Words in Transition

Organize your material so as to present a logical sequence or flow of ideas and to provide the strongest support for your thesis statement. Begin by making an informal outline. State your title, purpose, and thesis at the top. List the three parts of your essay-introduction, body, conclusion. Select those ideas from your brainstorming or clustering activities that are essential to your thesis; these will form the body of your essay.

Informal Outline

Title: Signs of the times: Bumper Stickers
Purpose: Informative: to explain the purpose of bumper stickers.
Thesis: Bumper stickers express people’s beliefs, interests, and attitudes.

1. Introduction
2. Body - types of bumper stickers arranged in order of increasing social and cultural significance
   • Advertising on bumper stickers - examples
   • Humorous bumper stickers - examples
   • Ethnic and religious statements on bumper stickers - examples
   • Environmental, political, and social issues on bumper stickers - examples
3. Conclusion

Following is the formal outline for the Annotated Student Essay in COMP 6. Andy Pellett, a university student, prepared this outline to submit with his essay.

Title; The Perils of AstroTurf
Purpose; Persuasive; to argue for banning artificial turf and returning to natural turf as a playing surface for football and baseball.
Thesis; Artificial turf is a change for the worse.

1. Arguments for artificial turf
   • AstroTurf saves money
     • Counterargument: installation costs are high
     • Counterargument; artificial turf needs to be replaced more frequently, which further increases costs.
   • AstroTurf increases traction, especially during inclement weather.
     • Counterargument; Football and baseball are meant to be played in all kinds of weather.
     • Counterargument: Fans’ satisfaction is increased by seeing their teams playing in inclement weather.
2. Arguments against artificial turf
   • Artificial turf causes the ball to hop unnaturally, affecting player statistics and game strategy.
   • Artificial turf causes player injuries.
3. Conclusion: If we stick with real grass we cannot go wrong.

In writing a formal outline, follow these rules:

1. Include the title, a statement of purpose, and the thesis statement.
2. Write in complete sentences unless your meaning is immediately clear from a phrase.
3. Divide each category into at least two sub-categories. The reason for this is simple: you cannot logically divide something into fewer than two parts.
4. Observe the traditional formal outline pattern. Notice how each new level of specificity is given a new letter or number designation.

WPTips

Outlining

Develop a master outline file that can be copied for use with each writing project. Fill it in on the screen. Having a master file assures correct outline form (roman numerals, letters, and numerals), and using a word processor makes it easy to revise your outline during the writing process-adding, deleting, and rearranging ideas as you develop your composition.

Having arrived at a thesis statement and decided on your purpose for writing, it is time to consider your audience or intended readership. Tammi Lipski’s intended audience would be a fairly general one-readers interested in human traits and qualities-whereas Terry Mote’s audience would be somewhat narrower-college or university students preparing to embark on a career. Lisa Denis’s audience would also be narrower than Tammi Lipski’s; those who use or could potentially use disposable diapers.

Students often mistakenly assume their instructor is their only audience. Though it is true that your teacher will read your composition, do not forget the other students in your class. They, after all, make up the writing community to which you belong.

Use the following list of questions to identify your audience so you can make appropriate decisions on content, sentence structure, and word choice.

Audience Questions

Who are my readers?
Is my audience specialized (my chemistry lab partners, other Macintosh computer users) or general (literate adults)?
What do I know about my audience (age; sex; amount of education; religious, social, economic, and political attitudes)?
What does my audience know about my subject? What is their knowledge level-expert or novice?
What does my audience need to know that I can tell them? Will my audience have misconceptions that I can clarify?
What is my relationship to my audience: Boss? Equal? Subordinate?
How will my audience respond to what I have to say (interested, openminded, resistant, hostile)?
Is there any specialized language my audience needs or that I should avoid? What do I want my audience to do? How can I help them?
How should I sound-formal or informal?

The best writers empathize with their readers. They try to see things as their readers might, recognize and understand their problems and address them, and appeal to their emotions, their rational faculties, and their humanity.

Implied in your thesis statement is your purpose, the answer you give the question, “What am I trying to accomplish in this composition?” Being clear about your purpose helps you choose the best supporting details and arrange them in the most effective order (see PARA3a). For example, it is clear in Tammi Lipski’s thesis statement that she wishes to describe a person, to re-create him and in particular his loneliness for her readers. Terry Mote’s purpose is to inform readers of the three basic rules of conducting a job search. Lisa Denis ends her paragraph with the thesis statement that it is time to stop using disposable diapers because they are harmful, especially to the environment, a statement she will try to prove in order to persuade her readers. At the editing stage, keeping your purpose in mind helps you use language with an awareness of the effect you want it to have on your readers.

Generally, nonfiction writing has one of three purposes: (1) to express the writer’s thoughts and feelings about a life experience, (2) to inform readers by explaining something about the world around them, or (3) to persuade readers to some belief or action.

Writing from Experience

In writing from experience, or writing expressively, you put your thoughts and feelings before all other concerns. When you express yourself about what it felt like to turn eighteen, describe the relationship you have with your father, narrate a camping experience you had with a friend, or share an insight you had about the career you want to pursue, you are writing from experience. The first purpose of expressive writing is, therefore, to clarify life’s experiences, and the second purpose is to communicate what you learn to someone else. That is not to say expressive writing is not immensely appealing to readers; the reflections of a thoughtful and sensitive writer illuminate the reader’s experiences and clarify his or her own feelings and ideas. Here, for example, are the reflections of a writer on her ambitious nature.

I’ve always liked ambitious people, and many of my closest friends have had grandiose dreams. I like such people, not because I am desperate to be buddies with a future secretary of state but because I find ambitious people entertaining, interesting to talk to, and fun to watch. And, of course, I like such people because I am ambitious myself, and I would rather not feel apologetic about it. - Perri Klass, “Ambition”

Writing to Inform

Informative writing focuses on the world outside the writer-the events, people, places, things, and ideas in the objective or real world. In informative writing you report, explain, analyze, define, classify, compare, describe a process, or get at causes and effects (see PARA 2b). Informative writing is the kind most often found in newspaper and magazine articles and nonfiction books. Informative writing encompasses everything from an article on the Hubble telescope, your chemistry textbook, and a news update on a railroad strike to a provincial government subcommittee report on housing, a travel guide, and a computer manual.

The following example of informative writing provides useful information about Canadian history:

No study of Canadian history is intelligible without some understanding of Canada’s geography. Indeed, geography has been (and still is) one of Canada’s chief problems and has, therefore, been a vital factor in determining its history. - J.A. Lower, Canada: An Outline in History

Writing to Persuade

In writing to persuade you attempt to influence your reader’s thinking and attitudes toward a subject or issue and sometimes move him or her to a particular course of action. Persuasive writing uses logical reasoning and authoritative evidence and testimony, and sometimes emotionally charged language and examples.

There was a time when I traveled everywhere by train. The overnight trip from Toronto to Halifax aboard The Ocean or The Scotian used to be a delight and an adventure that most people today will never experience. But the government has decided to drastically reduce rail service, and Canada will be poorer for it. - Roger Mann, The Reluctant Writer

Most of the writing that you do in college or university will be informative and some will be persuasive in character; occasionally you may be asked to write from experience. Often you will use some combination of these types of writing in a single composition. For example, as an environmental science student you may find yourself informing your readers about the dangers of clear-cut logging, expressing your own beliefs about its effect, telling of an experience you had with an environmental group that has dealt with logging companies, and attempting to persuade your readers that changes are needed.

Having generated ideas and information, you are ready to begin organizing your thoughts. At this stage, you must commit to a controlling idea, a thesis. The thesis of a prose composition is its main idea, the point it is trying to make. The thesis is often expressed in one or two sentences called a thesis statement. Because everything you say in your composition must be logically related to your thesis statement, the thesis statement controls and directs the choices you make about the content of your essay (see PARA 1). That does not mean your thesis statement is a straitjacket, As your essay develops, you may want to modify your thesis statement. This is not only acceptable, it is normal. Remember that writing is a recursive process; you move back and forth among the stages as you clarify your thoughts and try to communicate them to your reader.

Here are some examples of thesis statements.

He was the best friend a person could have, but if I had to choose one word to describe him, it would be lonely. - Tammi Lipski, student

In order for students to successfully compete after graduation in the job market, they must follow three basic rules in their job search. - Terry Mote

These are good thesis statements because they lead naturally into the rest of the essay: we want to know more about the loneliness of the person Lipski describes, and we want to know what Mote considers to be the three basic rules of the job search. Both thesis statements set up expectations in the reader’s mind. For the writer, both thesis statements strike a level of generality that is not so broad as to be impossible to support in the space allotted or so focused as to require virtually no supporting evidence.

The thesis statement is usually set forth near the beginning of the composition, sometimes after a few sentences that establish a context. In the beginning of an essay on the harmful effects of disposable diapers, Lisa Denis builds a context for the last two sentences in which she presents her thesis statement:

Picture yourself having to change a child’s diaper. I’ll bet you don’t see yourself using a cloth diaper and pins. The use of disposable diapers has become the norm in today’s fast-paced society. But the fact is we have no idea of the damage they do. The time has come to put an end to their use. Disposable diapers are expensive, potentially harmful to babies, and environmentally unsound. - Lisa Denis, student

On occasion you may want to delay presenting the thesis until the middle or end of a composition. If the thesis is controversial or needs extended background discussion, presenting it later may make it easier for the reader to understand and accept it. Also, appearing near or at the end of an essay, a thesis gains prominence, and giving it such a position of importance may suit your purpose.

If you already know something about your topic, you might begin collecting ideas by brainstorming, listing the things you know in no particular order. Freely associate one idea with another; let your mind take you in whatever direction it will. Try not to censor yourself or edit your brainstorming because you simply do not know what will emerge or how valuable it might be in the end. Write quickly. Do not worry about spelling or punctuation; abbreviate. Also, because all your ideas may not occur during one brainstorming session, keep your list over several days, adding new thoughts as they come to you. Here is a typical brainstorming list.

When you complete your brainstorming list, number or color-code the entries that closely relate to one another. This is sorting, the first step in thinking about possible organizational patterns and outlining.

WPTips

Brainstorming

Brainstorming on a computer stimulates your thinking because it allows you to keep up with your thoughts, especially if you are a fast typist. Moreover, because a word processor provides a different medium for capturing your thoughts, it may take you down more imaginative paths.

Try brainstorming with your screen switched off or turned down low.

Brainstorming relies on free-association (the presence of one idea suggesting another), but some people find that looking at what they have written inhibits rather than stimulates their thinking. If you try this, every so often turn on the screen momentarily to make sure nothing has gone wrong technically and that you are actually capturing your thoughts. When you are done, turn on the screen to see what you have and print it out if you wish.

Clustering

Another strategy for generating ideas and gathering information is clustering. Put your topic, or a key word or phrase about your topic, in the center of a sheet of paper and draw a circle around it. (The example on page 10 shows the topic gun control in the centre.) Draw four or five (or more) lines out from this circle, and jot down main ideas about your topic; draw circles around them. Repeat the process by drawing lines from the secondary circles and adding examples, details, and maybe questions you have. Or, you may find yourself pursuing one line of thought through many add-on circles before beginning a new cluster. Do whatever works for you. As with brainstorming, keep writing-do not stop to think about being neat or capitalizing correctly.

Clustering allows you to generate material and sort it into meaningful groupings at the same time. Again, sorting is the first step to outlining.

WPTips

Clustering

If your word-processing program has graphics capability, try clustering on screen. Use balloons, boxes, tree diagrams, and lines to diagram and group your ideas. This can be fun as well as productive.

Keeping a Journal

Many people find their best ideas come when they are not actually working on a writing assignment, so they have learned to keep a journal. They carry a little notebook to record thoughts and observations, bits of overheard conversation, ironies, insights, and interesting facts and statistics from newspaper and magazine articles.

Freewriting

Journals are also useful for doing freewriting. Freewriting is simply writing for a brief uninterrupted period of time, say five or ten minutes, on anything that comes into your mind. It is a way of getting your mind working and easing into the writing task. Start with a blank sheet of paper or computer screen and write as quickly as you can without stopping for any reason whatsoever. Don’t worry about punctuation or spelling. Write as if you were talking to your best friend. If you run dry, don’t stop; repeat the last few things you wrote or write “I have nothing to write” over and over again, and you’ll be surprised-writing with more content will begin to emerge. Once you have become comfortable with open-ended freewriting, you can move to more focused freewriting in which you write about specific aspects of your topic. By freewriting regularly, you will come to feel more natural and comfortable about writing.

Researching

You may sometimes want to supplement what you know about your topic with research. This does not necessarily mean formal library work (see UB); firsthand observations and interviews with people knowledgeable about your topic are also forms of research and usually more up-to-date. Whatever your form of research, take careful notes (see RESCH 2c), so you can accurately paraphrase an author or quote interviewees.

Rehearsing Ideas

Some writers find it helpful to rehearse what they are going to write before committing their thoughts to paper. Rehearsal involves running ideas or phrasings through your mind until they are fairly well crafted and then transferring them to paper. The image of the writer at the keyboard, staring off into space, perhaps best captures the essence of this technique. Rehearsing may suit your personality and the way you work; moreover, because it requires a lot of thought, rehearsing may help you generate ideas. Rehearsing may also be done orally. Try taking ten or fifteen minutes to talk your way through your paper with a roommate or friend.

Visualizing your Topic

Some experts believe that much of our thinking is done through images. Tapping into those images can be a productive way of developing your ideas. For example, if you wish to describe a totem pole, visualizing one you recently saw in British Columbia can make your task easier. Imagining that totem pole can also help you to visualize the lives of the traditional Haida people on the West coast.

Thinking Creatively

There are many definitions of creativity, but in one way or another, creativity involves moving beyond what is generally regarded as normal or expected. To push an idea one step further, to make a connection not recognized by others, to step to one side of your topic and see it in a new light, to ask a question no one else would, to arrive at a fresh insight, is to be creative. Creativity and inspired thinking are within the reach of most writers if they take the writing process seriously and work hard.

Ideas and information lie at the heart of good prose. Ideas grow from information; information (facts and details) supports ideas. To inform and intellectually stimulate your readers, gather as many ideas and as much specific information as you can about your topic. If you try to write before doing so, you run the risk of producing a shallow, boring draft. Good strategies for generating ideas and collecting information-and for beginning to make connections within the body of information you accumulate-include asking questions, brainstorming, clustering, keeping a journal, researching, rehearsing ideas, visualizing your topic, and always trying to think creatively.

Asking Questions

Ask questions about your topic to discover areas for exploration and development. The newspaper reporter’s 5Ws and an H - Who?, What?, Where?, When?, Why?, and How? - are excellent questions to start with. Usually, too, questions give rise to yet more questions. Every set of questions will vary with the topic and with the person formulating them. Here is one sample set.

1. Who discovered it?
2. What does it look like?
3. Where was it discovered?
4. When was it discovered?
5. Why did it take so long to be discovered?
6. How can I get some of it?
   • How much does it cost?
   • Are there limitations on how much I can buy?
   • Who sells it?
   • Where can I buy it?
   • Can I resell it?

WPTips

Saving Key Questions

Develop a master file of key questions that you ask yourself at various stages of the writing process: questions about your subject, your topic, various drafts you write, and so forth. Leave several lines between the questions. This way you can copy (and rename) the file each time you begin an assignment, typing in answers and notes as you work and keeping the original for use again. Over time, you will find yourself revising your master file questions as you discover more about your personal writing style.

A topic is the specific aspect of a subject on which the writer focuses. Subjects such as literature, television, and sports are too broad to be dealt with adequately in a short composition; even books focus on only aspects of these and other subject areas. The writer’s task is to select a manageable topic within the chosen or assigned subject area. Thus, if your subject is sports, you might choose as your topic the growing popularity of soccer in Canada, violence in hockey, types of fan behaviour, the psychology of marathon runners, or the growth of sports medicine.

When moving from a subject to a particular topic, take into account any length or format constraints and the amount of time you have to write. These are practical considerations that affect the scope of your topic. The following examples illustrate how to limit a topic.

Farming » livestock » cows » dairy cow diseases » parasite control in dairy cows

Music » classical » Haydn » symphonies » Haydn’s Symphony 101

Advertising » TV advertising » TV advertising of food » TV advertising of cereals » TV advertising of high-fiber cereals

Notice that each successive topic is more limited than the one before it. Moving from general to specific, the topics become appropriate for essay-length work.

A subject is a general field of knowledge; farming, clothing, business, ecology, and transportation are all subjects. You may know a great deal about the subject of your essay or you may simply be curious about an area and wish to expand your knowledge of it.

If you are free to choose your own subject, begin by asking yourself these questions: “What do I really care about?” “What am I interested in?” “What do I know something about?” “What do I want to learn about?” Your answers to these questions will provide you with potentially good subjects. Resist the temptation to seize the first subject that comes to mind. Take your time. Review the possibilities, and then pick the one subject that most appeals to you and best suits your audience.

Much of your college writing will be in response to very specific assignments: your physical science professor may ask you to write a paper presenting pro and can evidence of the greenhouse effect. With such a narrowed topic, you can move ahead to collecting information and formulating a thesis, a one- or two-sentence statement of your main idea. At other times your instructor may assign only a general subject and ask you to choose a particular aspect of it to write on. For example, your business teacher may assign a paper on retail merchandising, giving you the opportunity to choose a specific topic (say, the popularity of recreational vehicles), and develop your own thesis (to explain how the sale of recreational vehicles is affected by the economy).

Sometimes your instructor will allow you to write on any subject that interests you. In such a case, you may already have an idea for a paper in mind (why you feel that federal funding for post-secondary education should be increased, for instance). What happens, however, when you are free to choose your own subject and you cannot think of anything to write about? If you find yourself in this situation, follow the advice set forth in the rest of this section. We give many approaches to selecting a suitable subject and topic; one will work for you.

The planning stage of the writing process encompasses everything you do before you actually begin to write. In planning, you:

1. Analyze the writing task,
2. Choose a subject,
3. Focus on a topic,
4. Generate ideas and collect information,
5. Formulate a thesis statement,
6. Determine your purpose,
7. Analyze your audience, and
8. Make an outline.

Each of these stages is discussed in detail in the following pages.