In her 1989 book The Writing Life, Annie Dillard describes a fellow writer who was asked by a student if she thought he might become a writer. “Well, do you like sentences?” the fellow writer said.

"Write a paragraph on traffic jams." Have you been asked to do so in school? I was too. My teacher sometimes asked me, "Write a SHORT paragraph on a winter morning." A short paragraph! A paragraph on ...

As a graduate student, I once drew a rather bad cartoon of an old schoolmarm (complete with Gary Larson-style beehive) standing in front of a class saying, “And when you finish your five-paragraph ...

When writing an essay, it’s important to think about which aspects you would like to include in your paper. For example, are there definitions or background information that you’d like to explain ...

Extended "discourse," such as class presentations or essays written as school assignments, has a particular structure arising from particular expectations and standards. Such structure, expectations, ...

Ethical considerations and academic integrity Issues of academic integrity were central to participants’ experiences. Students expressed concerns about unintentional plagiarism, the accuracy of ...

There’s no better way to build an audience than writing online. Creating the habit of showing up and hitting publish will serve you well for everything in your professional future. But there’s a wrong ...