Where do I start?

For many students, including me, the most difficult step in the writing process is getting started. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stared at an assignment sheet, thinking to myself, “I’ve got nothin’.” With practice – and patience – you’ll likely develop your own process and techniques for initiating the writing process, here are some things that I find helpful:

Read the assignment instructions. Done? Good, now do it again. Some assignments include multiple requirements – very specific requirements. I find it useful to make a checklist of the requirements and review the list before I submit my paper.

Write. Write something, anything. This isn’t your final draft, so don’t worry about it being perfect. If you have an idea for your paper, this is the time to write it down. It’s easy to think it, but it can be challenging to put those thoughts on paper, and that’s why prewriting can be beneficial. If the assignment lists questions or prompts to consider, try writing brief answers to get started.

What do I do when I don’t have something to say right away? I write anyway! Even if it doesn’t answer the assignment’s topic or prompt, I always have an opinion – and you do, too! If my assignment is to write a critical analysis of a selected text, I jot down my initial opinion, my reaction to the reading, and any comments I have. Even if you don’t think these ideas will be useful when writing your paper, they get you thinking about the topic of the assignment, and, who knows– later, you might come back to something you wrote and find that you can use it in your paper.

I’ve got words…now, what? After prewriting and thinking about the assignment and topic, I start to think about how I’m going to present my information. I find that creating an outline, even a tentative outline, helps. I always include a bullet point for my introduction and my conclusion, but I never start there. Outlining helps me think about the order in which I want to present my information. After I outline my main points and sub-points, I find that it’s much easier to tackle the writing little by little, focusing on one point at a time.

For more tips on getting the writing process started, check out the University of Maryland University College’s Prewriting and Outlining page at https://www.umuc.edu/writingcenter/writingresources/prewriting_outlining.cfm

(Written by Tessa Hill as a blog entry for Rogers State University's Writing Center)

"A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God." -Sidney Sheldon

Writing a Thesis Statement

During my time at The Writing Center, I’ve noticed that students often struggle with creating, understanding, and identifying thesis statements. In fact, this was once a challenge for me early in my academic career. Your thesis statement is the most important part of your paper, and identifying your thesis makes the writing process much easier. First, let’s answer the question: What is a thesis statement? Basically, the thesis states your claim or your reason for writing the paper. For example, if I was writing a paper on the benefits of a university writing center my thesis might look like this:

University writing centers offer many benefits to the student body, faculty, and the university as a whole.

What I’ve done here is prepare my audience (the reader) for my paper. I’ve told my reader what my paper will be about and what to expect. But I’ve also obligated myself to fulfill this promise. By making this promise to the reader, I hold myself accountable to write my paper in a way that fulfills the reader’s expectations.
Keeping my thesis in mind helps me stay focused when I write my paper. In my thesis statement, I claim that a university writing center is beneficial for students, faculty, and the whole university, so I need to make sure I address all three of my claims in the paper. One way I could to do this is by developing a paragraph for each topic: how the university writing center benefits students, how it benefits faculty, and how it benefits the entire university. By doing this, my thesis is supported by the body of my essay, and I fulfill my promise to the reader.
Once you understand what a thesis statement is, you can better understand its mini-me, the topic sentence. The topic sentence does for the paragraph what the thesis statement does for the essay. So, for my paper on the benefits of a university writing center my topic sentence for the first body paragraph might be:

Students in all majors and disciplines and at any level of writing confidence can benefit by visiting the university’s writing center.

This topic sentence tells my reader that this paragraph is about the ways in which students benefit from university writing centers. As writers, what we are trying to say might make sense in our head, or even when we read our paper, but it’s important to remember that our readers might need a little direction. By developing a clear thesis statement and topic sentences, we help readers understand where the paper is going, much like road signs help us navigate the road.

For more tips on writing a thesis statement, check out the Purdue Online Writing Lab: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/545/01/

(Written by Tessa Hill as a blog entry for Rogers State University's Writing Center)

Introducing a Quote with a Colon

My experience working as a writing consultant this semester has reminded me that I’m still a developing writer. While I might secretly think I can create a list of works cited in MLA format blindfolded, the truth is – I still have a lot to learn. Before my first appointment as a writing consultant, my biggest fear was that a student would ask me a question I didn’t know the answer to. But, it happened. It still happens – a lot. Realizing that I don’t have all the answers has helped me become a better writer and a better student. Each time I’m confronted with a writing question that I don’t have the answer to I try to look at it as an opportunity to further develop my own writing skills.

Recently, I have met with students asking for help with introducing a quote with a colon. I knew it could be done, but it’s not something I do every day. I knew right away that if I wanted to use a colon (for something other than a list), I needed to have a complete sentence on each side. For example, when trying to introduce a quote with a colon, I couldn’t do this:

For children in The Giver: “The front-buttoned jacket was the first sign of independence, the first very visible symbol of growing up” (Lowry 40).

The problem here is that I only have one complete sentence. If I take the quote away, I have:

For children in The Giver.

This is not a complete sentence. To make correct this example, I need to turn this fragment into a complete sentence. For example, I could do something like this:

For the children in The Giver, clothing is not a fashion statement, but a part of their identity: “The front-buttoned jacket was the first sign of independence, the first very visible symbol of growing up” (Lowry 40).

It is also important to remember that when using a colon to introduce a quote, both sentences must be related. It wouldn’t make sense for me to write:

Lois Lowry’s The Giver is set in a dystopian society: “The front-buttoned jacket was the first sign of independence, the first very visible symbol of growing up” (40).

I do have complete sentences on both sides of the comma, and my initial sentence is a true statement about the novel. However, the quote following the colon does not really relate to the information in front of the colon.

Helping other students understand how to introduce a quote with a colon has helped me too. Now, I find myself using this method to introduce quotes in my papers more often than I did before. Being a writing consultant has reminded me that I still have a lot to learn, but it has also provided me with opportunities to grow as a writer.

For more tips on how to introduce a quote with a colon, check out Integrating Quotations into Sentences from Illinois Valley Community College.

(Written by Tessa Hill as a blog entry for Rogers State University's Writing Center)

[Sic] Happens

As a student and a writing consultant, I’m always learning how I can improve my writing. This semester, I learned that [sic] happens--specifically, I learned how and why [sic] happens. I’ve come across [sic] as a reader, but I’ve never taken the time to find out what it really means.

Recently, I quoted passages from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road in my Capstone paper. If you haven’t read The Road . . .
a. You should.
b. McCarthy intentionally omits apostrophes from most contractions in the work.

For example, one passage reads, “You should thank him you know . . . I wouldnt have given you anything”

(McCarthy 173).

When including a quote in your paper, it’s important to write the passage exactly as it appears in the original work, and indicate any changes (capitalization, punctuation, etc.) by placing brackets around them. In this paper, I preferred to leave McCarthy’s intentionally unpunctuated contractions alone. Someone who hasn’t read The Road may believe I made a hasty error when typing McCarthy’s words. To clarify that I copied McCarthy’s passage exactly as it appears in the novel, I include [sic] after the unpunctuated contraction:

“You should thank him you know . . . I wouldnt [sic] have given you anything” (McCarthy 173).

According to Purdue OWL, sic is a Latin term for “so” or “thus” and should be used to indicate that you are presenting the quoted material exactly as it appears in the original work. Sic tells your readers that you haven’t made a typo; you have paid careful attention to the original author’s wording.

Just a few days after learning how and why to use [sic] in one of my papers, I had the opportunity to share this information in a writing consultation. Sharing what I’ve learned with others students is rewarding, and it strengthens my writing skills as well.

You can find more information on using [sic] and brackets at http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/parens.asp

McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Vintage, 2006. Print.

(Written by Tessa Hill as a blog entry for Rogers State University's Writing Center)