Thoughts on Drafting

In this blog post I will share my opinions on how helpful the textbook, A Student's Guide to First-Year Writing" is with tips for drafting. This book is geared towards writing essays, whereas I am working on a Quick Reference Guide. Because of this difference in genre, I do not believe all of the provided tips will be useful.  

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1. What parts of the book's advice on the above bulleted topics are helpful for writing in this genre? 

 Even with the difference in genre I believe that a topic sentence in still important in writing a           QRG. In a traditional essay the thesis sentence would typically be the last sentence in the                    introduction, but a QRG has the thesis sentence in the heading or the title. 

 An introduction isn't as critical in a QRG as in an essay. Because an essay is usually much                  longer and wordier than a Quick Reference Guide, emphasis on the Quick, the introduction                  usually sums up what will be discussed in the paper so the audience has an idea. However,                  QRG present the topic of the text in the title or heading and jump straight into the information. 

 Information organization is important for both genres. Because both are written with the idea              that they will be read the information needs to be presented in a way that the reader can                        understand the progression of ideas. 

 Because its meant to be a quick reference for the reader to get information a conclusion is just as         important as in an essay. If the reader has made it through the entire quick reference guide, they           may be overwhelmed by the quantity of information hat has been provided to them. Therefore a         conclusion is crucial so the reader has a take away from the QRG.  

   2. What parts of the book's advice on these topics might not be so helpful, considering the                 genre? 

 One aspect of the drafting process that was suggested in the textbook that would be of little use          in writing a Quick Reference Guide is the PIE format for writing paragraphs. The PIE format is          used to create very structured paragraphs that present a point, give examples (illustrations), and          explain the examples.

 While the formula is useful and thorough, the structure is not needed in the QRG. In a QRG the          paragraphs are much shorter than would allow for this much information. Also, QRGs are                   supposed to present non-biased information, the illustrations, and the reader can draw their own           conclusions. 

Therefore the formula for a QRG paragraph would be PI. 

Reflection: 
After reading Nick's post I realized there is more than one to interpret the tips given in the textbook. For example, I thought the tips on organization were there to help make sure the ideas were organized in a way that made sense, whereas he believed the same tips to be too constraining.

Also, in Jessica's post she also disagreed with the usefulness of the PIE format, but for different reasons. I don't like the PIE style because I think the reader should be presented with more information than opinion, but she didn't agree with the tips because they contradicted the genre conventions.

Areas for Improvement
1. The organization of my essay is definitely lacking. I think I need a better setup to how I present the information.

2. Thesis sentence. I don't think I included a thesis sentence in my QRG, and after reading about writing tips I think this will help improve my QRG.

3. The dreaded conclusion. I have always hated writing conclusions and at the moment my QRG does not have one at all. I think the conclusion will help my readers have a take-away opinion at the end..