Rules for Writing
As college students, we are constantly bombarded with advice on how to approach our writing and our academics, but perhaps the best advice does not come through worksheets and grammar quizzes, but through simple and understandable metaphors such as those presented in Reid’s “Ten Ways to Think About Writing: Metaphoric Musings for the College Student.”
“Show and Telepaths”
While we are writing, it is easy to assume that our readers have the same knowledge as we do. What may seem to be common knowledge to one person could be completely foreign to another. This is an important factor to remember particularly when composing research pieces, in which it is crucial to specifically explain your thought process for your results to be valid.
“Pink Houses and Choruses: Keeping Your Reader With You”
As much as I personally detest excessive repetition, repetition in moderation is quite necessary in writing. This isn’t to say that the same words and phrases should be reiterated over and over again within the same paper, but rather, stresses the importance of the thesis of the paper. Finding creative ways to advise your reader of what is to come not only improves the reader’s ability to understand your writing, but also acts as an assist in keeping your writing on track yourself. It is easy to find ourselves wandering from our thesis and addressing different topics as we write, only to return to the beginning of our paper to find that we have strayed far from what we wanted to address.
“Wash and Wear Paragraphs”
I often find myself revising my own papers and finding some paragraphs that have extended over a page in length, while others consist of only two or three simple sentences. As is addressed in the article, some variation in paragraph length is an effective means of creating a layer of interest in our writing, but it is also important to remember to keep the paragraphs a reasonable length. Particularly in papers that are already quite lengthy, extremely paragraphs may seem “rambly” and may cause readers to lose interest.
Example of an annotated text
“Hey Hey Hey and the Textbook Conspiracy: Annotating Your Reading”
It is so easy to look at an article or textbook or novel and want to just skim through and gather what appears on the surface to be the “important parts” of the writing. I am very guilty of this, especially with shorter articles with strict deadlines. I have personally found that when I have a hard copy of a text and actively highlight and write notes in the margins as I read, I achieve a much greater level of understanding than I possibly could have by skimming the surface of the text.
“Rules vs. Rhetoric”
As useful as all of this advice and all of these rules seem to be, it is up to us as writers to make the calls when it comes to our writing. It is crucial for us to be able to own our writing as ours, and not the product of what somebody else is dictating us to compose.
Works Cited
Reid, E. Shelley. “Ten Ways To Think About Writing: Metaphoric Musings for College Writing Students.” Ed. Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky. Vol. 2. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor P, 2011. 3-23. Writing Spaces. Web. 21 Feb. 2016.
