."

Writing a Rough Draft

• Introduction, in which the topic is described, the issue or problem is summarized, and your argument is presented
• Main point paragraph 1, in which you make and support your first supporting argument
• Main point paragraph 2, in which you make and support your second supporting argument
• Main point paragraph 3, in which you make and support your final supporting argument
• Conclusion paragraph, in which you summarize your argument

• Proof includes specific quotes from the book you're writing about, or specific facts about the topic. If you want to talk about Mercutio's temperamental character, you'll need to quote from him, set the scene, and describe him in detail. This is proof that you'll also need to unpack with logic.
• Logic refers to your rationale and your reasoning. Why is Mercutio like this? What are we supposed to notice about the way he talks? Explain your proof to the reader by using logic and you'll have a solid argument with strong evidence.

• Ask how. How is Juliet's death presented to us? How do the other characters react? How is the reader supposed to feel?
• Ask why. Why does Shakespeare kill her? Why not let her live? Why does she have to die? Why would the story not work without her death?

• Only use words and phrases that you have a good command over. Academic vocabulary might sound impressive, but if you don’t fully grasp its meaning, you might muddle the effect of your paper.

• Try writing a rough draft the weekend before it's due, and giving it to your teacher for comments several days before the due date. Take the feedback into consideration and make the necessary changes.

• Moving paragraphs around to get the best possible organization of points, the best "flow"
• Delete whole sentences that are repetitive or that don't work
• Removing any points that don't support your argument

• Think of each main point you're making like a mountain in a mountain range that you're flying over in a helicopter. You can stay above them and fly over them quickly, pointing out their features from far away and giving us a quick flyover tour, or you can drop us down in between them and show us up close, so we see the mountain goats and the rocks and the waterfalls. Which would be a better tour?

Expert Q&A

• Write a point, and expand 2 lines on that particular point. Thanks Helpful 9 Not Helpful 2
• Open source software called Free Mind can help with the pre-writing process. Thanks Helpful 7 Not Helpful 2
• You can always add more circles to your guiding diagram if you think the much you have is not sufficient. Thanks Helpful 5 Not Helpful 3

Tips from our Readers

• Remember to always proofread your composition after you have finished! Small typos like a missed comma or a misspelled word are easy to miss the first time around.
• If you want to outline your composition, try using a mini white board. This makes it easier to erase things and restructure your outline if you need to.
• It's hard to write with distractions, so try to pick a quiet place where you won't be disturbed to work on your assignment.

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.student.unsw.edu.au/writing-your-essay
• ↑ https://www.deakin.edu.au/students/studying/study-support/academic-skills/essay-writing
• ↑ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/544/01/
• ↑ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/685/05/
• ↑ https://libguides.newcastle.edu.au/how-to-write-an-essay/essay-structure
• ↑ https://www.citewrite.qut.edu.au/write/writing-well/essay.html
• ↑ https://writing.wisc.edu/handbook/grammarpunct/commonerrors/

About This Article

To write a composition, start with a brainstorming session to get your thoughts down on paper. You can create a formal outline during this time, or experiment with bubble exercises and free-writing. Next, create a clear thesis statement to base your composition around. Then, write an introduction, 3 main paragraphs, and a conclusion that summarizes your argument. Read through and revise your content, and don't forget to proofread thoroughly! To learn more about the "rule of 5" and how to back up your statements in a composition, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Academic Module 1: Creating Academic Content

14 Writing Academic Compositions: Processes and Products

U.S. college courses often require students to compose written assignments, ranging from short answer questions of a few sentences to much longer multi-page papers. Regardless of the length of the composition, all written assignments require students to complete specific steps (process) to reach the desired outcome (product). Generally, when students work on composition assignments, they complete the following steps: brainstorming, creating a graphic organizer, making an outline, creating the first complete draft, and editing/revising. As students advance in their acquisition of academic English and take on longer, more complex composition assignments, they often complete more than one cycle of drafting, editing, and revising.

In this chapter, you will learn more about each of the key steps in composing (a four-paragraph essay, for instance) as part of meeting your ELAI 990 learning outcomes as well as using the APP strategy of composition writing. [1]

The steps in composition writing

Generally, students may complete five steps when they compose a paragraph or an essay. This is especially helpful when students are less familiar with the process of composition writing. As students become more familiar, they may be able to successfully consolidate some of these steps, especially when they write timed in-class compositions.

Step 1: Brainstorming

Have you ever heard the term ‘brainstorming’ before? What do you think this refers to?

If you look up the term in a dictionary, you may come across the following definition: “generating ideas through group discussion”. This is accurate. However, students may not always have a group to generate ideas for assignments, and it is helpful to learn how to do simple brainstorming by oneself as well.

Let’s focus on the first part of the dictionary definition: ‘generating ideas’.

When you come across a topic for the first time, it is helpful to take a piece of paper (or on a computer/tablet/smartphone) and write down some initial ideas that come to your mind related to the topic. At this stage, students may draw upon their knowledge in one or more languages. This is something that you likely do in your everyday tasks, especially if you grew up in a bilingual/multilingual environment. In addition, students have a very strong command of a language other than English may also find it helpful to do the initial brainstorming in that language and then transition to English. At this stage, it is the ideas that are more important, regardless of what language they are expressed in.

To generate ideas, you may create a very simple idea map where you write the main topic in the center and then write down, clustered around that topic, one or two words or a very short phrase that comes to your mind and is connected to the topic (you may even draw a line from the topic to the new related ideas that you are expressing in the form of one or more words). By spending a few minutes on completing this simple task, you can quickly identify what you already know about the topic, all in one place in a visual form that’s easy to see. This will also give you more confidence that you do know something about the topic (sometimes students get stuck because they feel they do not know the topic at all). Finally, creating a simple brainstorming map will also help you figure out some of the gaps in your own knowledge about the topic–things that you do not know and need to know. This is especially handy when you already know what the composition writing task requires you to focus on (for instance, you may have to list causes or effects, or identify problems, or offer solutions, or take a position related to the topic).

Step 2: Creating a Graphic Organizer

At this step, students may start transitioning to (academic) English and use longer phrases to flesh out their ideas more and  to  organize those ideas in a graphic format across different levels of information. How many levels of information you identify at this step will depend on the APP of your assignment, but generally in a four-paragraph essay, students should list at least four levels of information in their graphic organizers: the thesis, the two main ideas (that will then become the topic sentences in the two body paragraphs), the major details to support the main ideas, and the minor details to support the major details. Remember, the more you move down the levels, the more specific the information will become.

Creating a graphic organizer will also help you identify the gaps in your knowledge that you need to fill in order to create a complete graphic. You may, for instance, need to find relevant facts to list as minor details or you will identify the academic English vocabulary items you need to know in order to fill in the different levels. A graphic organizer will also help you identify which information is less relevant or unnecessary and remove it from the organizer. For example, you may have three main ideas to support the thesis when you begin, but the parameters of the essay require you to use only two. At this step, you will identify which two the main ideas of the three to select, and you could select the best two based on importance, relevance, or parallelism. Finally, when you make a graphic organizer, you will be able to ensure that it is balanced, with a similar number of ideas for each of the body paragraphs that you will then outline in the next step.

Let’s look at the examples of a graphic organizer for a paragraph assignment and a graphic organizer for an essay assignment below to see how the ideas may be structured in a graphic organizer (To see the images in a larger format, click on each image). Keep in mind that the structure below is one example, and as you become more comfortable with making graphic organizers, you will be able to vary the structure based on the specific APPs of the assignments.

A sample graphic organizer for a paragraph assignment

A sample graphic organizer for a four-paragraph essay assignment

Step 3: Drafting an Outline

For longer composition assignments, such as multi-paragraph essays, creating an outline based on the graphic organizer can be very helpful, especially for students who struggle with writing longer sentences and creating flow within and across paragraphs. Let’s look at the examples of a paragraph outline and an essay outline below to see how outlines may be structured. Keep in mind that, just like a graphic organizer, the actual structure that you use for specific compositions will depend on the APP of the assignment.

A sample paragraph outline

• Topic sentence: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
• Minor details: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
• Major detail 2: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
• Conclusion: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A sample essay outline

• Hook: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
• Background information: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
• Thesis statement: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
• Minor details: ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
• Restatement of the thesis: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
• Additional information: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
• Closing strategy: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Step 4: Composing the first full essay draft

The next step in the essay writing process is to take the outline and convert it into the first full essay draft, comprising four paragraphs, in this instance. At this stage of essay writing, students should focus on ensuring that the ideas flow logically within and across paragraphs, and that they use suitable transitional words, phrases, and sentences to connect the ideas. Students should also start paying attention to the word count at this point to ensure that they follow the guidelines provided. Once the first full draft has been created, students should use the rubric provided as well as a checklist to ensure that they have not forgotten some important element. For instance, if the rubric requires the student to make at least one reference to a reading, the student should ensure that they have done so by this stage.

Step 5: Revising the draft

As a final step in the composition assignment, students should both proofread and edit their compositions as needed. At this step, students should pay special attention to spelling words correctly, using appropriate punctuation and indentation, employing correct grammatical structures, and so forth. This may also be a good time to visit the Writing Center to get additional feedback, although you may visit the Writing Center at any stage of the composition assignment.

We are going to practice all of these steps in the class throughout the semester as well.

The APP of composition writing

Now, let’s look at the tasks of annotating and making notes through the lens of audience, purpose, and parameters, or APP.

Let’s start with the first criterion–the audience.

• When you write a paragraph (e.g. in the form of a short answer to a question) or a longer composition (e.g. a four-paragraph essay) or a multi-page assignment (e.g. a 10-page paper that you may have to write in a credit course), who is your audience? Generally, students write short and long compositions for their professor to read (and to demonstrate that they have understood the target concept or idea well). As a result, you must structure and customize the content in the paragraph(s) for your professor, in which case, you need to make decisions about which language you would use to communicate your ideas (e.g. English in a U.S. college course) and what tone/register would be appropriate (i.e. academic/professional). In other words, who your audience is informs what you say and what you write in a college course. Therefore, it is very helpful to identify clearly who the target audience is for any academic assignment.

Now, let’s look at the second criterion–the purpose.

• When you compose a text, it is essential that you keep the purpose or the reasons why you are writing the text in mind. For instance, is the purpose to describe, to inform, to persuade, or to convince? Depending on the purpose, you will need to choose the appropriate pattern of organization and the tone to use in your writing. For instance, if you write an essay where you have to provide two reasons why multilingualism is beneficial, you will need to use a persuasive tone and list two benefits of multilingualism along with details to describe these benefits in detail. Students who fail to do so or  misidentify the purpose at the beginning of the composition process end up writing a composition that is off-topic or with the wrong focus.

Finally, let’s look at the last criterion–the parameters.

• In composing an assignment, you need to pay close attention to the guidelines provided to identify the assignment parameters, for instance in terms of word length, number of paragraphs, formatting, recommended font type and font size (for typed assignments), and so forth. This is especially helpful for students who may be new to college-level writing in general or the U.S. college culture specifically. When in doubt, check with your professor!
• As you advance in your academic careers, the composition writing tasks are likely to become more complex, such as in the form of multi-page essays and research papers. Such advanced composition tasks may require other steps in the process of essay-writing, and you will learn those skills in your credit courses. The steps you learn here will help create the foundation on which you will then advance in your academic writing in credit-based coursework. ↵

Demystifying Academic English Copyright © by Rashi Jain is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The Writing Process

Whether writing a paper for school or a document for work, high-stakes writing requires careful thought and execution. The steps involved in this form of writing constitute a writing process. Even though everyone ultimately has his/her/their own process for getting ideas down on paper and turning those ideas into a finished product, there are identifiable steps involved in the process of writing that can be defined, developed, and discussed. These steps include:

• Getting Started (from deciphering a writing task assignment to getting your initial thoughts on a topic on paper)
• Drafting (from organizing your ideas, to strategies for refining drafts to dealing with writer’s block)
• Organization and Structure
• Gathering and Using Feedback (from responding to comments to using comments constructively)
• Revising, Editing, Proofreading

Common Types of Writing Assignments (Southwestern University) Your best resource for questions about assignments is your professor. However, here are a few links that discuss some common types of assignments. Please remember that these are just guides and that each assignment is different.

If I Were a Carpenter: The Tools of the Writer (Roy Peter Clark, Senior Scholar at The Poynter Institute and director of the National Writers’ Workshop) Includes 20 of the best writing tips that Clark has learned from reporters, editors, authors, teachers, and coaches.

Stages of the Writing Process (MIT Writing and Communication Center) Writing is a process that involves at least four distinct steps: prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing. It is known as a recursive process. While you are revising, you might have to return to the prewriting step to develop and expand your ideas.

Starting The Writing Process (Purdue OWL) The highly regarded OWL (Online Writing Lab) at Purdue University offers a large collection of online guides on writing that are updated regularly and cover a myriad of topics. This is a link to their page on the writing process.

Strategies for Essay Writing (Harvard College Writing Center) The links below provide concise advice on some fundamental elements of academic writing.

• How to Read an Assignment
• How to Do a Close Reading
• Essay Structure
• Developing a Thesis
• Topic Sentences and Signposting
• Transitioning
• How to Write a Comparative Analysis
• Conclusions

Tips and Tools Handouts (UNC Chapel Hill, The Writing Center) A comprehensive collection of handouts that deal with various aspects of the writing process including: writing the paper; citation, style, and sentence level concerns; specific writing assignments or contexts; and writing for specific fields.

GETTING STARTED

Before you begin writing, there are a few steps you can take to help you prepare yourself for the task at hand. The first step in any writing task is to understand what you need to write . In a classroom setting, this means understanding the assignment. In a professional setting, this means studying the publication: its audience, writer’s guidelines, and editorial reviewers. And in a business setting, it means identifying and understanding the needs of your customers.

Once you have an idea of what you need to write and why, you can begin brainstorming and generating ideas on what you want to write. Below are resources on prewriting, also known as invention, in the writing process.

Brainstorming Strategies for Student Writing (Cardinal Stritch University) Posted on YouTube: Oct. 20 2013 | length: 10:42 This tutorial provides “5 Brainstorming Methods for Writing Better College Papers.”

Developing an Outline (Purdue OWL) This guide demonstrates how to develop an outline for a first draft.

Getting Started (Pace University, The Writing Center) (Podcast) Posted on iTunes U: May 6 2009 | length: 1:45 / Access: iTunes U “Not sure how to begin your paper? Stuck on a topic? Not sure where to begin? Listen to this short podcast about how to get yourself started quickly and easily!” “Getting Started” is item 19 on the list of resources.

How Do I Make Sure I Understand an Assignment? (University of Michigan) “While some writing assignments are straightforward, others may need careful deciphering to make sure you are following the guidelines. Looking carefully at the instructions provided for any writing assignment to be certain that you understand the guidelines not only prevents missteps but can also help you develop strategies for conquering the task ahead.”

Introduction to Prewriting (Purdue OWL) This guide introduces the writer to strategies and techniques for developing an idea for a writing assignment through a series of questions.

Prewriting Questions (Purdue OWL) “This section explains the prewriting (invention) stage of the composing process. It includes processes, strategies, and questions to help you begin to write..”

• More Prewriting Questions

Starting the Writing Process (Purdue OWL) This guide addresses how to begin thinking about a writing project.

The Perils of Writer’s Block: A Poem (Pace University, The Writing Center) (Podcast) Posted on iTunes U: April 10 2009 | length: :40 / Access: iTunes U “We all hate writer’s block and this fun poem will give you an opportunity to rant and rave with our very own consultants!” “The Perils of Writer’s Block” is item 20 on the list of resources.

Understanding an Assignment (MIT Writing and Communication Center) When you get a writing task, the first step is to make sure you understand what you are being asked to do. This guide explains how to understand a writing assignment.

Understanding Assignments (UNC Chapel Hill, The Writing Center) “The first step in any successful college writing venture is reading the assignment. While this sounds like a simple task, it can be a tough one. This handout will help you unravel your assignment and begin to craft an effective response. Much of the following advice will involve translating typical assignment terms and practices into meaningful clues to the type of writing your instructor expects.”

Understanding Writing Assignments (Purdue OWL) “This resource describes some steps you can take to better understand the requirements of your writing assignments. This resource works for either in-class, teacher-led discussion or for personal use.”

Write a Great Essay Using The Topoi (Associate Professor of Writing Mark Marino, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences) Posted on YouTube: Oct. 27, 2008 | length: 10:22 This video demonstrates how to brainstorm a topic using the prewriting strategy called “Topoi.”

Writer’s Block (Purdue OWL) This guide discusses the causes and provides ideas and suggestions for dealing with writer’s block.

• More Writer’s Block Strategies

Writing Anxiety (UNC Chapel Hill, The Writing Center) “This handout discusses the situational nature of writer’s block and other writing anxiety and suggests things you can try to feel more confident and optimistic about yourself as a writer.”

CLAIM (THESIS)

Prior to writing and during the drafting stage, you should be thinking about the central claim – also known as the thesis or argument – of your paper. Developing a single statement that clearly articulates the main argument of your paper is a key component to writing a strong paper. As you delve further into research and exploration, your argument may change slightly or drastically; thus, you should continually reread and revise your central claim so that it provides a true representation of your paper. Many people like to think of a central claim as a roadmap of the paper, as it offers your readers a guide for where the paper is headed. Usually a central claim is written at the end of an introduction, though it may be present anywhere in your paper.

Argument (UNC Chapel Hill, The Writing Center) “This handout will define what an argument is and explain why you need one in most of your academic essays.”

Developing a Thesis (Harvard College Writing Center) “A good thesis has two parts. It should tell what you plan to argue, and it should “telegraph” how you plan to argue—that is, what particular support for your claim is going where in your essay.” This resource provides steps for writing a thesis statement along with caveats and examples.

Developing a Thesis Statement (Univ. of Wisconsin – Madison, The Writing Center) Offers a step-by-step approach to developing a thesis statement, from defining a topic to drafting a statement and finalizing it.

How to Write a Thesis Statement (Indiana University Writing Tutorial Services) Covers what a thesis statement is, why your paper needs one, and how to write/assess a thesis statement based on the following:

• How to Generate a Thesis Statement if the Topic is Assigned
• How to Generate a Thesis Statement if the Topic is not Assigned
• How to Tell a Strong Thesis Statement from a Weak One

The Thesis Statement: A Roadmap for Your Essay (Modesto Junior College) A PowerPoint presentation (approximately 20 slides) that uses many examples to help you understand what a thesis statement looks like and where you might add it to your paper.

Now you’re ready to put your ideas together and produce a first draft. This early and rough draft will lead you to your second, third, and fourth drafts as you continue to conduct more research and refine your ideas.

Pre-writing Activities and Drafting Your Essay (Purdue OWL) “This handout covers major topics relating to writing about fiction. This covers prewriting, close reading, thesis development, drafting and common pitfalls to avoid.”

Composing Processes: Drafting, Designing and Revising (Writing@CSU) “These guides provide advice on composing processes such as developing a thesis statement, creating a first draft, designing documents, revising, editing, proofreading, and carrying out peer review. Use these guides to help yourself write an effective document.”

The Structure of an Essay Draft (Univ. of Arizona) Tips for drafting your introduction, body, and conclusion. (Handout based on Hacker’s A Writer’s Reference )

INTRODUCTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

Sometimes writers have difficulties beginning and ending their papers. However, many effective introductions share similar elements – a hook, context, your argument, etc. – depending on the type of paper being composed. Likewise, many introductions and conclusions attempt to convey the “so what” factor, or why your reader should care about the subject. If you get stuck when writing the introduction, you might try moving onto your body paragraphs and then writing the introduction after the rest of your draft is complete. The websites listed below also provide a number of useful strategies and tips.

Conclusions (UNC Chapel Hill Writing Center) “This handout will explain the functions of conclusions, offer strategies for writing effective ones, help you evaluate conclusions you’ve drafted, and suggest approaches to avoid.”

Conclusion Strategies (MIT Writing and Communication Center; Click here for a full list of their online resources for writers) Examples of strategies to use in writing an introduction for a college essay.

Ending the Essay: Conclusions (Harvard College Writing Center) Offers strategies on how to provide readers with closure at the end of your essay or leave them thinking critically about the larger implications. It also provides some suggestions on ways not to end an essay.

Introductions (UNC Chapel Hill Writing Center) “This handout will explain the functions of introductions, offer strategies for writing effective ones, help you check your drafted introductions and provide you with examples of introductions to be avoided.”

Introductions, Body Paragraphs, and Conclusions for an Argument Paper (Purdue OWL) This guide addresses how to develop the key parts of a paper: the introduction, the body and the conclusion. There is a similar guide for writing exploratory papers.

Introductions, Body Paragraphs, and Conclusions for Exploratory Papers (Purdue OWL) This guide addresses how to develop the key parts of a paper: the introduction, the body and the conclusion. There is a similar guide for writing argument papers.

Introduction Strategies (MIT Online Writing and Communication Center; Click here for a full list of their Writing and Communication Center Resources) Examples of strategies to use in writing an introduction for a college essay.

Writing Introductions (Franklin and Marshall College Writing Center) A handout that breaks the introductory paragraph into manageable units – the opening sentence, middle sentences, and thesis statement. It also includes a sample effective introductory paragraph and ineffective introductory paragraph.

Writing Strong Conclusions (Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania, Kathleen Jones White Writing Center) Presents “five basic methods for concluding your paper in a way that will leave your reader intrigued and impressed”: anecdote, basic summary, startling summary, famous ideas, and hinting at related issues.

ORGANIZATION AND STRUCTURE

The organization of your paper should always be intentional. Whether you choose to structure your ideas chronologically, thematically, or in some other way, you should be thinking about the most effective way to present your argument to readers. You should also be able to clearly see how ideas are interwoven. Within each individual paragraph and between multiple paragraphs, you should seamlessly transition between concepts so your readers never lose track of your thought process.

Essay Structure (Harvard College Writing Center) This source reviews the logic behind essay writing explaining how “successfully structuring an essay means attending to a reader’s logic.”

On Paragraphs  (Purdue OWL) “Learning to write good paragraphs will help you as a writer stay on track during your drafting and revision stages.”

Organizing an Exploratory Essay (Purdue OWL) “This resource will help you with exploratory/inquiry essay assignments.”

Organizing Your Analysis (Purdue OWL) “This resource covers how to write a rhetorical analysis essay of primarily visual texts with a focus on demonstrating the author’s understanding of the rhetorical situation and design principles.”

Organizing Your Argument (Purdue OWL) Explains the Toulmin Method of logic/argumentation and offers an example.

Transitions (The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) “This handout will introduce you to some useful transitional expressions and help you employ them effectively.”

Strategies for Organizing as You Write (Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas; Click here for a full list of their handouts) (PDF) Describes different ways to organize your writing including creating headings, color coding, and outlining.

GATHERING AND USING FEEDBACK

Because writing is meant to be read, one of the best ways to improve your writing is to have others read your work. In academic circles, this is called peer review. In business, it is just called review. Your instructor might also give you feedback with the opportunity to revise. Gathering this feedback and using it constructively is a vital step in producing a quality piece of writing.

Challenges of Good Writing Part 3: Asking for Feedback (Arizona State University at iTunes U–ASU Challenges of Good Writing – Asking for Feedback) Posted on iTunes U: March 11, 2009 | length: 13:45 Dr. Jeanne Simpson, Director of the ASU Writing Centers, interviews professors from a variety of disciplines regarding exemplary writing in their fields These professors share their thoughts, challenges, and frustrations about the writing process. “Challenges of Good Writing” is item 8 on the list of resources in iTunes.

Getting Feedback (UNC Chapel Hill, Writing Center) “Sometimes you’d like feedback from someone else about your writing, but you may not be sure how to get it. This handout describes when, where, how and from whom you might receive effective responses as you develop as a writer.”

Peer Reviewing (University of Maryland Global Campus) From “The Writing Process” in the Online Guide to Writing and Research This page presents a series of checklists to direct the person reviewing your writing to particular areas and provide more focused feedback.

REVISING, EDITING AND PROOFREADING

When you submit a paper to a teacher for a grade, a journal for possible publication, or a customer or colleague in a business setting, you want your writing to be the best it can be in presenting your ideas. If your paper is riddled with pesky typos, misspelled words, or grammatical and punctuation errors, the reader will only focus on the errors. You need to edit and proofread your work closely so your reader focuses on the quality of your ideas.

Editing and Proofreading (UNC Chapel Hill, Writing Center) A handout on the differences between editing and proofreading with tips and strategies for revising and editing your own writing.

Proofreading Your Paper (Purdue OWL) Strategies for reviewing your finished writing to catch grammar and punctuation errors.

Questions to Ask Yourself as you Revise Your Essay (Writing@CSU) Questions to guide the essay revision process.

Reverse Outlining: An Exercise for Taking Notes and Revising Your Work (Purdue OWL) This guide provides a specific strategy of revising your paper by making an outline of a paper after it has been written to see what works and what is missing.

Revisions (Pace University, Writing Center) (Podcast) Posted on iTunes U: April 10 2009 | length: 2:04 “This short podcast will show you effective ways to look at your finished paper and improve it on your own. Revision is item 17 on the list of resources in iTunes.”

Strategies for Revision (Duke University; posted by USF Writing Commons) Posted on YouTube: June 19 2014 length: 8:22 This video clip provides specific strategies and helpful guidance on the best ways to revise an essay.

MULTIMODAL WRITING

Multimodal writing is the practice of using different modalities (audio, visual, spatial, and more) to help create meaning. Multimodality is common in academic and workplace writing. Use the resource below to help guide you on how to incorporate multimodality in your writing.

Digital Writing 101 (Amy Goodloe) A blog created by former University of Colorado-Boulder professor comprised of a variety of how-to guides for digital projects, including video, digital images, and digital storytelling, and more. It also contains sample student projects that use various media.

WRITING TIMED ESSAYS

You may not always have time to go through the steps writing a well-developed essay usually requires. This section provides background information and strategies you can use for completing the GRE Analytical Writing section or other timed essay tests.

For the GRE:

Overview of the GRE Analytical Writing Measure (ETS) An introduction to the Analytical Writing portion of the GRE that includes tips on how to prepare, information on scoring, and sample tasks. The GRE Analytical Writing prompts will ask you to analyze an issue and analyze an argument . In order to prepare for the test, you may want to review the topic pool for issue tasks and topic pool for argument tasks that have been published by the GRE.

For any timed essay:

Timed Essay/Essay Exam (Duke University, Writing Studio) “At some point during your college career, you will likely encounter a timed essay. Known collectively as timed essays, essay exams, or in-class essays, these essays require you to demonstrate disciplinary knowledge by producing a writing sample within a limited time period. Timed essays are popular because they allow teachers to grade students holistically in a very brief amount of time. This handout offers a few ways to prepare for timed essays and provides advice for how to answer a timed essay question effectively.”

Writing Essays for Exams (Purdue OWL) “While most OWL resources recommend a longer writing process (start early, revise often, conduct thorough research, etc.), sometimes you just have to write quickly in test situations. However, these exam essays can be no less important pieces of writing than research papers because they can influence final grades for courses, and/or they can mean the difference between getting into an academic program (GED, SAT, GRE). To that end, this resource will help you prepare and write essays for exams.”

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• How to write an essay outline | Guidelines & examples

How to Write an Essay Outline | Guidelines & Examples

Published on August 14, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

An essay outline is a way of planning the structure of your essay before you start writing. It involves writing quick summary sentences or phrases for every point you will cover in each paragraph , giving you a picture of how your argument will unfold.

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Organizing your material, presentation of the outline, examples of essay outlines, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about essay outlines.

At the stage where you’re writing an essay outline, your ideas are probably still not fully formed. You should know your topic  and have already done some preliminary research to find relevant sources , but now you need to shape your ideas into a structured argument.

Creating categories

Look over any information, quotes and ideas you’ve noted down from your research and consider the central point you want to make in the essay—this will be the basis of your thesis statement . Once you have an idea of your overall argument, you can begin to organize your material in a way that serves that argument.

Try to arrange your material into categories related to different aspects of your argument. If you’re writing about a literary text, you might group your ideas into themes; in a history essay, it might be several key trends or turning points from the period you’re discussing.

Three main themes or subjects is a common structure for essays. Depending on the length of the essay, you could split the themes into three body paragraphs, or three longer sections with several paragraphs covering each theme.

As you create the outline, look critically at your categories and points: Are any of them irrelevant or redundant? Make sure every topic you cover is clearly related to your thesis statement.

Order of information

When you have your material organized into several categories, consider what order they should appear in.

Your essay will always begin and end with an introduction and conclusion , but the organization of the body is up to you.

Consider these questions to order your material:

• Is there an obvious starting point for your argument?
• Is there one subject that provides an easy transition into another?
• Do some points need to be set up by discussing other points first?

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Within each paragraph, you’ll discuss a single idea related to your overall topic or argument, using several points of evidence or analysis to do so.

In your outline, you present these points as a few short numbered sentences or phrases.They can be split into sub-points when more detail is needed.

The template below shows how you might structure an outline for a five-paragraph essay.

• Thesis statement
• First piece of evidence
• Second piece of evidence
• Summary/synthesis
• Importance of topic
• Strong closing statement

You can choose whether to write your outline in full sentences or short phrases. Be consistent in your choice; don’t randomly write some points as full sentences and others as short phrases.

Examples of outlines for different types of essays are presented below: an argumentative, expository, and literary analysis essay.

Argumentative essay outline

This outline is for a short argumentative essay evaluating the internet’s impact on education. It uses short phrases to summarize each point.

Its body is split into three paragraphs, each presenting arguments about a different aspect of the internet’s effects on education.

• Importance of the internet
• Concerns about internet use
• Thesis statement: Internet use a net positive
• Data exploring this effect
• Analysis indicating it is overstated
• Students’ reading levels over time
• Why this data is questionable
• Video media
• Interactive media
• Speed and simplicity of online research
• Questions about reliability (transitioning into next topic)
• Evidence indicating its ubiquity
• Claims that it discourages engagement with academic writing
• Evidence that Wikipedia warns students not to cite it
• Argument that it introduces students to citation
• Summary of key points
• Value of digital education for students
• Need for optimism to embrace advantages of the internet

Expository essay outline

This is the outline for an expository essay describing how the invention of the printing press affected life and politics in Europe.

The paragraphs are still summarized in short phrases here, but individual points are described with full sentences.

• Claim that the printing press marks the end of the Middle Ages.
• Provide background on the low levels of literacy before the printing press.
• Present the thesis statement: The invention of the printing press increased circulation of information in Europe, paving the way for the Reformation.
• Discuss the very high levels of illiteracy in medieval Europe.
• Describe how literacy and thus knowledge and education were mainly the domain of religious and political elites.
• Indicate how this discouraged political and religious change.
• Describe the invention of the printing press in 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg.
• Show the implications of the new technology for book production.
• Describe the rapid spread of the technology and the printing of the Gutenberg Bible.
• Link to the Reformation.
• Discuss the trend for translating the Bible into vernacular languages during the years following the printing press’s invention.
• Describe Luther’s own translation of the Bible during the Reformation.
• Sketch out the large-scale effects the Reformation would have on religion and politics.
• Summarize the history described.
• Stress the significance of the printing press to the events of this period.

Literary analysis essay outline

The literary analysis essay outlined below discusses the role of theater in Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park .

The body of the essay is divided into three different themes, each of which is explored through examples from the book.

• Describe the theatricality of Austen’s works
• Outline the role theater plays in Mansfield Park
• Introduce the research question : How does Austen use theater to express the characters’ morality in Mansfield Park ?
• Discuss Austen’s depiction of the performance at the end of the first volume
• Discuss how Sir Bertram reacts to the acting scheme
• Introduce Austen’s use of stage direction–like details during dialogue
• Explore how these are deployed to show the characters’ self-absorption
• Discuss Austen’s description of Maria and Julia’s relationship as polite but affectionless
• Compare Mrs. Norris’s self-conceit as charitable despite her idleness
• Summarize the three themes: The acting scheme, stage directions, and the performance of morals
• Answer the research question
• Indicate areas for further study

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You will sometimes be asked to hand in an essay outline before you start writing your essay . Your supervisor wants to see that you have a clear idea of your structure so that writing will go smoothly.

Even when you do not have to hand it in, writing an essay outline is an important part of the writing process . It’s a good idea to write one (as informally as you like) to clarify your structure for yourself whenever you are working on an essay.

If you have to hand in your essay outline , you may be given specific guidelines stating whether you have to use full sentences. If you’re not sure, ask your supervisor.

When writing an essay outline for yourself, the choice is yours. Some students find it helpful to write out their ideas in full sentences, while others prefer to summarize them in short phrases.

You should try to follow your outline as you write your essay . However, if your ideas change or it becomes clear that your structure could be better, it’s okay to depart from your essay outline . Just make sure you know why you’re doing so.

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Writing a dissertation is a significant milestone in your academic journey. The process can be challenging, but understanding the correct dissertation structure can make it more manageable and ensure that your work meets academic standards. In this guide, we will explore the key components of a dissertation, providing insights and tips on how to effectively structure your dissertation. Whether you're studying in the UK or elsewhere, this comprehensive guide will help you navigate the intricacies of your thesis structure.

The Typical Dissertation Structure

A dissertation follows more or less a research paper structure but on a much larger scale. A well-structured dissertation should be more thorough than an essay or simple research paper and should delve deeper into your chosen topic. The standard dissertation structure generally includes the following sections:

Acknowledgements

Table of contents, list of figures and tables, introduction, literature review, methodology.

Let's delve into each section to understand its purpose and how to approach it.

The title page is the first impression of your dissertation.

- The title of your dissertation - Your name - Your institutional affiliation - The degree you are pursuing - The date of submission

Ensure the title is clear and descriptive, providing a concise summary of your research topic. It should include the following:

The abstract is a brief summary of your dissertation, typically around 150-300 words. It should highlight the research question, your methodology and key findings, plus a conclusion. Keep it concise but remember that it should be impactful: an effective abstract allows readers to quickly grasp the essence of your dissertation.

The acknowledgements section is where you thank those who have supported you throughout your research journey, including supervisors, peers, and family members. This can be both at the beginning or at the end of your dissertation, so check if your university gives you some guidance in this regard.

The table of contents lists all the sections and subsections of your dissertation along with their page numbers. This helps readers navigate through your work easily.

If your dissertation includes figures and tables, list them here with their corresponding page numbers. This is particularly useful for readers who want to reference specific data or visuals.

The introduction sets the stage for your dissertation. A strong dissertation introduction structure includes:

- Background information on the topic - The research problem or question - The objectives and significance of the study - An overview of the dissertation structure

This section should engage the reader and provide a clear roadmap for the rest of your dissertation.

The literature review examines existing research relevant to your topic, demonstrates your understanding of the field and justifying your research. In your literature review you should:

- Summarise and critically analyse previous studies - Identify gaps in the literature - Establish the context for your research

The methodology section details how you conducted your research. It should include:

- The research design (qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods) - Data collection methods (e.g., surveys, interviews, experiments) - Data analysis techniques - Ethical considerations

The results section presents the findings of your research without interpretation. Use text to describe key findings, tables and figures to illustrate data and finally make sure that the presentation of your results is clear and logically organised.

The discussion section interprets the results in the context of your research question. It should:

- Explain the significance of the findings - Compare them with existing literature - Discuss potential limitations - Suggest implications for future research

Your conclusion should recap the research question and objectives, summarising your key findings. You should also discuss the significance of the study and suggest areas for future research.

The references section lists all the sources cited in your dissertation, formatted according to a specific citation style (e.g., APA, MLA, Harvard). Ensure all references are accurate and complete.

Appendices include supplementary material that is relevant to your research but not essential to the main text. This might include:

- Raw data - Questionnaires - Interview transcripts

Dissertation Layout Examples and Templates

Creating a dissertation layout template can definitely streamline the writing-up and formatting processes. Using a dissertation layout template can help ensure your work is well-organised and adheres to academic standards. Use the section above as a dissertation layout example, it’s a great place to start! Note, however, that the general structure of a dissertation should be similar globally, but there may be specific requirements for the dissertation structure in the UK. Always check your university's guidelines and ask your supervisor for specific formatting or structural requirements. In addition, don’t forget to keep in mind the following throughout your dissertation-writing process:

• Consistency : Maintain consistent formatting throughout your dissertation, including font style, size, and margins.
• Headings and Subheadings : Use clear and descriptive headings and subheadings to guide the reader through your work.
• Page Numbers : Include page numbers for easy navigation.
• Spacing : Use appropriate line spacing (usually double or 1.5) to ensure readability.

To Conclude

Structuring your dissertation effectively is crucial for presenting your research clearly and professionally. By understanding the components of a dissertation structure and following best practices, you can produce a well-organised and impactful dissertation. Use dissertation layout templates and examples to guide your formatting, and ensure consistency and clarity throughout your work. Whether you're writing a dissertation in the UK or elsewhere, these dissertation structure tips should give you a broad idea of what to include in your dissertation and will help you create a comprehensive and polished dissertation that meets academic standards.

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The Benefits of Using a Free AI Detector for Essay Checking

06 Jul 2024 • 4 min

Welcome, young writers! Have you ever wished there was a magic tool that could help you improve your essays quickly and easily? Well, I have some exciting news for you! Today, we're going to talk about using a Free AI Detector for Essay Checking. But wait, what exactly is an AI detector, and how can it help you with your writing? Let's dive in and find out!

An AI detector, or Artificial Intelligence detector, is a special tool designed to check your essays for errors and suggest ways to make them better. It's like having a super-smart friend who can spot mistakes in your writing and help you fix them. With the help of AI detectors, you can enhance your writing skills and create polished essays that you can be proud of. Sounds awesome, right? Let's explore how this amazing tool can make a difference in your writing journey!

Table of Contents

Understanding ai detectors, advantages of using a free ai detector, how to use a free ai detector, tips for effective essay checking.

AI detectors, like essay checkers, are intelligent tools that can help you improve your writing skills by identifying and correcting mistakes in your essays. These detectors use artificial intelligence to analyze various aspects of your writing, such as grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure, to provide valuable feedback.

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Grammar Analysis

One key feature of AI detectors is their ability to detect grammar mistakes in your essays. They can point out errors in subject-verb agreement, tenses, and sentence construction, helping you write more clearly and accurately.

Punctuation Check

AI detectors also play a crucial role in checking and rectifying punctuation errors in your writing. They can spot misplaced commas, missing periods, or incorrect apostrophes, ensuring that your essays are correctly punctuated.

Sentence Structure Evaluation

Furthermore, AI detectors can assist in evaluating the structure of your sentences. By identifying run-on sentences, fragments, or awkward phrasings, these tools can enhance the coherence and flow of your writing, making it more engaging for your readers.

When it comes to improving your writing skills and creating polished essays, a Free AI Detector can be an invaluable tool. Let's explore some of the key advantages of using this technology.

Enhanced Writing Skills

By using a Free AI Detector regularly, you can significantly boost your writing proficiency. These tools provide instant feedback on your essays, pointing out errors and offering suggestions for improvement. Over time, this consistent practice can help you learn from your mistakes and enhance your overall writing skills.

Time-saving

One of the major advantages of using a Free AI Detector is the time-saving aspect. Instead of manually combing through your essay to identify errors, these tools can quickly scan your text and highlight any mistakes. This not only saves you time but also allows you to focus on other aspects of your writing process.

Increased Accuracy

AI detectors are known for their precision in catching errors that might otherwise go unnoticed. By using a Free AI Detector, you can ensure that your essays are thoroughly checked for grammar, punctuation, and coherence. The high level of accuracy offered by these tools reduces the chances of overlooking mistakes and helps you produce error-free content.

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Accessing the AI Detector

To begin, you need to access the Free AI Detector tool for essay checking. Simply visit the website where the AI Detector is available and follow the instructions for uploading your essay. Once uploaded, the tool will start analyzing your writing.

Interpreting Feedback

After the AI Detector has analyzed your essay, it will provide feedback on areas that need improvement. This feedback may include suggestions for correcting grammar mistakes, punctuation errors, and enhancing sentence structure. Take your time to carefully review the feedback given by the AI Detector and consider implementing the suggested corrections in your essay.

When using an AI detector for essay checking, it is essential to carefully review the suggestions provided by the tool. Pay close attention to the grammar corrections, punctuation adjustments, and sentence structure enhancements recommended by the AI detector. By understanding and implementing these suggestions, you can significantly improve the quality of your writing.

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Practice Regularly

Consistent practice is key to honing your essay checking skills with the help of an AI detector. Make it a habit to use the tool regularly to identify and correct errors in your writing. Through practice, you will become more adept at spotting mistakes, improving your writing style, and producing polished essays. Remember, the more you practice, the better you will become!

What are the benefits of using a Free AI Detector for essay checking?

Using a Free AI Detector for essay checking offers various advantages, such as enhancing writing skills, saving time, and ensuring increased accuracy. These tools help in identifying and correcting errors in grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure, leading to improved writing proficiency and polished essays.

How can I make the most of using an AI detector for essay checking?

To maximize the benefits of using an AI detector for essay checking, it is essential to carefully review the suggestions provided by the tool. Additionally, practicing regularly with the AI detector can help in refining writing abilities and improving overall writing skills.

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How not to write your college essay.

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If you are looking for the “secret formula” for writing a “winning” college essay, you have come to the wrong place. The reality is there is no silver bullet or strategy to write your way to an acceptance. There is not one topic or approach that will guarantee a favorable outcome.

At the end of the day, every admission office just wants to know more about you, what you value, and what excites you. They want to hear about your experiences through your own words and in your own voice. As you set out to write your essay, you will no doubt get input (both sought-after and unsolicited) on what to write. But how about what NOT Notcoin to write? There are avoidable blunders that applicants frequently make in drafting their essays. I asked college admission leaders, who have read thousands of submissions, to share their thoughts.

Don’t Go In There

There is wide consensus on this first one, so before you call on your Jedi mind tricks or predictive analytics, listen to the voices of a diverse range of admission deans. Peter Hagan, executive director of admissions at Syracuse University, sums it up best, saying, “I would recommend that students try not to get inside of our heads. He adds, “Too often the focus is on what they think we want.”

Andy Strickler, dean of admission and financial aid at Connecticut College agrees, warning, “Do NOT get caught in the trap of trying to figure out what is going to impress the admission committee. You have NO idea who is going to read your essay and what is going to connect with them. So, don't try to guess that.” Victoria Romero, vice president for enrollment, at Scripps College adds, “Do not write about something you don’t care about.” She says, “I think students try to figure out what an admission officer wants to read, and the reality is the reader begins every next essay with no expectations about the content THEY want to read.” Chrystal Russell, dean of admission at Hampden-Sydney College, agrees, saying, “If you're not interested in writing it, we will not be interested when reading it.” Jay Jacobs, vice provost for enrollment management at the University of Vermont elaborates, advising. “Don’t try to make yourself sound any different than you are.” He says, “The number one goal for admission officers is to better understand the applicant, what they like to do, what they want to do, where they spend the majority of their time, and what makes them tick. If a student stays genuine to that, it will shine through and make an engaging and successful essay.”

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Don’t Be Artificial

The headlines about college admission are dominated by stories about artificial intelligence and the college essay. Let’s set some ground rules–to allow ChatGPT or some other tool to do your work is not only unethical, it is also unintelligent. The only worse mistake you could make is to let another human write your essay for you. Instead of preoccupying yourself with whether or not colleges are using AI detection software (most are not), spend your time focused on how best to express yourself authentically. Rick Clark is the executive director of strategic student success at Georgia Institute of Technology, one of the first institutions to clearly outline their AI policy for applicants. He says, “Much of a college application is devoted to lines, boxes, and numbers. Essays and supplements are the one place to establish connection, personality, and distinction. AI, in its current state, is terrible at all three.” He adds, “My hope is that students will use ChatGPT or other tools for brainstorming and to get started, but then move quickly into crafting an essay that will provide insight and value.”

Don’t Overdo It

Michael Stefanowicz, vice president for enrollment management at Landmark College says, “You can only cover so much detail about yourself in an admission essay, and a lot of students feel pressure to tell their life story or choose their most defining experience to date as an essay topic. Admission professionals know that you’re sharing just one part of your lived experience in the essay.” He adds, “Some of the favorite essays I’ve read have been episodic, reflecting on the way you’ve found meaning in a seemingly ordinary experience, advice you’ve lived out, a mistake you’ve learned from, or a special tradition in your life.” Gary Ross, vice president for admission and financial aid at Colgate University adds, “More than a few applicants each year craft essays that talk about the frustration and struggles they have experienced in identifying a topic for their college application essay. Presenting your college application essay as a smorgasbord of topics that ultimately landed on the cutting room floor does not give us much insight into an applicant.”

Don’t Believe In Magic

Jason Nevinger, senior director of admission at the University of Rochester warns, “Be skeptical of anyone or any company telling you, ‘This is the essay that got me into _____.’ There is no magic topic, approach, sentence structure, or prose that got any student into any institution ever.” Social media is littered with advertisements promising strategic essay help. Don’t waste your time, energy, or money trying to emulate a certain style, topic, or tone. Liz Cheron is chief executive officer for the Coalition for College and former assistant vice president of enrollment & dean of admissions at Northeastern University. She agrees with Nevinger, saying “Don't put pressure on yourself to find the perfect, slam dunk topic. The vast majority of college essays do exactly what they're supposed to do–they are well-written and tell the admission officer more about the student in that student's voice–and that can take many different forms.”

Don’t Over Recycle

Beatrice Atkinson-Myers, associate director of global recruitment at the University of California at Santa Cruz tells students, “Do not use the same response for each university; research and craft your essay to match the program at the university you are interested in studying. Don't waste time telling me things I can read elsewhere in your application. Use your essay to give the admissions officer insights into your motivations, interests, and thinking. Don't make your essay the kitchen sink, focus on one or two examples which demonstrate your depth and creativity.” Her UC colleague, Jim Rawlins, associate vice chancellor of enrollment management at the University of California at San Diego agrees, saying “Answer the question. Not doing so is the surest way we can tell you are simply giving us a snippet of something you actually wrote for a different purpose.”

Don’t Overedit

Emily Roper-Doten, vice president for undergraduate admissions and financial assistance at Clark University warns against “Too many editors!” She says, “Pick a couple of trusted folks to be your sounding board when considering topics and as readers once you have drafts. You don’t want too many voices in your essay to drown you out!” Scripps’ Romero agrees, suggesting, “Ask a good friend, someone you trust and knows you well, to read your essays.” She adds, “The goal is for the admission committee to get to know a little about you and who better to help you create that framework, than a good friend. This may not work for all students because of content but helps them understand it’s important to be themselves.” Whitney Soule, vice provost and dean of admissions at The University of Pennsylvania adds, “Avoid well-meaning editorial interference that might seem to polish your writing but actually takes your own personal ‘shine’ right out of the message.” She says, “As readers, we connect to applicants through their genuine tone and style. Considering editorial advice for flow and message is OK but hold on to the 'you' for what you want to say and how you want to say it.”

Don’t Get Showy

Palmer Muntz, senior regional admissions counselor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks cautions applicants, “Don’t be fancier than you are. You don’t need to put on airs.” He adds, “Yes, proofread your work for grammar and spelling, but be natural. Craft something you’d want to read yourself, which probably means keeping your paragraphs short, using familiar words, and writing in an active voice.” Connecticut College’s Strickler agrees, warning, “Don't try to be someone you are not. If you are not funny, don't try to write a funny essay. If you are not an intellectual, trying to write an intellectual essay is a bad idea.”

Anthony Jones, the vice president of enrollment management at Loyola University New Orleans offers a unique metaphor for thinking about the essay. He says, “In the new world of the hyper-fast college admission process, it's become easy to overlook the essential meaning of the college application. It's meant to reveal Y...O...U, the real you, not some phony digital avatar. Think of the essay as the essence of that voice but in analog. Like the completeness and authenticity captured in a vinyl record, the few lines you're given to explain your view should be a slow walk through unrestrained expression chock full of unapologetic nuances, crevices of emotion, and exactness about how you feel in the moment. Then, and only then, can you give the admissions officer an experience that makes them want to tune in and listen for more.”

Don’t Be A Downer

James Nondorf, vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid at The University of Chicago says, “Don’t be negative about other people, be appreciative of those who have supported you, and be excited about who you are and what you will bring to our campus!” He adds, “While admissions offices want smart students for our classrooms, we also want kind-hearted, caring, and joyous students who will add to our campus communities too.”

Don’t Pattern Match

Alan Ramirez is the dean of admission and financial aid at Sewanee, The University of the South. He explains, “A big concern I have is when students find themselves comparing their writing to other students or past applicants and transform their writing to be more like those individuals as a way to better their chances of offering a more-compelling essay.” He emphasizes that the result is that the “essay is no longer authentic nor the best representation of themselves and the whole point of the essay is lost. Their distinctive voice and viewpoint contribute to the range of voices in the incoming class, enhancing the diversity of perspectives we aim to achieve.” Ramirez simple tells students, “Be yourself, that’s what we want to see, plus there's no one else who can do it better than you!”

Don’t Feel Tied To A Topic

Jessica Ricker is the vice president for enrollment and dean of admissions and financial aid at Skidmore College. She says, “Sometimes students feel they must tell a story of grief or hardship, and then end up reliving that during the essay-writing process in ways that are emotionally detrimental. I encourage students to choose a topic they can reflect upon positively but recommend that if they choose a more challenging experience to write about, they avoid belaboring the details and instead focus on the outcome of that journey.” She adds, "They simply need to name it, frame its impact, and then help us as the reader understand how it has shaped their lens on life and their approach moving forward.”

Landmark College’s Stefanowicz adds, “A lot of students worry about how personal to get in sharing a part of their identity like your race or heritage (recalling last year’s Supreme Court case about race-conscious admissions), a learning difference or other disability, your religious values, LGBTQ identity…the list goes on.” He emphasizes, “This is always your choice, and your essay doesn’t have to be about a defining identity. But I encourage you to be fully yourself as you present yourself to colleges—because the college admission process is about finding a school where your whole self is welcome and you find a setting to flourish!”

Don’t Be Redundant

Hillen Grason Jr., dean of admission at Franklin & Marshall College, advises, “Don't repeat academic or co-curricular information that is easily identifiable within other parts of your application unless the topic is a core tenant of you as an individual.” He adds, “Use your essay, and other parts of your application, wisely. Your essay is the best way to convey who your authentic self is to the schools you apply. If you navigated a situation that led to a dip in your grades or co-curricular involvement, leverage the ‘additional information’ section of the application.

Thomas Marr is a regional manager of admissions for the Americas at The University of St Andrews in Scotland and points out that “Not all international schools use the main college essay as part of their assessment when reviewing student applications.” He says, “At the University of St Andrews, we focus on the supplemental essay and students should avoid the mistake of making the supplemental a repeat of their other essay. The supplemental (called the Personal Statement if using the UCAS application process) is to show the extent of their passion and enthusiasm for the subject/s to which they are applying and we expect about 75% of the content to cover this. They can use the remaining space to mention their interests outside of the classroom. Some students confuse passion for the school with passion for their subject; do not fall into that trap.”

A Few Final Don’ts

Don’t delay. Every college applicant I have ever worked with has wished they had started earlier. You can best avoid the pitfalls above if you give yourself the time and space to write a thoughtful essay and welcome feedback openly but cautiously. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to be perfect . Do your best, share your voice, and stay true to who you are.

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Demystifying the Due Process Clause

This essay is about the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution emphasizing its role in ensuring legal fairness and protection against arbitrary government actions. It discusses procedural due process which ensures legal transparency and fairness and substantive due process which guards against irrational and oppressive laws. The essay highlights the evolution of due process in protecting economic freedoms civil rights and individual liberties citing significant court cases and addressing both criticisms and support for judicial interpretations.

How it works

Proper Suggestion of Process inlaid to 14 – ? of Amendment of U.S. Constitution stands how the native stones of legal honesty and defence against arbitrary governmental actions. Then passes a fine that not a single state must deprive not a single face of life freedoms whether the state without the proper process of right. But a constitutional guarantee guarantees how procedural honesty so and independent rights aiming to prevent unfair treatment and to support fundamental freedoms.

Procedurally the proper process requires favour to the set legal procedures that guarantee honesty and transparency.

Then providing includes notifications of burdens offering to just possibility to present defence and guaranteeing unwarned in a decision-making. These procedural guarantees are critical in the distraction of wrong convictions and unfair privation of the state.

Independent proper procedural defence of additions of process concentrating on a substance and honesty of rights directly. Then forbids a right that is arbitrary irrational whether repressing even if they follow by procedural requirements. Courts use the independent proper process to bring down rights that threaten on main rights for example confidentiality freedom and defence evens that is why strengthening principle of constitutional limits on governmental power.

During his history interpretation of the Proper Suggestion of Process evolved to appeal to replacement of social norms and legal calls. It is foremost applied to protect economic freedoms his possibility broadened to include civil laws and individual freedoms. Considerable cases like roe Deer of v. Make way and Obergefell of v. of Hodges consisted in the independent proper process to set rights on abortion and sex marriage accordingly removing more wide moving to the social values and legal interpretations.

Critics deny that the independent proper process can take to judicial activity as courts interpret constitutional principles to do niewa?nym rights. However supporters declare that then serves as a necessary guarantee against a governmental cunning guaranteeing that the main rights for respect of rights and freedom assured by Constitution.

Thus the Proper Suggestion of Process becomes a vital guarantee in the American right balancing requirements to procedural honesty with the protection of independent rights. His legal conversation of forms of interpretation and social progress lasted distinguishing his patient value in the guard of individual freedoms and avouching for measuring a justice for everything in accordance with a right.

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Best AI Essay Writing Tools for Students (2024)

In 2024, AI writing tools have become very helpful, especially for students with lots of writing assignments. These tools can help with everything from coming up with ideas and creating content to editing and polishing your work. 

While AI won’t replace your creativity, it can help with the boring and repetitive parts of writing. But with so many AI writing tools available, it can be hard to know which ones are the best. 

In this article, we’ll look at the top AI writing tools in 2024. We’ll talk about what they can do, how they can help you, and which tasks they’re best for. Whether you need help brainstorming, drafting, or editing, these tools can make your writing easier and better. 

Let’s get right in!

Criteria for Good AI Essay Writing Tools

When choosing an AI essay writing tool, it’s important to consider the following criteria:

• Ease of Use: Easy interface for smooth navigation.
• Quality Output: Generates well-written and clear essays.
• Customization: Allows adjusting writing style and complexity.
• Plagiarism Detection: Checks for copied content reliably.
• Research Capabilities: Assists in finding accurate and relevant information.
• Affordability: Cost-effective for students’ budgets.
• Support: Offers reliable customer assistance and additional resources.

We have made sure that all the tools mentioned in this post meet the criteria for a good AI writing tool. 

Overview of Best AI Writing Tools & Their Winning Features

Here is an overview of the AI writing tools with their best features and pricing:

MyEssayWriter.ai – Easy to Use With Free Features

This essay writer simplifies the writing process, so you can focus on your ideas instead of worrying about the technical stuff. Moreover, MyEssayWriter.ai offers free features you can use to make writing easier.

• User-Friendly Website: It’s easy to find what you need and use the tools.
• Free Features Available: You can use some of the tools for free, which is great for students on a budget.
• Different Academic Levels: Whether you need content for high school or Doctoral level, you can adjust the writing according to your needs.

The free trial does not provide access to premium features. 

Additional Tools:

• Humanizer Tool: Makes your writing sound more like a person wrote it, which is helpful for making your essays sound natural.
• Paraphrasing Tool: This helps you rewrite sentences in a new way, which can make your writing more original and interesting.

You can sign up for a free trial, but their basic plan starts at just $9.99/month. 

PerfectEssayWriter.ai – Plagiarism-Free Content in Multiple Languages

Whether you’re writing a research paper or analyzing literature, PerfectEssayWriter.ai gives you the tools to write, improve, and get ideas for your paper. 

• Multiple Languages: It can generate content in up to 20 different languages.
• Plagiarism-Free Content: It never repeats the same content and always provides unique content even on the same prompt.
• Customized Content: You can add extra details or any specific requirements you may have about the content you want.

The speed might be compromised if your internet connection is slow. 

• Citation Machine: Helps in generating citations in different formats.
• Sentence Rewriter: Rewrites sentences for clarity and originality.

It allows you to sign up for a free trial. The paid basic plan starts at just $9.99/month. 

CollegeEssay.org AI’s Essay Writer: Fast & Efficient Essay Generator

CollegeEssay.org AI generates essays quickly and accurately, helping students with their academic needs. Whether you’re short on time or need help with the content, this essay generator delivers well-researched essays quickly. 

From informative essays to argumentative writing, CollegeEssay.org AI provides reliable information and structured writing help. 

• Fast Generator: Generates an essay in seconds which saves time in essay creation.
• Accurate Information: Provides reliable and accurate content for essays.
• Learns and Adapts: This tool learns and adapts to your writing style and refines the content accordingly. 

There are limited customization tools for students to use. 

Additional Feature:

Essay Writing Service: If you feel that you need human help in addition to AI, then they have 250+ experienced writers who are ready to provide professional essay writing services.

The price for a premium plan starts at $7.99/month. 

Quillbot – Paraphrasing and Improving Content

Whether you’re writing an essay or polishing a report, Quillbot’s simple interface makes writing easier. From basic sentence improvements to detailed grammar checks, Quillbot meets various writing needs.

• Free to Use: Basic features are available at no cost.
• User-friendly: Simple interface for easy navigation.
• No-Limit to Use: You can use the paraphraser as many times as you wish. 

The paraphraser has a limit of 125 words only. 

Additional Tool:

• Grammar Checker: Helps in improving grammar and sentence structure.

You can sign up for a free plan, but if you want access to all features, Quillbot offers a monthly plan for $9.95. 

Jasper.ai – Best for Marketers and Bloggers

• Creative Writing: It provides creative content and maintains writing quality for marketers.
• Target Audience: It provides content suitable for the target audience for the business.
• Knowledge-based Content: It generates marketing campaigns according to your brand’s pre-design.

Their higher pricing is not feasible for individuals on budgets.

• Provides Product Descriptions: Provides product descriptions formatted according to Amazon or your website. 
• Generates Marketing Ideas: Offers ideas and insights to inspire marketing campaigns and strategies.

Their pricing starts at $49/month for one seat with a 7-day free trial. 

Wrapping Up!

In this article, we’ve looked at some of the best AI writing tools available today. Each tool was tested to make sure it’s easy to use, writes well, and fits a student’s budget. 

From MyEssayWriter.ai to PerfectEssayWriter.ai and others like CollegeEssay.org AI, Quillbot, and Jasper, these tools offer different features to help with essays and research papers.

Whether you need help brainstorming, drafting, or editing, these AI tools can make writing easier and your work better. They’re designed to support students throughout their academic writing journey, providing tools for faster, more accurate writing.

Each tool has its pros and cons, and you can select the one that best meets your needs. 

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Anatomy of an AI Essay

How might you distinguish one from a human-composed counterpart? After analyzing dozens, Elizabeth Steere lists some key predictable features.

By  Elizabeth Steere

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Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, educators have been grappling with the problem of how to recognize and address AI-generated writing. The host of AI-detection tools that have emerged over the past year vary greatly in their capabilities and reliability. For example, mere months after OpenAI launched its own AI detector, the company shut it down due to its low accuracy rate.

Understandably, students have expressed concerns over the possibility of their work receiving false positives as AI-generated content. Some institutions have disabled Turnitin’s AI-detection feature due to concerns over potential false allegations of AI plagiarism that may disproportionately affect English-language learners . At the same time, tools that rephrase AI writing—such as text spinners, text inflators or text “humanizers”—can effectively disguise AI-generated text from detection. There are even tools that mimic human typing to conceal AI use in a document’s metadata.

While the capabilities of large language models such as ChatGPT are impressive, they are also limited, as they strongly adhere to specific formulas and phrasing . Turnitin’s website explains that its AI-detection tool relies on the fact that “GPT-3 and ChatGPT tend to generate the next word in a sequence of words in a consistent and highly probable fashion.” I am not a computer programmer or statistician, but I have noticed certain attributes in text that point to the probable involvement of AI, and in February, I collected and quantified some of those characteristics in hopes to better recognize AI essays and to share those characteristics with students and other faculty members.

I asked ChatGPT 3.5 and the generative AI tool included in the free version of Grammarly each to generate more than 50 analytical essays on early American literature, using texts and prompts from classes I have taught over the past decade. I took note of the characteristics of AI essays that differentiated them from what I have come to expect from their human-composed counterparts. Here are some of the key features I noticed.

AI essays tend to get straight to the point. Human-written work often gradually leads up to its topic, offering personal anecdotes, definitions or rhetorical questions before getting to the topic at hand.

AI-generated essays are often list-like. They may feature numbered body paragraphs or multiple headings and subheadings.

The paragraphs of AI-generated essays also often begin with formulaic transitional phrases. As an example, here are the first words of each paragraph in one essay that ChatGPT produced:

• “In contrast”
• “Furthermore”
• “On the other hand”
• “In conclusion.”

Notably, AI-generated essays were far more likely than human-written essays to begin paragraphs with “Furthermore,” “Moreover” and “Overall.”

AI-generated work is often banal. It does not break new ground or demonstrate originality; its assertions sound familiar.

AI-generated text tends to remain in the third person. That’s the case even when asked a reader response–style question. For example, when I asked ChatGPT what it personally found intriguing, meaningful or resonant about one of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems, it produced six paragraphs, but the pronoun “I” was included only once. The rest of the text described the poem’s atmosphere, themes and use of language in dispassionate prose. Grammarly prefaced its answer with “I’m sorry, but I cannot have preferences as I am an AI-powered assistant and do not have emotions or personal opinions,” followed by similarly clinical observations about the text.

AI-produced text tends to discuss “readers” being “challenged” to “confront” ideologies or being “invited” to “reflect” on key topics. In contrast, I have found that human-written text tends to focus on hypothetically what “the reader” might “see,” “feel” or “learn.”

AI-generated essays are often confidently wrong. Human writing is more prone to hedging, using phrases like “I think,” “I feel,” “this might mean …” or “this could be a symbol of …” and so on.

AI-generated essays are often repetitive. An essay that ChatGPT produced on the setting of Rebecca Harding Davis’s short story “Life in the Iron Mills” contained the following assertions among its five brief paragraphs: “The setting serves as a powerful symbol,” “the industrial town itself serves as a central aspect of the setting,” “the roar of furnaces serve as a constant reminder of the relentless pace of industrial production,” “the setting serves as a catalyst for the characters’ struggles and aspirations,” “the setting serves as a microcosm of the larger societal issues of the time,” and “the setting … serves as a powerful symbol of the dehumanizing effects of industrialization.”

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AI writing is often hyperbolic or overreaching. The quotes above describe a “powerful symbol,” for example. AI essays frequently describe even the most mundane topics as “groundbreaking,” “vital,” “esteemed,” “invaluable,” “indelible,” “essential,” “poignant” or “profound.”

AI-produced texts frequently use metaphors, sometimes awkwardly. ChatGPT produced several essays that compared writing to “weaving” a “rich” or “intricate tapestry” or “painting” a “vivid picture.”

AI-generated essays tend to overexplain. They often use appositives to define people or terms, as in “Margaret Fuller, a pioneering feminist and transcendentalist thinker, explored themes such as individualism, self-reliance and the search for meaning in her writings …”

AI-generated academic writing often employs certain verbs. They include “delve,” “shed light,” “highlight,” “illuminate,” “underscore,” “showcase,” “embody,” “transcend,” “navigate,” “foster,” “grapple,” “strive,” “intertwine,” “espouse” and “endeavor.”

AI-generated essays tend to end with a sweeping broad-scale statement. They talk about “the human condition,” “American society,” “the search for meaning” or “the resilience of the human spirit.” Texts are often described as a “testament to” variations on these concepts.

AI-generated writing often invents sources. ChatGPT can compose a “research paper” using MLA-style in-text parenthetical citations and Works Cited entries that look correct and convincing, but the supposed sources are often nonexistent. In my experiment, ChatGPT referenced a purported article titled “Poe, ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’ and the Gothic’s Creation of the Unconscious,” which it claimed was published in PMLA , vol. 96, no. 5, 1981, pp. 900–908. The author cited was an actual Poe scholar, but this particular article does not appear on his CV, and while volume 96, number 5 of PMLA did appear in 1981, the pages cited in that issue of PMLA actually span two articles: one on Frankenstein and one on lyric poetry.

AI-generated essays include hallucinations. Ted Chiang’s article on this phenomenon offers a useful explanation for why large language models such as ChatGPT generate fabricated facts and incorrect assertions. My AI-generated essays included references to nonexistent events, characters and quotes. For example, ChatGPT attributed the dubious quote “Half invoked, half spontaneous, full of ill-concealed enthusiasms, her wild heart lay out there” to a lesser-known short story by Herman Melville, yet nothing resembling that quote appears in the actual text. More hallucinations were evident when AI was generating text about less canonical or more recently published literary texts.

This is not an exhaustive list, and I know that AI-generated text in other formats or relating to other fields probably features different patterns and tendencies . I also used only very basic prompts and did not delineate many specific parameters for the output beyond the topic and the format of an essay.

It is also important to remember that the attributes I’ve described are not exclusive to AI-generated texts. In fact, I noticed that the phrase “It is important to … [note/understand/consider]” was a frequent sentence starter in AI-generated work, but, as evidenced in the previous sentence, humans use these constructions, too. After all, large language models train on human-generated text.

And none of these characteristics alone definitively point to a text having been created by AI. Unless a text begins with the phrase “As an AI language model,” it can be difficult to say whether it was entirely or partially generated by AI. Thus, if the nature of a student submission suggests AI involvement, my first course of action is always to reach out to the student themselves for more information. I try to bear in mind that this is a new technology for both students and instructors, and we are all still working to adapt accordingly.

Students may have received mixed messages on what degree or type of AI use is considered acceptable. Since AI is also now integrated into tools their institutions or instructors have encouraged them to use—such as Grammarly , Microsoft Word or Google Docs —the boundaries of how they should use technology to augment human writing may be especially unclear. Students may turn to AI because they lack confidence in their own writing abilities. Ultimately, however, I hope that by discussing the limits and the predictability of AI-generated prose, we can encourage them to embrace and celebrate their unique writerly voices.

Elizabeth Steere is a lecturer in English at the University of North Georgia.

Career Prep Tip: Creating Meaningful Job-Shadow Experiences

Short-term on-the-job experiences can promote career exploration among students and help them determine paths after g

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Maine news, sports, politics, election results, and obituaries

Donald Trump is going to win the election and democracy will be just fine

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Jared Golden represents Maine’s Second Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

After the first presidential debate , lots of Democrats are panicking  about whether President Joe Biden should step down as the party’s nominee. Biden’s poor performance in the debate was not a surprise. It also didn’t rattle me as it has others, because the outcome of this election has been clear to me for months: While I don’t plan to vote for him, Donald Trump is going to win. And I’m OK with that.

There are winners and losers in every election. Democrats’ post-debate hand-wringing is based on the idea that a Trump victory is not just a political loss, but a unique threat to our democracy. I reject the premise. Unlike Biden and many others, I refuse to participate in a campaign to scare voters with the idea that Trump will end our democratic system.

This Independence Day marks our nation’s 248th birthday. In that time, American democracy has withstood civil war, world wars, acts of terrorism and technological and societal changes that would make the Founders’ head spin.

Pearl-clutching about a Trump victory ignores the strength of our democracy. Jan. 6, 2021, was a dark day. But Americans stood strong. Hundreds of police officers protected the democratic process against thousands who tried to use violence to upend it. Judges and state election officials upheld our election laws. Members of Congress, including leaders from both parties, certified the election results.

They all are joined in the defense of democracy by the millions of us who, like me, made an oath of allegiance to the United States and to the Constitution when we began our military service, plus hundreds of millions of freedom-loving Americans who won’t let anyone take away our constitutional rights as citizens of the greatest democracy in history.

This election is about the economy, not democracy. And when it comes to our economy, our Congress matters far more than who occupies the White House.

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The prospect of a Donald Trump win is cause for alarm, not acquiescence

Some of Congress’ best work in recent years has happened in spite of the president, not because of him. A handful of responsible Democrats, including myself and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, rejected  Biden’s bloated “Build Back Better” bill and instead passed a law that supercharged American energy production, saved Medicare billions of dollars and reduced the deficit. Years earlier, Congress stood up to the GOP establishment who tried to hijack Trump’s agenda to achieve their long-held goal of repealing the Affordable Care Act . Defeating them saved health coverage for tens of millions of Americans and protections for people with preexisting conditions.

It was Congress that wrote and passed the CHIPS Act  and the Inflation Reduction Act  to bring back manufacturing so we can once again be a nation of producers, not just consumers. We wrote laws to unleash American energy by tapping domestic natural resources — oil and gas, biomass, the sun and wind — as well as nuclear power to ensure a steady supply of affordable, reliable energy. And we passed an infrastructure law  that’s already building and improving roads, bridges and ports.

In 2025, I believe Trump is going to be in the White House. Maine’s representatives will need to work with him when it benefits Mainers, hold him accountable when it does not and work independently across the aisle no matter what.

Congress will need to stand up to economic elites and so-called experts in both parties who are already working overtime to stop Trump’s proposed trade policies that would reverse the harms of globalization and protect American businesses from unfair foreign competition. We need to protect from extremists the law I helped pass  that caps seniors’ insulin costs at $35 and forces Big Pharma to negotiate and lower the cost of prescription drugs.

Perhaps more importantly, members must stand up to the GOP old-guard who will use a Trump presidency as cover for handouts to the wealthy and powerful at the cost of America’s working families and communities.

We must stabilize Medicare and Social Security, without cuts for seniors. We must guarantee women’s reproductive rights. And Congress must be ready to once again protect the ACA and to end huge tax breaks for the wealthy and for multinational corporations.

I urge everyone — voters, elected officials, the media, and all citizens — to ignore the chattering class’s scare tactics and political pipedreams. We don’t need party insiders in smoke-filled back rooms to save us. We can defend our democracy without them.

My focus is on representing the people of Maine’s Second Congressional District and working for the common good of all Americans. This Independence Day, we should reflect on the history and strength of our great democracy, safe in the knowledge that no one man is strong enough to take it away from us.

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