A Little Friendly Advice

There is a reason that at the end of almost every book you read the author always has a page dedicated to thanking his or her editor or those that provided support in making that writing better (and ultimately successful). Your classmates have been your support throughout this gigantic research paper and who better can give you some last-minute advice for how to improve it? You have, no doubt, read many of your peers' chapters throughout this process, some pretty good, some needing a bit more work. Please take a second to think about how your classmates can improve their writing throughout the revisions and final changes you will make next week before turning in that final paper. Be specific, put some thought into it, and actually write something useful-- "spell better" is not going to cut it!

Oh, Those Wonderful Words

We have been talking a lot about word choice lately, and how it can make your writing much more effective. As you are reading today, look for specific examples of how the author uses his/her words effectively. Today's blog response has two parts:

1. Tell what is effective about the author's word choice. Specifically! For example... uses strong verbs, uses unexpected but appropriate words, is not over the top, but not too boring either, uses detailed sentences without stacked modifiers, etc.

2. Give an example of a specific sentence in which the author uses a strong verb instead of a weaker one, or where the text is made colorful by word choice.

How do you keep it together?

You have recently been doing a lot of research for your US History papers. When reading for information like that, it is sometimes difficult to keep all of your information and sources straight. What tips or tricks do you use to help keep it all together? Note cards? Some sort of graphic organizer? KWL?