Danielle Heck

10/10/10

     During the first eight weeks of Enc 1102 I learned new things that I will take with me in my writing techniques. First I learned about criticism and how you cannot take things personally. People are not there to degrade you or your writing. They are only there to help you. I might have let me ego get in the way some, but I am trying to get that into check. I am very self conscious about my writing and I unfortunately take things to heart too much. When I first started to use the Wiki I fed off all the comments I was getting, though they were all positive. Then I got my first negative remark and I went off on the commenter. I felt bad afterwards but the reason I got crazy was because my ego got in the way. Though I do believe that he could have given the advice in a nicer manner so instead of taking the comment as rude I would take the advice and use it to my advantage. I believe the only reason I did not take his advice was because of the tone he was writing in.

     When I was learning about writing to inform I thought about the different styles you could write your paper. Writing to convince is one of the biggest writing styles. When trying to write an informative in college the biggest element that will be used in the paper is persuasiveness so writing to convince helps you out. When you do a persuasive paper you have to have evidence to back up your claim, this will also help you with your writing to inform. You use persuasive writing in life all the time. For example you use it when you are trying to convince someone to buy a certain item. You use examples and facts about the product to make it more appealing to the person. There are all types of persuasive topics mayors, presidents; as well as school board officials use persuasive speeches and papers. They do this in order to show people why they should stick with them or vote for them in the next election. When you are writing to inform you have to add other styles so your paper not only informs but draws people in as well. There are some considerations when you are writing an informative paper. One element is audience; you want to make sure your paper is geared to the right age groups. You would not sell or give information about anti aging cream to teenagers and you would not sell or inform about toys to adults. You want your piece, whatever it is, to appeal to the right crowd. Another element is purpose; this is when you make sure that your audience knows your claim. It also means you are trying to convince them to take your side. A big element is voice and tone, this is use to make sure you are trying to make a connection with your audience. When you are trying to inform or convince someone to take your view you do not want to have a mad or angry tone because that may turn off your potential supporter. You would more than likely want to have a personal or persuasive tone. The biggest element is context, you could have the best issue in the world but if you do not know what you are talking about then it does not matter. Your audience needs to be convinced that you know what you are talking about and that you have well informed them on your platform or issue at hand. The quality of a good informative essay is a collection of different things. Presentation of the issue and what it is about is very important; you have to make sure your audience knows what you are trying to convince and inform them about. A clear claim is just as important, this ensures the reader that you know you have an issue with your topic. An awareness of audience is important because your job for writing a informative essay is to convince and inform the reader to take your side in the issue. So when you write your essay you want to make sure the audience you are trying to get the attention to will be able to read it. Convincing reasons are yet another important element. You need these because in order to effectively convince your reader to get involved with your issue you have to know everything about your topic. You have to be an expert of your topic or issue. You also need an honest discussion of the other views, this shows you are not bias but that you stand on a certain side of an issue.

     Writing to analyze can help you write an informative essay as well. Writing to analyze is like taking a issue and splitting it up into different categories so you can see what is important enough to write more about. For example I your writing about abortion, you could spit it up into types of abortions, what can happen when you get an abortion, who gets abortions, or even why people get abortions. Then once you analyze what you have split up sometimes you can go further. Such as, Types of abortions, you can go through and pick out one and write all about that type of abortion. When you analyze something you come to understand it more. This is because you have broken down the topic so much you know everything there is to know, you know every angle. This will help you be able to better inform your audience about your topic. When you write an informative you have to make close observations about your topic. This makes it so you write you’re informative in your own words and ideas but still tie in to all the research you did. You have knowledge of your topic but it is what you get out of the observations that you write about. You do analysis in your every day to day life as well. For example, when you decide to wake up in the morning or when you decide what you want to eat for breakfast, you make choices and subconsciously dissect your options. The qualities of effective informative writing help you and your readers better understand what you are writing and what you want point you want to come across. Every subject will have many parts that will come together to interact with one another to help further explain your subject. You have to first break down your subject into parts so you can figure out how to explain your subject better. Then you have to present your parts into a full presentation. This is where all the pieces tie together to fully explain your subject. You can also write a visual analysis; this is where you write with pictures attached to the writing. For example when we wrote our issues paper, we added pictures to go along with our subjects and all their parts. When you write with pictures it helps to draw the reader in more. It makes them seem like they are part of the story and not just reading it. When readers have pictures they can also draw their own conclusions and that will better inform them. The writing process is about the same as every other type of writing. You start with a subject, you research your subject, organize your findings, create a rough draft, peer edit, revise, and then conduct a final draft. Though they might all be the same, the way you go about them is somewhat different. For example, when writing your draft you want to make sure your topics or parts of your subject help to support what it is that you are trying to say about the whole subject. Knowledge of conventions is when you go through and make your writing a more pleasant read for the people who are going to be reading it. This is when you edit your work. For example, when you are writing to a teacher you want to make sure you use the right grammar or punctuation. This is because when their reading your work they want to be able to read it fluently rather than guess on how you meant to write it. "When I sing well, ladies feel sick." means something different than "When I sing, well ladies feel sick." This is why punctuation matters so much. When you are writing to inform the knowledge of conventions is very important because you have to make sure you are making since and being able to properly inform your reader about whatever your subject is about.

     I look forward to the rest of the semester. Learning new things about my writing from other people as well as myself will help me later in my schooling. Using the Wiki has helped me, even though at times is very hard to understand. I believe in the long run it has and will help me become a better writer.