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.

John Warner has read enough college student essays to diagnose what's wrong with the way Americans write. After 20 years teaching undergraduate writing courses, including a recent stint at the College ...

Most students when asked to write a paragraph or two on any stipulated topic begin producing lengthy essays overflowing with details. The practice is like an epidemic in government schools, especially ...

"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 ...

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 ...

One of the least-examined assumptions among academics today is that being “formulaic” — using established formulas to structure thought — is always a bad thing. In the field of rhetoric and ...