Let’s Talk Good Writing

     The official definition of the literate is a person that is able to read or write. This is a skilled that is valued around the world but mostly in more fluent countries such as the USA or European countries where the literally rate is almost 100%. Children are taught basic reading/writing skills from the lowest levels of school to ensure that the literacy rate of this country is maintained. It is important for people to know how to read and write in order to progress individually and as a nation in the world too to minimize poverty where illiteracy is seen more commonly.

“Good” writing can be a flaky term because there are so many differences of opinion on what this actually means. Some think it’s being able to express ideas freely, cohesively whereas others think that it is the ability to combine sentences in a grammatically correct manner. Well, I think that it is both! A “good” piece of writing possesses factual information or a well thought out opinion of the subject at hand, structured sentences, minimal errors in grammar, and cohesive transitions. A good writer should also take into consideration their readers and any questions that may arise as a result of reading the piece. There is a few things that good writing should not have is one being too much complexity in sentences, it should be simple but not simplistic (http://www.annhandley.com/2013/11/18/9-qualities-of-good-writing/).

There aren’t a lot of things I find annoying when it comes to writing but I hate when people use the wrong word for that definition such as “their”, “there”, and “they’re”. If you’re going to use any of those three words, please make sure that it is in the right context! I also cannot stand when people don’t use punctuation marks frequently thus avoiding run-on sentences which are ugly. Another thing that irks me is multiple paragraphs combined into one huge chunk instead of separating the paragraphs into 5-7 sentence increments. Then you end up with this humongous amount of information that is slurred all into one thus making it harder for me to understand the overall message. Long story short, use several paragraphs as opposed to just one.

A lot of high school teachers have their own ways and methods of doing things when it comes to writing papers. My teachers very rarely gave me specific instructions as far as writing goes but they did have preferences such as don’t use “I” or “you”, and my senior English teacher didn’t believe in contractions in papers. I only had to use the thesis statement with the 3 supporting texts in history or science, never when writing an opinionated or reflective piece. There are various things that teachers do not want you to do just to please them and appease their inclinations but luckily I rarely had to deal with it throughout high school.