Writing Basics
Translating your thoughts and ideas into language — the “content” of writing. In includes word choice (vocabulary), details that add meaning, and clear expression.
What is Text Generation?
The word “rhetorical” has many different shades of meaning, but they all point toward a similar definition—successfully connecting with and persuading audiences. For college and university students, those audiences are usually professors and other course instructors. Some strategies are unique to a subject area, but there are many basic strategies that work in all academic contexts.
What are Rhetorical Strategies?
Put simply, it is the copying of another person’s work and/or ideas without giving that person credit.
What is Plagiarism?
This is included with the page number in your document's header.
What is the surname (last name) of the author?
The first draft of an assignment.
What is the rough draft?
Good writing involves planning, revising, and editing. These processes are extremely important to success in writing, and become even more important throughout a child's schooling.
What is the Writing Process?
After introducing your subject, make sure that in the first paragraph you summarize everything that you plan to discuss in the rest of your paper. At the beginning of each subsequent paragraph, make sure the first sentence covers everything you plan to discuss in the rest of the paragraph. This will be the topic sentence or the focus of that paragraph.
What is Start Big and Get Small?
If it isn’t your idea, make sure you have a citation.
What is the Basic Rule for avoiding Plagiarism?
The proper size of your margins within any document you submit.
What is One (1) inch?
The main argument of a writing assignment.
What is the thesis statement?
It includes an understanding types of writing (genre) — for example, understanding that narrative writing or descriptive writing is organized differently than informational writing or persuasive writing. Another important part of writing knowledge is understanding the audience you are writing for.
What is Writing Knowledge?
A more sophisticated vocabulary can boost the effectiveness of your writing. Use a thesaurus to find synonyms and related words for concepts you already know. After finding a new word, make sure it is a good choice by asking someone or looking up examples of how the word is used in different contexts and whether the word works in the context that you are writing about. If you are not in a position to do this, type the word into a search engine like Google, and see how others have been using it.
What is Enrich Your Vocabulary?
Turning in an assignment for one class that you wrote for another?
What is Plagiarizing Yourself?
This is the proper line spacing for your assignments.
What is double?
The initial layout of the structure of a writing assignment.
What is an outline?
ENG 0900 Focuses on this.
What are the Writing Basics?
During your studies, it is likely that you will have the opportunity to write about topics that inspire or infuriate you. Regardless of your passion for a topic, academic audiences prefer clear, precise, and neutral descriptions to emotional or moralistic language. For example:
Education is the single most important factor in career success.
This is a statement that an overwhelming majority of people would agree with, but saying that education is the single most important factor tells readers more about your response to education than about education’s real role in having a successful career. When academic readers see this, it leads them to believe that you cannot help imposing your attitudes on a subject. A more neutral and persuasive way of writing would be:
Education is one important factor in career success. Don’t be extreme. Academic readers are often suspicious of superlative claims. These are statements that begin with “the most” or “the least” or end with “–est,” and are applied to all situations. You can make it less extreme by narrowing the situations in which the statement is true. For example, instead of writing:
New Horizons is the fastest spacecraft ever built.
It would be more restrained (and accurate) to write
As of 2007, New Horizons is the fastest spacecraft ever built.
You can also quantify the information, rather than using a superlative:
New Horizons is traveling at 16.21 kilometers per second.
What is Keep Your Language Neutral?
Submitting someone else's work as your own.
What is Overt Plagiarism?
Times New Roman, Calibri, and Ariel are examples of these.
What are acceptable fonts?
The final part of a paragraph, meant to signal the end of a paragraph as well as remind the reader what the point of the paragraph was.
What is the clincher?
It includes spelling, capitalization, punctuation, handwriting or keyboarding, and sentence structure (for example, elimination of run-ons and sentence fragments)?
What are Basic Writing Skills?
Often (though not always) instructors are eager for evidence that their students are thinking and writing critically. In this case, being critical does not necessarily mean criticizing, but instead means to question, to interrogate. In other words, don’t accept things at face value. Writing critically means to look carefully at a subject, and to ask tough questions about different aspects of it. Bring in different perspectives and talk about how they view the subject. Being critical also means not believing something because of a person’s high status; even if a writer you found in your research is very prominent, that does not mean that they are right. Interrogate them just as thoroughly as you would an unknown writer.
What is Finding Opportunities to be Critical?
Results in a failing grade on an assignment.
What is Intentional Plagiarism?
This includes your name, the name of your instructor, the course title and number, and the date due.
What is the college header?
Once you submit an essay for a grade, it is done and there is nothing you can do to the paper to ever make it better (true or false)
False; a paper can always be improved and is never really finished.