DRAFT AN INTRODUCTION THAT INCLUDES A THESIS. For most writing tasks, your introduction will be a paragraph of 50 to words. Perhaps the most common strategy is to open the paragraph with a few sentences that engage the reader and to conclude it with a statement of the essay's main point. The sentence stating the main point is called a thesis Provide background information about the topic, including controversy, and discuss why the issue is of concern or interest. Move from the general to the specific, ending with the thesis statement. The thesis expresses one main idea and includes how you really feel about your topic I say "draft essays" because I do not want you to devote energy or resources at this point to the production of a traditional, typed, formal "term paper". You will develop research skills as you work, but this is not a research paper so much as a "thought piece" focusing on certain sources identified on the course syllabus, in SAC and in other course materials
What is drafting and re-drafting?
Drafting is the stage of the writing process in which you develop a complete first version of a piece of writing. Even professional writers admit that an empty page scares them because they feel they need to come up with something fresh and original every time they open a blank document on their computers. Because you have completed the first two steps in the writing process, you have already recovered from empty page syndrome.
You have hours of prewriting and planning already done. You know what will go on that blank page: what you wrote in drafting essay definition outline.
A five-paragraph essay contains an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. If you are more comfortable starting on paper than on the computer, you can start on drafting essay definition and then type it before you revise. You can also use a voice recorder to get yourself started, dictating a paragraph or two to get you thinking.
In this lesson, Mariah does all her work on the computer, but you may use pen and paper or the computer to write a rough draft. What makes the writing process so beneficial to writers is that it encourages alternatives to standard practices drafting essay definition motivating you to develop your best ideas. For instance, the following approaches, done alone or in combination with others, may drafting essay definition your writing and help you move forward in the writing process:, drafting essay definition.
Of all of these considerations, keeping your purpose and your audience at the front of your mind is the most important key to writing success. If your purpose is to persuade, for example, you will present your facts and details in the most logical and convincing way you can. Your purpose will guide your mind as you compose your sentences. Your audience will guide word choice. Are you writing for experts, for a general audience, for other college students, or for people who know very little drafting essay definition your topic?
Keep asking yourself what drafting essay definition readers, with their background and experience, need to be told in order to understand your ideas. How can you best express your ideas so they are totally clear and your communication is effective?
You may want to identify your purpose and audience on an index card that you clip to your paper or keep next to your computer. On that card, you may want to write notes to yourself—perhaps about what that audience might not know or what it needs to know—so that you drafting essay definition be sure to address those issues when you write.
It may be a good idea to also state exactly what you want to explain to that audience, or to inform them of, or to persuade them about. Many of the documents you produce at work target a particular audience for a particular purpose. You may find that it is highly advantageous to know as much as you can about your target audience and to prepare your message to reach that audience, drafting essay definition, even drafting essay definition the audience drafting essay definition a coworker or your boss.
Menu language is a common example. Drafting essay definition, mail-order companies research the demographics of the people who buy their merchandise. For example, the product descriptions in a skateboarder catalog will differ from the descriptions in a clothing catalog for mature adults.
Using the topic for the essay that you outlined in Section 8. Use your own sheet of paper to record your responses. Then keep these responses near you during future stages of the writing process. A draft is a complete version of a piece of writing, but it is not the final version. The step in the writing process after drafting, as you may remember, is revising. During revising, you will have the opportunity to drafting essay definition changes to your first draft before you put the finishing touches on it during the editing and proofreading stage.
A first draft gives you a working version that you can later improve. Workplace writing in certain environments is done by teams of writers who collaborate on the planning, writing, and revising of documents, such as long reports, technical manuals, and the results of scientific research. Collaborators do not need to be in the same room, the same building, or even the same city. Many collaborations are conducted over the Internet. In a perfect collaboration, each contributor has the right to add, edit, and delete text.
Strong communication skills, in addition to strong writing skills, are drafting essay definition in this kind of writing situation drafting essay definition disagreements over style, content, process, emphasis, and other issues may arise. The collaborative software, or document management systems, that groups use to work on common projects is sometimes called groupware or workgroup support systems.
The reviewing tool on some word-processing programs also gives you access to a collaborative tool that many smaller workgroups use when they exchange documents.
You can also use it to leave comments to yourself. If you invest some time now to investigate how the reviewing tool in your word processor works, you will be able to use it with confidence during the revision stage of the writing process.
Then, drafting essay definition, when you start to revise, drafting essay definition, set your reviewing tool to track any changes you make, so you will be able to tinker with text and commit only those final changes you want to keep.
If you have been using the information in this chapter step by step to help you develop an assignment, drafting essay definition, you already have both a formal topic outline and a formal sentence outline to direct your writing. Knowing what a first draft looks like will help you make the creative leap from the outline to the first draft. A first draft should include the following elements:.
These elements follow the standard five-paragraph essay format, drafting essay definition, which you probably first encountered in high school. This basic format is valid for most essays you will write in college, drafting essay definition, even much longer ones.
For now, however, Mariah focuses on writing the three body paragraphs from her outline. In college writing, using a topic sentence in each paragraph of the essay is the standard rule. However, the topic sentence does not always have to be the first sentence in your paragraph even if it the first item in your formal outline. When you begin to draft your paragraphs, you should follow your outline fairly closely.
After all, you spent valuable time developing those ideas. However, as you begin to express your ideas in complete sentences, it might strike you that the topic sentence might work better at the end of the paragraph or in the middle.
Try it. Writing a draft, by its nature, is a good time for experimentation. The topic sentence can be the first, middle, or final sentence in a paragraph. When the purpose of the assignment is to persuade, for example, the topic sentence should be the first sentence in a paragraph. When you organize information according to order of importance, the topic sentence may be the final sentence in a paragraph.
All the supporting sentences build up to the topic sentence. Chronological order may also position the topic sentence as the final sentence because the controlling idea of the paragraph may make the most sense at the end of a sequence. When you organize information according to spatial order, drafting essay definition, a topic sentence may appear as the middle sentence in a paragraph, drafting essay definition. An essay arranged by spatial order often contains paragraphs that begin with descriptions.
A reader may first need a visual in his or her mind before understanding the development of the paragraph. When the topic sentence is in the middle, it unites the details that come before it with the ones that come after it. As you read critically throughout the writing process, keep topic sentences in mind. You may discover topic sentences that are not always located at the beginning of a paragraph. For example, fiction writers customarily use topic ideas, either expressed or implied, drafting essay definition, to move readers through their texts.
In nonfiction writing, such as popular magazines, topic sentences are often used when the author thinks it is appropriate based on the audience and the purpose, of course. A single topic sentence might even control the development of a number of paragraphs. Developing topic sentences and thinking about their placement in a paragraph will prepare you to write the rest of the paragraph. The paragraph is the main structural component of an essay as well as other forms of writing.
Each related main idea is supported and developed with facts, examples, and other details that explain it. By exploring and refining one main idea at a time, drafting essay definition, writers build a strong case for their thesis. Paragraph Length. To grab attention or to present succinct supporting ideas, a paragraph can be fairly short and consist of two to three sentences.
A paragraph in a complex essay about some abstract point in philosophy or archaeology can be three-quarters of a page or more in length. As long as the writer maintains close focus on the topic and does not ramble, a long paragraph is acceptable in college-level writing. In general, try to keep the paragraphs longer than one sentence but shorter than one full page of double-spaced text.
Journalistic style often calls for brief two- or three-sentence paragraphs because of how people read the news, both online and in print. Blogs and other online information sources often adopt this paragraphing style, too. Readers often skim the first paragraphs of a great many articles before settling on the handful of stories they want to read in detail.
In such cases, you should divide the paragraph into two or more shorter paragraphs, adding a topic statement or some kind of transitional word or phrase at the start of the new paragraph. Transition words or phrases show the connection between the two ideas. In all cases, however, be guided by what you instructor wants and expects to find in your draft.
To build your sense of appropriate paragraph length, drafting essay definition, use the Internet to find examples of the following items. Copy them into a file, drafting essay definition, identify your sources, and present them to your instructor with your annotations, or notes. As she does, you should have in front of you your outline, with its thesis statement and topic sentences, and the notes you wrote earlier in this lesson on your purpose and audience.
Reviewing these will put both you and Mariah in the proper mind-set to start. Here are the notes that Mariah wrote to herself to characterize her purpose and audience.
Mariah chose to begin by writing a quick drafting essay definition based on her thesis statement. She knew that she would want to improve her introduction significantly when she revised.
Right now, she just wanted to give herself a starting point. You will read her introduction again in Section 8, drafting essay definition. She could have started directly with any of the body paragraphs. With her thesis statement and her purpose and audience notes in front of her, Mariah then looked at her sentence outline.
She chose to use that outline because it includes the topic sentences. The following is the portion of her outline for the first body paragraph. The roman numeral II identifies the topic sentence for the paragraph, capital letters indicate supporting details, and arabic numerals label subpoints.
How to Write an Eye-Catching Essay Introduction - Scribbr ��
, time: 4:33The Importance of Drafting, Rewriting and Editing
A part of the writing process leading to successful writings later on is called Drafting. With the help of this process, the writes get a layout of their final writing. The final piece of writing will be excellent if the daft is well-constructed in the beginning Provide background information about the topic, including controversy, and discuss why the issue is of concern or interest. Move from the general to the specific, ending with the thesis statement. The thesis expresses one main idea and includes how you really feel about your topic Oct 14, · In composition, drafting is a stage of the writing process during which a writer organizes information and ideas into sentences and paragraphs. Writers approach drafting in various ways. "Some writers like to start drafting before they develop a clear plan," notes John Trimbur, "whereas others would not think of drafting without a carefully developed outline " (The Call to Write, )
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