The writing teacher's foremost job is leading students to see the valuable ideas they have to express. Writing is a way to share those ideas with the world rather than a way to be wrong, Anderson asserts. Teachers and parents too often focus on errors in student writing. This focus gives students the impression that writing well is about avoiding…

Offers a narrative in the form of five confessions the author's life. Contends that writing from memory can be pedagogic and political. Concludes that writing what was witnessed is to testify to what is remembered, so that it cannot be forgotten. (PM)

Offers a modest new taxonomy for rhetorical heuristics for arrangement, one of the five major divisions of classical rhetoric. Suggests schemes suitable for academic discourse, such as "obvious before remarkable,""literal before symbolic," and "explanation before complication." Supplies a limited theoretical context…

Discusses collaborative design in the context of developing a "Toolbook" hypertext intended to introduce graduate students to the fields of rhetoric and professional communication. Examines the new grammar and rhetoric of hypertext, discusses the importance of document planning within an emergent design, and argues for a functional aesthetic. (SR)

Depicts how any word chosen by chance can function as a magical word to exhume fields of memory and excite imagination. Details several word games of invention for children (such as the "fantastic binomial," using creative errors, and "Little Red Riding Hood in a Helicopter") that juxtapose normally unrelated words and that can…

Describes a three-step process by which students are taught to revise their writing by listing each sentence on another paper, combining sentences by eliminating redundancy, reducing information to appositives, and reducing information to participles, as well as revising the reduced number of sentences by including verbals, action verbs,…

In the act of revision a writer seeks what Joyce Carol Oates calls "points of invisibility": things not in the text that should be and things in the text that should not be. Composing process research on revision has articulated several aspects of the revising process, but study of creative writers' composing habits remains an…

Includes an interview with writer Lydia Davis. Discusses her definition of story, her use of endings, and her language choice. Provides an excerpt of her translation of Marcel Proust's "Swann's Way." (PM)

Considers what poets themselves have to say about poetry. Discusses how they write poems, why they write poems, and what poetry is good for. (RS)

Discusses the rhetorical elements of technical copywriting, including its shared communicative aims with technical writing; authorship considerations such as ethics, education, and professionalism; and the concerns of promotional strategy, audience analysis, choice of media and materials, writing strategy, and style. (SR)

The idea that little attention has been paid to the creativity of the craftsmanship which produces a piece of scientific writing is discussed. Examples are used to support the proposition that this craftsmanship is worth studying in biological sciences as well as the humanities. (KR)

Discusses Flannery O'Conner's notion that "stupidity" is a necessary quality for the writer of fiction to possess. Examines the difference between ignorance and stupidity and vicious and virtuous stupidity. Presents pedagogical implications for the teaching of writing. (NH)

Discusses how writer Norma Fox Mazer has helped many readers make the leap between reality and imagination simply in the way she handles details in the lives of her characters. Explores the ideas of communicating with detail, experimenting with structure, and playing with time in crucial scenes. (SG)

This essay frames the connections between punk principles and writing theory in order to re-form what the author emphasizes in his own composition classroom, in particular the do-it-yourself ethic, a sense of passion and fearlessness, the agency to attack institutions, and the seeking of pleasure. (Contains 1 note.)

Teachers of writing know that published writers write sentence fragments, use passive voice, begin sentences with "and" and end them with prepositions, use the first-person pronoun "I," contract their words, and splice their sentences with commas. Even so, most instructors advise students against these elements of style. As a result, school…