My Writing Style

When ever I write a paper outside of class, whether it is a classroom assignment or a personal letter, I always go to the computer first. There is no planning involved in my writing. It seems to work best for me if I sit down at the computer and just start writing. I then attempt to write a good opening paragraph to catch the reader’s attention. As we have read in the book one of our main purposes for writing is for the audience, so I try and keep this in mind. After I have written the opening paragraph I have some clue as to what I am going to talk about in the body of my paper. The next step in my writing process is to research the topic so I can use factual information to prove my point to the reader. As I am writing I am slowly cutting and pasting sentences into different paragraphs, and then re-wording them to make sense. I try and read the paper several times to check for grammatical errors and sentence structure. Once I have read it a few times I feel like I am comfortable with it and print the paper out. Sometimes I read it again after printing the paper because I often find more mistakes reading it on paper rather than on the computer screen. After reading chapter four I realize that I may need to check for clarity, making sure my paper follows a logical order, checking for redundancy, and so forth. I think that an outline will also help me, which I learned about in chapter two of the textbook, organize my paper.