Difference between revisions of "Purpose"
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of writing with a purpose in mind. They will hopefully determine a purpose to their writing | of writing with a purpose in mind. They will hopefully determine a purpose to their writing | ||
before beginning any future documents. | before beginning any future documents. | ||
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| + | Combining this second answer with the one from earlier gives us our purpose statement. Now that we have this, the next step in the writing process is considering our document's audience. We'll talk about that in the next topic. | ||
==Further Readings== | ==Further Readings== | ||
Revision as of 16:28, 8 April 2008
COMP3040 > The Writing Process
Introduction
Before you begin writing your document, the first thing you need to do is determine the purpose of your document. Knowing the purpose will help you communicate successfully with the document's audience. You'll have a better idea of what information you'll need, how to organize it, what style of writing you should choose, and even how much to write. Writing with a purpose will give your document a sense of direction and clarity, leading to an overall better document.
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Contents
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...by studentsPurpose StatementThe first step to choosing a purpose is writing a purpose statement. These will guide every decision you make as you plan, draft, and revise your document. In order to create this statement, we need to consider two questions.
Why Am I Writing This Document?It's important to know why you're writing. For many of us students in a writing-focused class, our immediate reason may be to simply get a good grade. This is admittedly a good reason, but it's often not enough if our document will be read by a larger audience than just our instructor. In order to communicate effectively with that audience, consider just why you're writing to them. Are you trying to entertain them? Share ideas and opinions? Inform with facts? Argue a series of points? You may even combine purposes within a single paper. Whatever purpose you determine for your document, the mood and frankness of your prose will be affected by it. The answer to why you're writing a document should fit into one sentence. This will help to form your purpose statement. Here's an example. I am writing this Purpose wiki to inform people, most likely students interested in Technical Communication, about why it is important to write with purpose, and how to go about doing this.
What Response Do I Want From Readers?Your document's purpose will invariably depend on the result you're looking for. For example, if we're writing a newspaper column about university volunteering, we may want to encourage readers to participate. Thus, our desired result would have our readers rushing off to volunteer at a university. Since we have this in mind, it will affect how we write our document. The response I want from readers is to feel informed and knowledgeable about the importance of writing with a purpose in mind. They will hopefully determine a purpose to their writing before beginning any future documents. Combining this second answer with the one from earlier gives us our purpose statement. Now that we have this, the next step in the writing process is considering our document's audience. We'll talk about that in the next topic. Further ReadingsReid, Stephen, Barnes, Luann, Kowalski, Dawn. Understanding Your Purpose. http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/processes/purpose/index.cfm. |
