Writing Style Essay

It is essential to understand that classes taken in grade school do not give students a full understanding of each subject. With the topic of writing, there will always be a new lesson to learn, an aspect to improve, or a differing way to explain. Author Craig Vetter states in Bonehead Writing, “This is your enemy: a perfectly empty sheet of paper. Nothing will ever happen here except what you make happen.” Each story, essay, or response comes from a writer’s experiences. With each attempt at a new piece comes an underlying story of emotions the writer is facing. Each person’s writing is unique and the ideas people have are related to their past experiences and what they believe to be familiar with when deciding which writing style to use. As a high school student, I have learned many things about writing that helped me become the improved writer I am today, but the most essential advice I have received is practice makes perfect. Although there is no actual perfect way of writing, I have discovered that each essay I write, my writing improves. It is easier to spot mistakes, find areas to improve, and ponder elevated word choice to use.

In Dan Berrett’s article, “Students Come to College Thinking They’ve Mastered Writing,” the idea of freshman thinking they are or must be a refined writer is discussed. Students may think this way coming into college, but their teachers do not. While students might feel satisfied and think that they are prepared with their writing skills, professors found that these students did not necessarily meet the expected level (Berrett 1). Many students reported that they would normally write around 25 hours every week. They said that most of those hours of writing was for more formal purposes like passages to make changes in society (Berrett 1). It was found that one reason the new students might feel this way is that their assumptions about writing differed greatly from those of faculty members and their expectations. One big thing that students will not get for a while, is that good writing is not just listed as a bunch of steps one is to follow that automatically make one’s writing good. Good writing requires one to be in different mental states; it requires the understanding of how to write for different audiences and different reasons (Berrett 2). Berrett includes in the article that writing is not just universal and that in order to do very well, writers must use different forms of writing specifically for their purpose (2). It seems as though students think that, before they even take a class, they are supposed to know everything about writing; in reality, they are supposed to learn new skills and enhance others (Berrett 2). Berrett says that many believe the schools these students previously attended with their test focus might cause these feelings about writing (2). Berrett ends his article by saying that students these days do not think that informal writing actually counts as writing, and that students should practice writing for informal purposes because it can help them (2). Even if they feel like it, students are not fully prepared to write in all contexts when they arrive at college.

The essay I was assigned is “How To Write With Style” by Kurt Vonnegut. After reading the essay, I found that a theme that would best summarize it is “effective communication. Kurt Vonnegut writes in his essay about how one should write in order to attract the reader and effectively communicate your thoughts. His advice to writing as he calls it “How To Write With Style” provides an insight to some elements that allows the writer to effectively communicate his thoughts and be true to him or herself. Keeping it simple, Have the guts to cut, Sound like yourself, Say what you mean to say, Pity the readers are his advice to writers to become effective writers. After reading the essay, I looked at several stories and poems that shared a similar

Writing varies from a text message to a novel. Writers often have a difficult task in creating a piece of work that truly identifies the meaning of good writing. Every good writer usually starts with the basics such as genre, audience, rhetorical situation, and reflection of the piece. Throughout this semester, we have gone through all of these key terms in great detail with each new assignment that has come our way. In doing this, not only as students but also as writers, we have come to create our own theory of writing. Every writer has a different theory of writing though most are very similar. Now, at this point in the semester after doing countless journals, in-class exercises, and final assignments, I think I have figured out my own

Every author has a different writing style in comparison. They convey their messages in multiple ways; using different tones to evoke certain moods on their readers. Some authors use a few different ways to catch their audiences attention; persuading them using logic, ethics and emotion.

Everyone knows what writing is to one extent or another, but we all have different definitions of how it should be done and varying degrees of seriousness about the art. We all have a process of writing, but each is unique to ourselves and our own experiences. Annie Dillard and Stephen King are two well known authors who have published many pieces, two of which describe how they view the writing process and let their readers get a peek of what goes on through their minds when they write. These two pieces are Dillard’s The Writing Life and King’s “What Writing Is.”

In “To Read like a Writer” Mike Bunns introduces how writing is “a series of choices” with an account of his past as an employee at a theatre. As he was trying to concentrate on his reading, he had an epiphany that literary works are all “a series of choices”(Bunns 72). He then transitions to his main claim of how reading like a writer allows for the reader to determine whether or not to adopt the same style as the piece that the text may have. He breaks this down into subsections that readers need to observe before they tackle the writing, such as context, genre, and publication. Additionally, he points out the necessity to makes notes while reading the

Kenneth Burke, in “Psychology and Form” and “Lexicon Rhetoricae,” two brief essays in his book Counterstatement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), writes that the most profound effects of a work of art are created by the repetition of form; the creation of expectations in a reader through repeated and carefully varied devices, as well as through information, enhances our excitement about information by baffling our emotional expectation, and finally satisfies us with increasingly complex style and devices as well as with plot complications. Language, symbolism, and dramatic action fuse at the end of the work. Burke cautions us to beware of the tyranny of the informational, as characters, and even authors—especially the humorist

American Psychological Association (APA) writing style exists for a reason and this reason is because writers' must give “credibility where credibility is due”(Walden Writing Center, 2015) . During my BSW program I learned this and also, the importance of integrity in college level writing. In my opinion, two aspects of APA that I think will not challenge me are direct quotations and listing references. I have to admit I prefer to quote intellecutual matter directly rather than, use paraphazing. I believe this is approriate to do if the quote you utilize is short and all of your agrguments regarding, the content of the quote, are your own ideas. Another thing that will come easily to me is listing my references. This comes easily to me because during my undergraduate education, I excelled in this area. The reason for this is because everytime I wrote a reference page I always refered to my courses APA manual.

Any style of writing has a problem of whether it is easy to read, not smooth along the tone, language was beautiful enough. In short, we must pay attention to any stylistic language

There are different forms of literature which can include essays, poems, novels, reports and more. The one thing all forms of literature have in common is that they all have meaning, purpose and form, but how it is expressed is all different, the question is how. Most of the times authors have a reason to convey such messages, and how the messages are delivered is up to the author as well. The author uses the form, it’s aesthetics to send the readers an image; what kind of literature it is. The authors also send the readers a blatant message, the message is sent through the text of the literature. Through the text on the literature the author portrays purpose, and with the form of the

In the final chapter of Style: A Pragmatic Approach, Peter Richardson recommended his final tips for writing strong essays. His recommendations included: assume the “readers don’t already know what we’re thinking” (56) and use metaphors from earlier drafts to develop your main points. His first recommendation is essential for me because I find myself not writing for my readers. Even rereading my first Martin Luther King Jr. essay, I found myself stating claims that may not be as obvious to other individuals. As Richardson noted: “When we’ve been pondering something for a while, we frequently assume that our readers have been doing the same” (56). However, this is not always the case because everyone’s mind is unique and different. And since

There are thousands of pieces of advice about writing out there. Every English text book discusses it. Every person knows the rules to good writing by heart. In fact it is next to impossible to separate what we have been told from our own beliefs.

Before the 20th Century, literature was pretty straightforward; the narrators were reliable, the timelines were linear, and the perspective was clear, but then somebody got the idea to mix it up. This is how we got books such as The Great Gatsby and one of our class texts, Orlando. For some, this was a startling and uncomfortable transition from what used to be considered the, “normal” format which was very up front in terms of structure and voice. Others found it to be more exciting and, while it was still weird and unsettling for those people, it forced people to think more about what the books were trying to communicate, instead of just being handed the message; they had to work for it. This has become one of the leading reasons that societies are encouraged to read; if you read a book that forces you to think, your mind becomes stronger and this promotes an increase in intelligence and creativity.

A writer can accomplish composing a “good” piece of writing by making sure he has logical reasoning behind their statements, by making it noticeable when they transition into explaining another point, and when by not letting their personal feelings be put ahead of their logical reasons, and by making the reader question them. These are not only important for the author but it is also important for the reader. If a author does not have a logical reasoning behind his statements than the reader can not take it as a credible source and they will most likely not believe it. Transitions are a huge part of good writing also because if a reader can not tell when your last point ends and the next one starts