Commas: practice

See if you can use commas to punctuate the following sentences correctly. The answers are in the comments below.

He left the scene of the accident and tried to forget that it had happened.

Oil which is lighter than water rises to the surface.

Madame de Stael was an attractive gracious lady.

Nice is a word with many meanings and some of them are contradictory.

The contractor testified that the house was completed and that the work had been done properly.

Some people refuse to go to the zoo because of pity for creatures that must live in small cages.

Taxicabs that are dirty are illegal in some cities.

The closet contained worn clothes old shoes and dirty hats.

The uninvited guest wore a dark blue tweed suit.

After surviving this ordeal the trapper felt relieved.

Mark Twain's early novels I believe stand the test of time.

December 7 1941 will never be forgotten.

The field was safe enough wasn't it?

Write the editor of the Atlantic 8 Arlington Street Boston Massachusetts 02116.

He replied "I have no idea what you mean."

After a good washing and grooming the pup looked like a new dog.

Because of their opposition to institutions that force creatures to live in captivity some people refuse to go to the zoo.

Men who are bald are frequently the ones who are the most authoritative on the subject of baldness.

Vests which were once popular have been out of vogue for several years.

As a celestial goddess she regulated the course of the heavenly bodies and controlled the alternating seasons.

I hope that someday he will learn how to be polite.

The correct punctuation for these sentences will appear in the comments below shortly.

Six Stages of the Essay Writing Process 6

Stage Six: Editing

If you were snatched away right now by aliens and never seen again, you’d still get a reasonable mark for your writing piece. It’s got plenty of ideas, they’re in the right order, and the whole thing flows without gaps or bulges. However, in the event of an alien abduction it would be comforting to know that you’d left a really superior piece of writing behind. The way to achieve this is through the last step of the writing process: editing.

What is editing, exactly?

Basically ‘editing’ means making your piece as reader-friendly as possible by making the sentences flow in a  clear, easy-to-read way. It also means bringing your piece of writing into line with accepted ways of using English: using the appropriate grammar for the purposes of the piece, appropriate punctuation and spelling, and appropriate paragraphing.

Why edit?

I’ve used the word ‘appropriate’ rather than ‘correct’ because language is a living, changing thing and the idea of it being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ is less important than whether it suits its purpose . . . there’s nothing wrong with those thongs, but maybe not for a job interview! It’s all about being practical. If you use spellings that aren’t the usual ones, or grammar that isn’t what we’ve come to accept as ‘right’, it will distract your readers. Instead of thinking ‘what wonderful ideas this person has’, they’ll think ‘this person can’t spell’. It will break the trance of reading. Readers can be irritated and troubled by unconventional usage (I’ve had dozens of letters from readers about the fact that I don’t use inverted commas around dialogue in some of my novels). It’s your right to make up new ways to do things, but expect to pay a price for it. In the case of a school essay, this price might be a lower mark. (Like everything else about the English language, there are exceptions to this. Imaginative writing often plays fast and loose with accepted ways of using English in order to achieve a particular effect.)

The read-through

As with revising, the first thing to do is to read the piece all the way through, looking for problems. Make a note of where you think there are problems, but don’t stop to fix them. Once you’ve found them all, you can go back and take your time fixing each one. If there’s even the slightest feeling in the back of your mind that something might not be quite right, don’t try to talk yourself out of that feeling.

As writers, we all want our piece to be perfect, so we have a tendency to read it as if it is perfect, with a selective blindness for all its problems. For that reason, this is a good moment to ask someone else to look at it for you. To make a piece as user-friendly as possible, you need to check the piece for style, grammar and presentation.

Editing for style

You made a decision about style back at the start of Stage Four, but in the heat of the moment as you wrote your draft, style might have slipped or changed. You might have forgotten a technical term, or been unable to  think of the proper word for something, or you might have got your thoughts tangled up in long complicated sentences. That’s fine—that shows you had your priorities right: get the broad shape of the essay right first, not get bogged down in detail. But now the moment has come to get to grips with all those details of style. The main point about style in an essay is that it should always be the servant of meaning. In an essay, a style that draws attention to itself has failed. The aim of an essay is to get your ideas across strongly and clearly—the style is just the vehicle to convey the ideas.

Questions to ask about style

Have I used the style most appropriate to an essay?

• An essay should be written in a reasonably formal style. It should be in the third person or the passive voice. ‘I’ is generally not appropriate.

Have I chosen the most appropriate words for this style?

• To achieve a formal style, individual words shouldn’t be slangy or too casual. You’ll be expected to use the proper technical terms where appropriate. On the other hand, your essay shouldn’t be overloaded with pompous or obscure words. If a simple word does the job, use it.
• Does the writing give the reader a smooth ride or a bumpy one?
• In a first draft it’s very easy to get yourself into long complicated sentences containing too many ideas. This is the time to simplify them. Even if a long complicated sentence is grammatically correct, it’s generally awkward and hard to read. Try it out loud—if it’s hard to get it right, or if it sounds clunky, rewrite it. It’s much better to have two or three straightforward sentences than a big baggy monster.
• On the other hand, the ‘See Spot run’ variety of sentence gets pretty mind-numbing after a while. If you have too many short, choppy sentences you may need to look at ways of connecting some of them, using words such as ‘although’, ‘in addition’, ‘on the other hand’…
• If all the sentences are constructed exactly the same way, you should look at ways of varying them.

Go back to Stage Four to remind yourself about style.

Editing for grammar

Imaginative writing may have a little latitude with grammar, but an essay has none—the grammar just has to be right.Grammar is a big subject, and for a proper understanding of it, I strongly suggest you get a specialised book on the subject. This is a quick checklist of some of the most common grammatical problems.

Questions to ask about grammar

• Is this really a complete sentence?
• Have I joined two complete sentences with only a comma between them?
• Do my subjects agree with my verbs?
• Have I changed tense or person without meaning to?
• Is one bit of my sentence somehow attached to the wrong thing?
• Have I put enough commas in? Or too many?
• Have I put apostrophes in the right places?
• If I’ve used colons and semicolons, have I used them properly?
• If I’ve used inverted commas and brackets, have I used them properly?
• Have I put paragraph breaks in the best places?
• Have I trusted the computer grammar checker too much?

Editing for presentation

Presentation probably shouldn’t matter, but let’s face it, it does. No matter how well-researched and clearly argued your essay is, it (and your mark) will be undermined by spelling mistakes, messy-looking layout or illegible handwriting.
Questions to ask about presentation

Is my spelling correct?

• You’d think that using a computer spell checker would solve all spelling problems. However, if an incorrect spelling is in fact a legitimate word, the computer won’t always pick it up as a mistake.
• Be aware, also, that computer spell checkers may also suggest US spellings, which aren’t always the same as Australian ones, and they are very bad at names of people and places.
• If you’re not using a computer, go through your writing very carefully for spelling. If you have even the faintest shadow of doubt about the spelling of a word, look it up in a dictionary. There are certain words that all of us find hard—words like ‘accommodation’, ‘necessary’, ‘disappoint’—so if you get to a word that you know is often a problem, double-check it even if you think it’s right.
• Another reader can also be a big help in picking up spelling errors. If there are two perfectly good spellings of a word, choose one and use it consistently.

Does my layout make my piece look good?

• Layout means the way the text is arranged on the page. Layout makes a huge psychological difference to your reader. A piece that’s crammed tightly on the page with no space anywhere and few paragraph breaks can look dense and uninviting. A piece that’s irregular—different spacing on different parts, different amounts of indentation or different spacing between the lines—looks jerky and unsettling.
• Your layout should allow plenty of ‘air’ around the text, with generous margins all round.
• You should leave some space between the lines, too—not only for comments by the teacher, but also because your text is easier on the eye if there’s good separation between the lines.
• It’s just human nature to prefer something pleasant to deal with and—contrary to some opinions—teachers are, in fact, human. So make sure your piece of writing is as legible as you can make it. If it’s handwritten, write as clearly as you can and don’t let the writing get too small or too sloping. On a computer, stick to one of
• the standard text fonts (New York or Times New Roman, for example). Don’t use fancy fonts. Use 10- or 12-point type size. If your piece isn’t long enough, the teacher won’t be fooled by 16-point type. Human, yes. Entirely stupid—not usually.

Does my title help the reader enter the essay?

Your essay may have a title: The Water Cycle. Or it may have a heading: Term 2 assignment: ‘What Were the Causes of World War I?’. Whatever the title is, it should tell the reader exactly what the writing task is.

Have I acknowledged other people’s contributions to my essay?

• Most essay writers use other people’s work to some extent. Sometimes they use it as background reading. Sometimes they specifically use information someone else has gathered or insights someone else has had. Sometimes they actually quote someone else’s words.
• It’s very important to acknowledge this help, and say exactly where it comes from. This is partly simple gratitude, but it also means that other people can go and check your sources, to find out if, as you claim in your essay, Einstein really did say the earth was flat.
• You should acknowledge other people’s work in two ways: first, in a bibliography at the end of your essay. This is just a list of all the sources of information that you’ve used. List them alphabetically by author’s surname, with information in this order: author, title, publisher and place and date of publication (or the address of the website).
• As well as appearing in the bibliography, sources that you’ve used in a direct way should also be acknowledged in the essay itself—for example, ‘As Bloggs points out, Einstein was not always right.’
• The titles of any books that you refer to should be in italics (if you’re using a computer) or underlined (if you’re writing by hand).

Editing an Essay: 5 steps

1. Read the piece through

• Don’t stop to fix mistakes, just mark them.

2. Is the style okay?

Ask yourself:

• Have I chosen the style that’s most appropriate for an essay? (Remember, an essay is aiming to persuade or inform.)
• Have I chosen particular words that jar with this style? (Check for over-casual, conversational words or ‘ordinary’ words where a technical one would be more appropriate.)
• Have I chosen to construct sentences in a way that jars with the style? (Look for short, simplistic sentences, also for needlessly pretentious ones.)

3. Is the grammar okay?

Ask yourself:

• Have I written any sentence fragments?
• Have I written any run-on sentences?
• Do my subjects agree with my verbs?
• Have I changed tense or person?
• Have I dangled any modifiers?
• Have I shown the pause I intended by using commas?
• Have I used apostrophes in the right places?
• Have I used colons or semicolons correctly?
• Have I used inverted commas or brackets correctly?
• Are there plenty of paragraph breaks, and are they in the most natural places?

4. Is the presentation okay?

Ask yourself:

• Have I checked spellings? (Be careful of sound-alikes such as their/there/ they’re.)
• Is my layout orderly and well spaced?
• Have I found the best title for my piece, which prepares the reader for the essay?
• Have I acknowledged sources of ideas and information in a bibliography?

5. Print out the piece and read it through again

• Repeat the steps above, if necessary. Then print and read it again.
• If everything seems OK in the final read-through, the essay is finished.

IN THIS SERIES ABOUT THE ESSAY WRITING PROCESS:

Stage One: Getting Ideas >
Stage Two: Choosing Ideas >
Stage Three: Outling >
Stage Four: Drafting >
Stage Four: Revising >
Stage Six: Editing

Six Stages of the Essay Writing Process 5

Stage Five: Revising

You’ve now got a piece of writing instead of a blank page and a sinking feeling in your stomach. You know that what you’re supposed to do now is revise it. But what does revising really mean? Revising literally means ‘re-seeing’. It is about fixing the bigger, structural problems and, if necessary, ‘re-seeing’ the whole shape of the piece. What this boils down to is finding places where you need to cut something out, places where you should add something, and places where you need to move or rearrange something. Revising doesn’t mean fixing surface problems such as grammar and spelling. That’s what’s called ‘editing’, and we’ll get to that in Stage Six.

Two-step revising

There are two quite different things you have to do when revising. It’s tempting to try to do them both at the same time, but it’s quicker in the long run to do them one by one. The first thing is to find the problems. The second thing is to fix them.

Finding problems

Coming to your own work fresh is one of the hardest things about writing. Somehow, you have to put aside everything you know about the background of the piece—what you intended, the real situation it might be based on—and react to what you’ve actually got on the paper. If you want to find problems before your readers do, you have to try to read it the way they will. That means reading it straight through without stopping, to get a feeling for the piece as a whole. Read it aloud if you can—it will sound quite different and you’ll hear where things should be changed.

Don’t waste this read-through by stopping to fix things, but read with a pen in your hand. When you come to something that doesn’t quite feel right, put a squiggle in the margin beside it, then keep reading. Trust your gut feeling. If you feel that there’s something wrong—even if you don’t know what it is—your readers will too. Time helps you come to a piece freshly. Even fifteen minutes— while you take the dog for a walk—helps you get some distance on what you’ve written.

If you’re working on a computer, I strongly recommend that you print it out (double-spaced) before you start revising. Things always look better on the screen—more like a finished product. But right now you don’t want them to look any better than they really are— you want to find problems, not hide them.

The first time you read the piece through, think only about these questions:

• Have I repeated myself here or waffled on?
• Is there something missing here?
• Are parts of this in the wrong order?

Fixing problems

After you’ve read the piece through, go back to each of the squiggles you made, and work out just why it didn’t sound right.

• If you repeated something, you need to cut.
• If you’re missing something, you’ll need to add.
• If parts are in the wrong order, you’ll need to move things around.

If the problem is something else—spelling or grammar, for example—leave it for the moment. You’ll fix those in Stage Six.

The Great Opening Sentence (GOS)

Now it is time to replace your ‘summary’ sentence with a GOS. A GOS should get your reader interested, but not give too much away. A good GOS will often make the reader ask ‘Why?’—then they’ll read on, to find the answer to that question.

There are two ways to come up with a GOS. One way is to find it. It may be embedded somewhere in your piece, already written—read through the piece, auditioning each sentence (or part of it) for a starring role as a GOS. Or you may find it somewhere else—a sentence in another piece of writing may suggest a GOS, or the sentence may be useable as a direct quote.
The other way to produce a GOS is to write it. Approach this in the same way as you got ideas in Step One—let your mind think sideways and don’t reject any suggestions. Write down all the openers you can dream up, no matter how hopeless they seem.

When you’ve got a page covered with attempts, circle the ones that seem most promising—or just a good phrase or word—and build on these. Assume that you’ll write many GOS attempts before you come up with a good one.

The Great Final Sentence (GFS)

It’s time to get that right, too. A GFS should leave the reader feeling that all the different threads of the piece have been drawn together in a satisfying way. A piece might end with a powerful final statement, or in a quiet way. In either case, the reader should feel sure this is the end—not just that there’s a page missing. As with the GOS, you may find your GFS hiding somewhere in what you’ve already written, or you may need to write one from scratch. Go about it in the same way as you did for the GOS.

Revising your essay

An essay will generally be aiming to give the readers information, or persuade them of something. As you read through your draft, you’ll be looking for changes that will help readers understand the information better or be more convinced by your argument. Once you’ve found the places that need fixing, you have to decide whether to cut, add or move.

Cutting

Here are some things that might need cutting:

• padding—too little information or argument taking up too much space;
• waffle—pompous or over-elaborate sentences with no real purpose;
• repeated ideas or information;
• irrelevant material (even if it’s brilliant or took you hours to write, it has to address the assignment);
• words, sentences or even whole ideas if the essay is longer than required.

Adding

Here are some things that might need be added:

• information that you’ve assumed but not actually stated (don’t rely on the reader to fill the gaps);
• a step in your argument that you’ve left out;
• details or explanations that show how your ideas relate to the assignment;
• connectors or pointers that smooth the flow between your ideas;
• the introduction and conclusion: this is the moment to compose a GOS and a GFS.

Moving

Here are some things that might need to be moved around:

• information that’s not in the most logical order (for example, from most important to least important, most distant in time to most recent, or any order that works and is consistent);
• information that’s important but is given to the reader at the wrong time (for example, background information that should go before the main argument);
• steps in an argument that are not, in the most logical order (an argument has to build up step by step, with the evidence for each step, and then a final, convincing statement);
• something that is good in itself but interrupts the flow;
• the arrangement in a twopronged essay; you may decide now that you made the wrong choice and need to rearrange some of the parts.

Other ways to revise

Sometimes cutting, adding or moving doesn’t quite do the trick. If that’s the case, put the draft away and simply tell someone (real or imaginary) what it’s about. Then tell them the contents of each paragraph, one by one. (You might start with words like ‘What I’m saying here is…’) Then write down what you’ve just heard yourself say. Those words will give you a clear, simply-worded version of your essay which you can then embellish with details from your written draft.

Revising ‘too much’

It’s easy to talk yourself out of the need to make changes. On a second reading some of the problems appear to melt away. You’ve got to remember, though, that most pieces don’t get a second reading.

Nevertheless, as you continue your revisions, you might decide you were right in an earlier version and you need to go back to that. It’s a good idea not to delete or throw away any parts of your earlier drafts—keep them somewhere, in case. (For computer work, make a copy before you start changing it.)

Don’t worry about ‘overworking’ a piece until you’ve revised it at least three times. An overworked essay is a rare and seldomsighted creature.

Strange though it seems, revising can actually be the best part of writing. You’ve done the hard work—you’ve actually created an essay out of thin air. You don’t have to do that again. Now you can enjoy tinkering with it, adding here, cutting there—getting the whole thing as good as you can make it.

Six Steps to Revising an Essay

1. Make a copy of the first draft

• This is so you can scribble on this one to your heart’s content.
• Space it generously—then you can read it easily.

2. Read it through pretending that someone else wrote it

• Don’t stop and fix things.
• If something sounds wrong, just mark it with a squiggle on this first reading.
• Don’t stop to work out why it sounds wrong.

3. Consider making cuts

Ask yourself:

• Is this essay longer than required?
• Have I padded it to make it up to length?
• Have I waffled on pompously and got tangled up in long, complex sentences?
• Have I repeated myself?
• Have I included material that doesn’t connect to the assignment?

If so, write CUT against each squiggle that flags repetition, long-windedness or irrelevance.

4. Consider adding something

Ask yourself:

• Have I assumed that my readers know something I haven’t actually said?
• Have I left out a step in my argument?
• Have I left out an important piece of information?
• Have I failed to show how something is relevant to the topic?
• Have I got ideas that seem disconnected, and need to be joined?
• Have I failed to give supporting material for a point I’ve made?
• Do I need to add a GOS or a GFS?

If so, write ADD.

5. Consider moving parts around

Ask yourself:

• Is this information relevant, but not in a logical sequence?
• Is this idea relevant, but not a step in this particular argument?
• Have I introduced information at the wrong time (too early, before its relevance can be shown: too late, after the reader needed it)?
• For a two-pronged essay, have I chosen the best way of arranging the material?

Write MOVE against the parts that need it.

6. What if you can see a problem but not how to fix it?

Ask yourself:

• Is it that I can’t bring myself to cut something out?
• >>> Solution: tell yourself a little white lie: you’ll find a place for it ‘in a minute’.
• Is it that I can’t think of anything to add?
• >>> Solution: go back to the idea-starters in Step One, especially research. Also, go back to the assignment and read it again.
• Am I afraid I’ll get into a worse muddle when I move things around?
• >>> Solution: cut the essay up, physically, and spread the bits out on the table. Then sticky-tape the pieces together in the new order. Primitive, but it works!
• Are the ideas in the right order but still sound jerky?
• >>> Solution: use connecting phrases such as ‘On the other hand…’, ‘In addition…’.
• Is it that I can’t think of a GOS?
• >>> Solutions:
• look for a brief, punchy quote to open with;
• open with a question;
• open with a dramatic contrast or contradiction.
• Is it that I can’t think of a GFS?
• >>> Solutions:
• If you haven’t done so for a GOS, end with a strong quote;
• refer back to the assignment—not by quoting the whole thing, but by using one or two words from it.
• Be prepared to have several attempts at a GOS and a GFS.

IN THIS SERIES ABOUT THE ESSAY WRITING PROCESS:

Previously… Stage One: Getting Ideas > Stage Two:Choosing Ideas > Step Three: Outling > Step Four: Drafting

The next one (and the last one)… Step Six: Editing

Finding Ideas by Generating Questions

'Generating Questions' is a method you can think about using when producing a specific assignment, as one way of getting used to the process. Let's take a possible question from a first-year politics course as an example. I don’t necessarily expect you to know anything about the topic below from the point of view of a university politics course. The point of this method is to define your own thoughts as a preliminary to further work.

Imagine working on this title: ‘What is racism? Can it be eradicated?’

You would make a list of as many questions as you could that this title suggested to you. Of course, you would not be expected to answer any of these questions – just to pose them.

• What do we mean by race?
• What are the causes of racism?
• Is racism mainly to do with black and white?
• Is racism an innate human characteristic?
• Are there some societies where racism doesn’t exist?
• Are there different kinds of racism?
• How has racism manifested itself historically?
• Can anyone be racist?
• What is the connection between racism and religious intolerance?
• What effect have laws against racism had?
• Is policy-making and the law an answer?
• How am I personally affected by racism?
• Is there a difference between racism and prejudice?

These questions are very varied and you will realize that neither this assignment nor even a fairly general politics course could answer all of them. They certainly do not begin to form a plan for an essay. It is also interesting that all of these questions could lead to further questioning, which is an important part of being able to be searching and analytical in your writing. It is always important that the student as well as the tutor asks questions.

Generate questions for yourself when you embark on a new course, and as you are about to read a book or article, or attend a lecture. Formulating the questions helps you to be clear about how you conceive the subject and what you hope you will get from the materials and other sources of information. It starts you thinking in a purposeful way as you explore different sources for ideas.

As you embark on your study you can expect to encounter various ways in which you will be helped towards tackling assignment questions. Firstly, your course syllabus or handbook should give you a good idea about how the particular topic of your chosen assignment fits into others.

Lecturers may also suggest appropriate ways in which you might think about the topics. Handouts may direct you to particular readings, or provide a series of different definitions. In discussion groups of various kinds you may be asked to introduce particular topics. This will give you the opportunity to explore your own understanding in the company of others who do not necessarily share your views.

You may find that you have to defend your opinions, or listen to others and change what you think on how you approach a topic. In all of this it is always a good idea to do your own thinking first, to put together and make concrete your ideas, see how they relate to what you are learning at university, and develop them by more thinking and reading.

Here is another example. The topic is "What is happening to the family in modern Indonesia"

Here are some questions (in no particular order) that could help a writer organize his or her thoughts:

• What exactly is 'a family'?
• Parents – parenting – should it be taught?
• What is the impact of different cultures or traditions?
• Are there different models of what is a family?
• What ever happened to the extended family?
• Is the nuclear family on its way out?
• What do we know about the "Ideal family" in ‘TV ads’?
• What are the new kinds of family emerging – e.g. shared parenting, civil partnerships.?
• What about if families are difficult and can be completely dysfunctional?
• Why is there a high rate of divorce?
• Family Christmas – do I want it?
• What does "family values" mean?
• How and why do politicians talk about "family values"?
• Are families in decline?

Six Stages of the Essay Writing Process: 4

Stage Four: Drafting

One of the occupational diseases of writers is putting off the dreaded moment of actually starting to write. It’s natural to want to get it right first time, but that’s a big ask, so naturally you put it off some more. However, unless you’re sitting for an exam, you can do as many drafts as you need to get it right. (Some of us do quite a number: my last novel was up to draft 24 when I gave it to the publishers.) First drafts are the ones writers burn so no one can ever know how bad they were.

Only a first draft

Redrafting can seem like a chore, but you could also see it as a freedom. It means that this first draft can be as rough and ‘wrong’ as you like. It can also be (within reason) any length. In Step Five you’ll add or cut as you need to, to make it the right length, so you don’t need to worry about length at the moment. Writing is hard if you’re thinking, ‘Now I am writing my piece.’ That’s enough to give anyone the cold horrors. It’s a lot easier if you think, ‘Now I am writing a first draft of paragraph one. Now I am writing a first draft of paragraph two.’ Anything you can do to make a first draft not feel like the final draft will help. Writing by hand might make it easier to write those first, foolish sentences. Promising yourself that you’re not going to show this draft to a single living soul can help, too. But the very best trick I know to get going with a first draft is this: Don’t start at the beginning.

The GOS factor

The reason for this is the GOS factor. This is the knowledge that our piece has to have a Great Opening Sentence—one that will grip the reader from the very first moment. Probably the hardest sentence in any piece of writing is the first one (the next hardest is the GFS—the final one). Starting with the hardest sentence—the one with the biggest expectations riding on it—is enough to give you writer’s block before you’ve written a word. Years of my life were wasted staring at pieces of paper, trying to think of a GOS. These days, instead of agonising about that GOS, I just jot down a one-line summary to start with. I don’t even think about the GOS until I’ve written the whole piece. In Step Five (page 139) there’s some information about how you might write a GOS—but you don’t need it yet. No matter where you start and whatever the piece is about, you need to decide how the piece should be written—the best style for its purposes. Let’s take a minute to look into this idea of style.

About style

Style is a loose sort of concept that’s about how something is written rather than what is written. Choosing the best style for your piece is like deciding what to wear. You probably wouldn’t go to the school formal in your trackies and trainers, and it’s not likely you’d go to the gym in your silk and satin. In the same way, you wouldn’t use the same language for every situation. It all depends on what the piece of writing is for.

Choosing an appropriate style

For an essay, you’re trying to persuade or inform your reader. Therefore, you’ll want to choose a style that makes it as persuasive or informative as possible. You want to sound as if you know what you’re talking about, and that you have a considered, logical view of the assignment rather than an emotional response. Even for an essay in which you’re taking sides and putting forward an argument, you’ll be basing it on logic, not emotion.

This sense of your authority is best achieved by a fairly formal and impersonal style. You would probably choose:

• reasonably formal words (not pompous ones, though);
• no slang or colloquial words;
• no highly emotional or prejudiced language;
• third-person or passive voice (no ‘I’);
• sentences that are grammatically correct and not overly simple (but not overly tangled, either).

In a first draft, aim for these features if you can, but don’t get paralysed by them. It’s better to go back and fix them up later (Step Six shows you how) than not to be able to write a first draft at all because you’re too worried about getting it perfect.

You can see from this that style boils down to three factors: word choice, voice and sentence structure. We’ll look at each of those one by one.

Choice of words

English is well-supplied with synonyms—different words that mean the same thing. They may mean the same, but you’d choose different ones for different purposes.

• The average kitchen contains quite a few cockroaches.
• The average kitchen contains heaps of cockroaches.
• The average kitchen contains numerous cockroaches.

If you were aiming to be convincing, factual and authoritative, you’d probably use ‘numerous’. If you were aiming to be chatty and friendly, you might choose ‘heaps’. If you were aiming for somewhere in between, you might use ‘quite a few’. Whichever one you choose is a matter of judging which one will serve your purposes best. That means thinking about the purpose of your piece and who will be reading it.

Voice

Listen to the following sentences. Who’s speaking in each one?

• I hate all kinds of bugs.

This sounds personal and close up, like a person talking directly to you. It’s called the first person narrator because an ‘I’ is speaking.

• You (reader) hate all kinds of bugs.

This narrator is telling you about yourself. This is the second person because the narrator is speaking to a second person, ‘you’. Sometimes the ‘you’ is not actually said, but it’s there in the background, and then it sounds as if the ‘you’ is being given an order. For example, ‘Sit down’—the ‘you’ is there but not actually said. This is called the imperative (meaning ‘what you must do’).

• He [or she] hates all kinds of bugs.

This narrator is talking about other people. It’s a sort of ‘onlooker’. This is the third person (it’s talking about things happening to a third person—a ‘he’ or a ‘she’).

• One hates all kinds of bugs.

This is when you’re talking about yourself, but in a disguised way—you’re speaking about yourself as if you’re a third person— you want to stay hidden behind a third person’s mask.
This can also be used to show that you’re speaking about people in general—to give the idea that it’s a universal truth—for example, ‘To make an omelette, one must break eggs.’

Sometimes we use ‘you’ as a more informal version of this ‘universal’ narrator, so it doesn’t sound quite so pompous—for example, ‘To make an omelette, you must break eggs.’

• Bugs are hated.

This sentence doesn’t tell us who hates bugs; someone does but the narrator has not told us. The narrator has rearranged the words so that bugs are the subject and focus of attention in the sentence. This is called the passive voice. Computer grammar checks seem to hate the passive voice, but it has its uses. It has a certain authority. It also allows the writer to hide information from the reader—in the example above, we aren’t told who hates bugs.

You can see from these examples that the choice you make will have a big effect on the way readers respond.

• If you want your readers to be charmed, to feel relaxed, to like you, you’d probably use the personal, chatty, first-person ‘I’ narrator. You might use the personal voice in a letter or for a piece of imaginative writing, for example.
• If you want them to be convinced by you and believe what you’re saying, you’d choose a less personal narrator with more authority—the third person. You would probably use third person in an essay or a report because of its confident and objective feel.
• If you want to shift the emphasis of the sentence away from the person acting, or to the action itself, you might use the passive voice. For example, in a scientific report you might say, ‘A test tube was taken’ or ‘Four families were interviewed’.

Sentence structure or syntax

Syntax just means the way you put your words together to make sentences. The simplest kind of sentence has a grammatical subject, a verb and an object: ‘I (subject) hate (verb) bugs (object).’ This arrangement can be varied. Sometimes you want to do something more elaborate like adding clauses and phrases, or changing the usual order of words. My house is full of bugs, which I hate. Bugs! I hate them. I hate bugs, although my house is full of them. Although my house is full of bugs, I hate them; however ants are different—I find them rather cute. at the
How to decide on the best style for your piece

Okay—so you can make a piece sound different depending on what style you choose. But how do you know what style is right for a particular piece of writing? The answer is to go back and look again at what your piece of writing is trying to do.

If a piece of writing is mainly setting out to entertain, you need to ask what style will be most entertaining for this particular piece.

If a piece of writing is setting out to persuade, you need to ask what style will be most persuasive.

If you’re setting out to inform, you need to ask what style will be best to convey information.

So, work out what your piece of writing is trying to do, then choose the best style for that purpose and write in it.

What if I can only think of one style?

Writing in different styles for different purposes assumes that you can choose between several ways of saying something. It assumes, for example, that you can think of another word for ‘heaps’ if you’re writing an essay. But maybe you can’t think of another way to say it.
One solution is to go to a thesaurus and try to find a similar word. This is okay in theory but the thesaurus won’t tell you whether the word you find is going to fit with the tone of your piece. It doesn’t know what kind of piece you’re writing.

A different way is to use the actor all of us have inside ourselves. Try this: if you can only think of ‘heaps’, and you know it’s too slangy for your essay, pretend you’re a school principal or the prime minister and say your sentence in the tone of voice and words you’d imagine them using. If you can only think of ‘numerous’, but you want your piece to sound relaxed and chatty, try pretending you’re on the phone to your best friend and say the sentence in the sort of words you’d probably use to him or her.

Using your outline

As you write, you might see ways to improve or add to your outline. Change it, but make sure it’s still addressing the assignment and moving in a logical way from point to point. Don’t let yourself be drawn down paths that aren’t relevant to the assignment.

Keeping the flow going

Postpone that intimidating GOS—Great Opening Sentence. Instead, use the one-line summary of your basic idea that you put at the head of your outline in Step Three. This sentence won’t appear in the final essay—it’s probably pretty dull. You’ll think of a more interesting way to start the essay in Step Five. Plunge in and try not to stop until you’ve roughed-out the whole piece. If you can’t think of the right word, put any word you can think of that is close to what you want to convey. If you’re desperate, you can always leave a blank. If you’ve forgotten a date or a name, leave a blank and come back to it later. Get spelling and grammar right if you can—but don’t let those things stop you. Don’t go back and fix things. Rough the whole thing out now and fix the details later.

Getting stuck

The Beginning of an essay is often a hard place to start. It’s where the central issue of the essay is presented—whether it’s a body of information about a subject, or a particular argument. Sometimes it’s hard to write this before you’ve written the whole piece. If you’re finding this is the case, write the Middle first. Come back later when you can see what you’ve done and tackle the Beginning. (In “Stage Five – Revising”, next week, there’s some information about getting that GOS right, but you don’t actually need it now.)

How to end it

Ending an essay can be almost as hard as starting it. The pressure is on for that Great Final Sentence to be—well—great. Take the pressure off for now. Just draw together the points you’ve made in the best final paragraph you can. You’ll probably need more than one try before you get it exactly right—don’t spend too much time on it now. (Step Five is the time for that.)Don’t give this to a reader yet. It’s rough, and they might not be able to see past the roughness to the shape underneath. Revise it first (Step Five), otherwise you might be unnecessarily discouraged.

First Draft For an Essay: 7 steps

1. Remind yourself of the ‘essay style’
Aim to use:

• formal, non-slangy words;
• third person or, for certain kinds of essays, passive voice;
• grammatically correct sentences that aren’t too simplistic.

2. Write out each card on your outline

• Start with your one-line summary of the piece. (But remember it won’t appear like this in the final draft—this is just to give you a run-up. When you’ve written the essay out, you can come back and think of a better way to start it.)
• The idea is to expand each card into a paragraph (or several paragraphs).
• In general, each card should be a new paragraph (this might not be true of the Beginning and End sections).

3. Structure each paragraph
Use:

• • a topic sentence which says what the paragraph will be about;
• • a development which gives more details, in a few sentences;
• • evidence which gives examples or other supporting material.

4. Link each paragraph to the assignment
Ask yourself:

• How does this help to address the assignment I’ve been given?
• How can I show that it addresses the assignment?
• How can I connect this paragraph to the one before?

5. What if you can’t think of how to expand on a card?
Ask yourself:

• Should this idea be in the essay after all?
• Do I need to find out some more information? If so, more research might give you what you need.
• Does this point need some support or proof? If so, go and look for some. If you can’t find anything, consider whether you should still include that point.

6. What if you get stuck?
Ask yourself:

• Am I feeling anxious because this doesn’t sound like an essay?
• >>> (Solution: it’s not an essay yet. It’s only a first draft. Give it time.)
• Am I having trouble thinking of the right word or right spelling?
• >>> (Solution: for the moment, just find the best approximation you can. Fix it up later.)
• Am I stuck because I’ve forgotten a date or name or technical term?
• >>> (Solution: leave a blank and look it up when you’ve finished writing this draft.)
• Am I stuck because my sentence has become long and tangled up in itself?
• >>> (Solution: cut the sentence up into several short, simpler ones.)
• Do I keep going back and re-reading what I’ve done?
• >>> (Solution: just press ahead and get it all down before you go back.)
• Is there another card further down the outline that would be easier to write about?
• >>> (Solution: leapfrog down to that card. Start the writing for it on a new page, though, and don’t forget to go back later and fill in the gap.)
• Do I keep losing sight of how each idea is relevant?
• >>> (Solution: use key words from the assignment in each topic sentence.)

7. What if the essay changes direction?

• This is common, so don’t panic—although a well-planned outline help prevent it.
• Once you can see the new direction, stop writing and go back assignment. Would this new direction be a better way to the assignment after all?
• If you think so, go back to the index cards. Add new ones for ideas, cut out any that no longer fit, and rearrange the rest need to.
• Resume writing using the new outline and remind yourself more time outlining the next time you write an essay.

IN THIS SERIES ABOUT THE ESSAY WRITING PROCESS:

Previously… Stage One: Getting Ideas > Stage Two: Choosing Ideas > Step Three: Outling

To follow… Step Five: Revising > Step Six: Editing

Writing Strategy and Style

Purpose, the end you are aiming at, determines strategy and style. Strategy involves choice—selecting particular aspects of a topic to develop, deciding how to organize them, choosing this word rather than that, constructing various types of sentences, building paragraphs. Style is the result of strategy, the language that makes the strategy work.

Think of purpose, strategy, and style in terms of increasing abstractness. Style is immediate and obvious. It exists in the writing itself; it is the sum of the actual words, sentences, paragraphs. Strategy is more abstract, felt beneath the words as the immediate ends they serve. Purpose is even deeper, supporting strategy and involving not only what you write about but how you affect readers.

A brief example will clarify these overlapping concepts. It was written by a college student in a fifteen-minute classroom exercise. The several topics from which the students could choose were stated broadly—"marriage," "parents," "teachers," and so on—so that each writer had to think about restricting and organizing his or her composition. This student chose "marriage":

Why get married? Or if you are modern, why live together? Answer: Insecurity. "Man needs woman; woman needs man." However, this cliche fails to explain need. How do you need someone of the opposite sex? Sexually is an insufficient explanation. Other animals do not stay with a mate for more than one season; some not even that long. Companionship, although a better answer, is also an incomplete explanation. We all have several friends. Why make one friend so significant that he at least partially excludes the others? Because we want to "join our lives." But this desire for joining is far from "romantic"—it is selfish. We want someone to share our lives in order that we do not have to endure hardships alone. [125 words]

The writer's purpose is not so much to tell us of what she thinks about marriage as to convince us that what she thinks is true. Her purpose, then, is persuasive, and it leads to particular strategies both of organization and of sentence style. Her organization is a refinement of a conventional question/ answer strategy: a basic question ("Why get married?"); an initial, inadequate answer ("Insecurity"); a more precise question ("How do we need someone?"); a partial answer ("sex"); then a second partial answer ("companionship"); a final, more precise question ("Why make one friend so significant?"); and a concluding answer ("so that we do not have to endure hardships alone").

The persuasive purpose is also reflected in the writer's strategy of short emphatic sentences. They are convincing, and they establish an appropriate informal relationship with readers.

Finally, the student's purpose determines her strategy in approaching the subject and in presenting herself. About the topic, the writer is serious without becoming pompous. As for herself, she adopts an impersonal point of view, avoiding such expressions as "I think" or "it seems to me." On another occasion they might suggest a pleasing modesty; here they would weaken the force of her argument.

These strategies are effectively realized in the style: in the clear rhetorical questions, each immediately followed by a straightforward answer; and in the short uncomplicated sentences, echoing speech. (There are even two sentences that are grammatically incomplete—"Answer: Insecurity" and "Because we want to 'join our lives.' ") At the same time the sentences are sufficiently varied to achieve a strategy fundamental to all good prose—to get and hold the reader's attention.

Remember several things about strategy. First, it is many-sided. Any piece of prose displays not one but numerous strategies—of organization, of sentence structure, of word choice, of point of view, of tone. In effective writing these reinforce one another.

Second, no absolute one-to-one correspondence exists between strategy and purpose. A specific strategy may be adapted to various purposes. The question/answer mode of organizing, for example, is not confined to persuasion: it is often used in informative writing. Furthermore, a particular purpose may be served by different strategies. In our example the student's organization was not the only one possible. Another writer might have organized using a "list" strategy:

People get married for a variety of reasons. First. . . Second . . . Third . . . Finally . . .

Still another might have used a personal point of view, or taken a less serious approach, or assumed a more formal relationship with the reader.

Style

In its broadest sense "style" is the total of all the choices a writer makes concerning words and their arrangements. In this sense style may be good or bad—good if the choices are appropriate to the writer's purpose, bad if they are not. More narrowly, "style" has a positive, approving sense, as when we say that someone has "style" or praise a writer for his or her "style." More narrowly yet, the word may also designate a particular way of writing, unique to a person or characteristic of a group or profession: "Hemingway's style," "an academic style."

Here we use style to mean something between those extremes. It will be a positive term, and while we speak of errors in style, we don't speak of "bad styles." On the other hand, we understand "style" to include many ways of writing, each appropriate for some purposes, less so for others. There is no one style, some ideal manner of writing at which all of us should aim. Style is flexible, capable of almost endless variation. But one thing style is not: it is not a superficial fanciness brushed over the basic ideas. Rather than the gilding, style is the deep essence of writing.

Generating Ideas with a Brainstorm

Here is an example of how a thorough brainstorming exercise can create ideas or perspectives which you might be able to use to make your writing interesting. The basic principle of the brainstorm was to NOT edit yourself; just let the ideas flow out, even if they seem a bit silly or repetitive. Write everything down. Quantity not quality [the quality comes later!] Apologies in advance for any repetitions you find. Take a look...

The Brainstorm

Don't wear t-shirts. Stop looking at the clock. Eat your breakfast. Don't be late for class. Don't wear sandals. Do your homework. Speak English. Don't forget where you parked your bike. Don't complain. Don't insult people. Take a shower. If you smell, use perfume. Be productive. Build some muscles. Don't get high. Listen to Adrian. Come on time. Be polite. Try to understand international students' attitudes. Manage your sleeping habits. Don't use a cellphone in the class. Address people properly. Pay attention to the teacher. Be friendly. Answer questions clearly. No littering. Don't call the exchange students "bule". Try to read faculty announcements every day. Try to make a lot of friends. Do not be afraid to be wrong. Join organizations. Take notes and pay attention. Go to the beach. Don't put off doing the assignments you are given. get involved in campus events. Don't be shy about asking questions. Manage your time. Try new things. Don't skip your classes. Get the books recommended by the lecturer. Never talk dirty during class. Try to create an English language environment. Don't procrastinate. Participate. Check Sintesis regularly. Eat regularly. Study in groups. Don't drink and drive. Be prepared. Respect fellow students. Bring enough money when going out. Bring your jacket. Don't eat in class. Don't sleep in class. You can sleep in class - nobody cares. Don't sit under the AC. Don't sign for the attendance register for other people. No public displays of affection in class. Pray before starting the class. Find a good coffee place. throw rubbish in the dustbin. Go sightseeing in Yogya. Try many kinds of food.Try to always think positively. Don't get stressed before exams because they are easy. Bring a pillow to class because the chairs are uncomfortable. Wake up early. Bring mineral water. Don't go out if you have a class the next day. Try random things with new friends. Try to eat at different restaurants. Learn how to cook. Keep your mobile phone charged. Don't overestimate yourself on your motorbike. Don't skip lunch. Be focussed. Be honest. Don't be racist. Be optimistic. Do more of what makes you happy. Have two pairs of shoes. Don't look for a 'mate' in the class. Have a life besides university. Read books. Help each other. Get a minimum of 8 hours' sleep. Get a minimum of 4 hours' sleep. Get as much sleep as you can. Get used to the slow internet. Be open about cultural differences. Don't fall in love too quickly. Ignore weirdos. Drive safely and keep your eyes open. Come early to get a parking space. Never forget your helmet. Respect the dress code. Be active in class. Don't go clubbing on weekdays. Do not stare into a stranger's eyes. Make friends with seniors. Don’t drink the tap water. Think outside the box. Keep hydrated. Do not just copy your presentations from wikipedia. Take responsibility. Smell good. Manage your money. Smile. Choose the right friends. Read more news (and in English). Be consistent. Make use of the library. Be open. Learn to play chapsa. Always carry a flash disk. Life is not fair; deal with it. Memorize your student number. Do not do drugs. Take vitamins. Check e-mail regularly. Concentrate. Live near the university. Don't waste your money. Workout. Don't have crushes on your lecturers. Find ways to relieve your stress. Buy a motorcycle. Don't be homesick. Don't eat too many instant noodles. Study hard. Mingle. Don't pick a fight. Ride a bicycle. No plagiarism. Explore other faculties' canteens. Stop Facebook and use Twitter instead. Respect your elders. Put your phone on silent mode in class. Don't get too upset about useless courses. Don't be lazy. Be happy. Be open minded. Join in discussions. Go to the toilet before class. Be kind to nerds. Bring stationary and pens etc. Don't cheat during exams. Smoke in the right place. Use "kak" with seniors. Don't cling to the internet too much. Buy formal clothes. Have an ordinary haircut. Call your parents sometimes. Talk less, do more. Smile. Don't get caught picking your nose. Have good relations with the regular class students. Don't join BEM in the first semester. Be pro-active. Find a boyfriend or girlfriend. Set yourself goals. Control your emotions. Control your desire to have fun. Bring your laptop every day. Practice your English. Don't be anti-social. Feel free to disagree. Look for the cheapest stores in Yogya. Be patient with the administration staff. Use the three-absence allowance wisely. Prepare for exams. Wear comfortable shoes. Be creative. Carry a notebook. Don't be cocky. Make a study plan. Don't wear shorts. Don't copy someone else's assignment. Remember where you parked your motorbike. Don't miss Adrian's class. Don't expect too much from your teachers. Don't be stressed out. Respect your lecturers. Sit properly. Don't yawn in class. Stand up to bullies. Don't carry firearms. Don't steal books from the library. Don't laugh too hard. Don't slam the door. Don't smoke too much. Don't be arrogant. Be tolerant. Safety first. 

In the case of the 'First Semester IUP Students' question, ideas for advice that came up on almost every brainstorm sheet were... Be organized - Be an active student - Balance work and play - Be open minded - Keep healthy - Be honest - Be polite - Join Organisations - Make new friends. Good advice, undoubtedly, but a bit predictable and dull!

Fortunately, thanks to the brainstorms we did last week we came up with some attention grabbing bits of advice that we can use for our article to make it interesting and thought provoking. Take a look. We can start each of the nine or ten paragraphs with a funny or idiosyncratic 'point' but then explain the kind of advice that it refers to.

So, based on the many ideas generated by the brainstorm, here is a rough plan for the piece of writing, with notes on what will be covered in each paragraph.

What practical and personal advice 

would you give to students starting 

their first semester with IUP?

Remember where you parked your motorbike.

Be organised. Take responsibility. Know where you are supposed to be. Know when you must complete tasks. Be professional. Don't walk around in a daze!

Stop looking at the clock.

Don't be passive and lazy. Get involved in classes. Be active. Ask and answer questions. Grab opportunities. Don't see your lectures as things you simply have to endure.

Find a good coffee place.

Balance your work with times of relaxation and recreation. Know how to relieve your stress. Find places to hang out with friends. Give yourself breaks. Enjoy being busy, but also enjoy doing little or nothing sometimes!

Do not be afraid to be wrong.

Be open minded. Explore your own opinions. Test them. Listen to others. Admit you have doubts. Admit you have changed your mind. Do your best but don't be a perfectionist if it stresses you out or makes you unable to work.

Don’t drink the tap water.

Don't do things that are unhealthy for you. Get enough sleep. Eat properly and regularly. Don't drive yourself too hard. Don't think that you can survive for 4 months on instant noodles. Exchange students should also beware of hidden threats to your health in this new environment... like the tap water!

Try random things with new friends. 

This is a time to try new things, be adventurous, broaden your horizons, spread your wings etc. Remember that some of the people you get to know are going to be lifelong friends; others won't be. Find out who you are, who you like, and what you like to do.

Don't sign the attendance register for other people.

Be honest. Take responsibility for yourself. Be loyal to friends and help them when you can, but don't be compromised. Don't get into situations where you are doing things you feel uncomfortable with or that you know are not right.

Explore other faculties' canteens. 

You are not just IUP. You are not just FEB. You are a member of UGM. Join organisations and clubs. Play sports. Take up new sports or hobbies. Make friends in other faculties. Broaden your horizons.

Don’t fall in love too easily.

Look after yourself emotionally. Be prepared to take a few knocks. Be prepared to take a few risks or to try new things. But don't jump in with both first when you are unsure. Learn who to trust a lot and who to trust less. Take everything at your own speed. If life knocks you down, get up again.

Sound advice? Yes. Variety of issues? Yes. Authentic and practical? Yes. Conventional and serious approach? Not really. Interesting, idiosyncratic advice that attracts the attention of the reader? I reckon so. Mission accomplished!

Pen and Computer

You can write only with your brain; but whether to process your thoughts with a computer or pen and paper is your first practical choice as a writer. I suppose it is still possible to ignore the computer and write just with pencil and paper. A surprising number of writers, including Martin Amis, A. S. Byatt, Ted Hughes, John Irving, Joyce Carol Oates, Susan Sontag, John Updike, and Edmund White prefer longhand for serious writing. But the advantages of the computer are so great that it seems almost irresponsible to pass them up. A computer greatly accelerates editing procedures, allowing you to take a piece through far more drafts than you could otherwise. On-screen correction is so easy that people of all ages find the process relaxing, even pleasurable. Computers give a sense of freedom from lasting error that no one who has experienced it will want to give up. I shall never forget the excitement I felt, twenty-five years ago, when I discovered that words had ceased to be indelible. So in this book I shall take for granted that you will probably use a computer for some, if not all, the processes of writing.

Many people use a computer throughout, and never feel the need to print out hard copy. Mathematicians, in particular, produce papers and even books entirely onscreen. In principle, it is possible to write and publish electronically, without ever lifting pen or pencil. For some, however, especially those engaged in literary work, this may not always be the way to get the most out of the computer.

Computers of the present generation have certain limitations, arising from the screen display, which for some people tend to complicate the process of writing long pieces. Even with the best flat-screen monitor you can’t comfortably read long texts. And you can’t actively browse with any clear sense of where you are in the text.

Good writing depends on extensive reading, not only previous reading of other works but also frequent scans of your own piece, the one you’re working on. Yet if it runs to any considerable length, uninterrupted reading on-screen is difficult. A monitor’s field of view is necessarily local, limited to about 150 words—much less than a printed page. This is fine for drafting a postcard; but not for extensive reading or browsing. To scroll through successive screenfuls is hardly an adequate substitute: it is too fragmentary and remote from ordinary reading. In active browsing you need to be able to skim or read a page or two here, check the index there, and jump back or forward at will, always aware of structure and proportion, always aware of each passage’s relation to the text as a whole.

Working by the screenful can have the unfortunate consequence of smoothing your writing prematurely. For onscreen correction is so easy that the grammar and word choices gel too soon, without enough consideration being given to the overall sequence or the underlying structure. Decisions about the piece as a whole may tend to be passed over, so that the end result is polished enough, but boring: flat, shapeless, even garrulous.

Some have gone so far as to argue that the fluency and facility of composing on-screen are positively bad for writing, since they make you forget the reader’s experience of your piece. The beautiful screen is supposed to delude us into a false consciousness, flattering us with the illusion that technical procedures (correction of typos, format changes, boilerplate insertions, rearrangement of phrases, and the like) can do it all by magic. You cast wonderful

spells, but find they are somehow not enough. But the evidence for all this (cited by Edward Mendelson in a 1990 Academic Computing article) is no longer thought compelling. In any case, the remedy is a very simple one: any limitation you feel in the computer’s display can be overcome by printing out hard copy. I shall assume, in fact, that you will work from printouts whenever you find it more convenient to do so.

Composing on-screen, revising as you go, is obviously fine for short letters, emails, and routine reports. But many people find that anything longer than 250 words or so—and certainly any competitive or ambitious piece that needs much thought—is better printed out for reading and drafting. For many writers drafting is not a detour but the best way forward.

An additional reason for alternating screen and paper applies only to some writers, who find their thinking in front of a screen slower. After a time the computer has for them a dulling, even stupefying effect. Others report quite the reverse, finding that the computer’s pleasurability encourages thinking on-screen, as Michael Heim claims in Electric Language (1987). People differ; but it does no harm to take a break from the screen every half hour or so, for your circulation’s sake.

Some writers find it helps to jot down the earliest draft on paper, where they can vary the size of words for emphasis, use abbreviations, and resort to private symbols. Even illegible scribbles can be turned to account: paper writers can postpone resolution of ambiguities, defer grammatical structuring, delay lexical choices, allow their minds to explore vague surrounding associations, and perhaps encounter serendipities. For them, the computer closes off too many syntactic options, and calls for definition of ideas still inchoate. Other writers, however, more at ease on the keyboard, value the rapid rearrangement and deletion that can be done on-screen. Inserts can go in as they come to mind, without need for memos or post-its. In drafting, the choice between pen and keyboard may be partly a matter of age, partly of training and temperament.

At any rate, when you have reached the stage of a rough outline, you may want to print it out for ease of reading. Working with the draft on paper, you can read it more easily, and see whether each passage is proportioned and positioned where it should be. But don’t forget to have the latest draft on-screen, ready for you to slot in corrections, references, and new ideas.

Except for a complete beginner, computer spellchecks can waste time. They have a way of giving the correct spelling of the wrong word. Better to have a good dictionary on disk (or on your desk), and consult it for yourself. When you work on the final draft, though, a spellcheck sometimes finds inconsistencies. A grammar check, too, if it is a very good one, can be instructive. But again it is better still to learn some grammar. If you could have a program to write the whole piece for you without effort on your part, would you buy it? If the answer is yes, read no further.

Taken from “How to Write” by Alastair Fowler (Oxford University Press 2006)