Readers expect that a piece of writing will make one or more points clearly and illustrate or support those points with ample evidence—good reasons, examples, or other details. Effective use of such evidence helps readers understand a point, makes abstract concepts concrete, and offers proof that what you are saying is sensible and worthy of attention.
One special kind of supporting evidence for your points comes from source materials. When you choose possible sources, evaluate them, and use the results of your research effectively in your writing, you build credibility as a writer, demonstrating that you understand what others have to say about a topic and that you are fully informed about varying perspectives. But finding enough sources, judging their usefulness, and deciding when to quote, when to summarize, and when to paraphrase—and then doing so accurately and effectively—are skills that take considerable practice, ones you should develop throughout your college writing career. You can begin sharpening those skills now by taking a close look at how well you use sources in your writing.
Purposes for writing vary widely—from asking for an appointment for a job interview to sending greetings or condolences to summarizing information for a test to tracing the causes of World War II for an essay. In college writing, your primary purpose will often be directly related to the assignment you receive. As a result, you need to pay careful attention to what an assignment asks you to do, noting particularly any key term in the assignment such as analyze or argue or define or summarize. Such words will help you meet the requirements of the assignment, stay on the subject, and thus achieve your purpose. Your writing will profit from some time spent identifying the purposes of several pieces of writing you have done and thinking about how well you achieved those purposes.
Most college writing is addressed to instructors and other students, though you may sometimes write to another audience—a political figure, a prospective employer, a campus administrator. The most effective writing reflects a sensitivity to readers' backgrounds, values, and needs. Such writing, for example, includes definitions of terms readers may not know, provides necessary background information, and takes into account readers' perspectives on and feelings about a topic.
When friends or instructors read your writing, they may often give you information about the overall impression it makes, perhaps noting how it seems to be improving or how you may be lapsing into bad habits. As the writer, you need to make such comments as concrete as you can by trying to determine, for instance, exactly what has caused some improvement or weakness in your writing. Setting up a conference with the instructor is one way to explore these general responses. Before doing so, however, carry out your own analysis of what the comments mean, and then find out what your instructor thinks.
Readers expect a writer to provide organizational patterns and signals that will help them follow the thread of what the writer is trying to say. Sometimes such cues are simple. If you are giving directions, for example, you might give chronological cues ( first you do A, then B, and so on), and if you are describing a place, you might give spatial cues ( at the north end is A, in the center is B, and so on). But complex issues often call for complex organizational patterns, so you might need to signal readers that you are moving from one problem to several possible solutions, for example, or that you are moving through a series of comparisons and contrasts.
2. Sentence structure and style
Effective sentences form the links in a chain of writing, guiding readers and aiding their understanding. If you have never taken a close look at how your sentences work (or don't work) to help organize your writing and guide readers, a little time and effort now will provide an overview. How long do your sentences tend to be? Do you use strings of short sentences that make the reader work to fill in the connections between them? Do any long sentences confuse the reader or wander off the topic? How do your sentences open? How do you link them logically?
Just as overall organization can help readers follow the thread of thought in a piece of writing, so, too, can paragraph structure. You may tend to paragraph by feel, so to speak, without spending much time thinking about structure. In fact, the time to examine your paragraphs should generally be after you have completed a draft. Begin by studying any readers' comments that refer to your paragraphs.
Our new research shows the growing importance of researched writing in college. Any writing that uses source materials requires careful documentation—parenthetical references, endnotes, footnotes, lists of works cited, bibliographies—to guide readers to your sources and let them know you have carried out accurate research. A close look at comments on your writing may reveal that you have learned certain documentation rules but not others. Pay close attention to the guidelines for the documentation style you have been asked to use.
Readers depend on the format of a piece of writing to make their job as pleasant and efficient as possible. Therefore, you need to pay very close attention to how your materials are physically presented and to the visual effect they create. Because format guidelines vary widely, part of your job as a writer is always to make certain you know what format is most appropriate for a particular course or assignment.