The Process of Writing: Composing through Critical Thinking, by Roberta Allen and Marcia Mascolini

Sally caught the ball. The long-haired, athletic Sally gathered up all her strength and stretched, like Stretch Arm Strong, to grab that ball right out of the sky above. Which one sounds better? Which one would you rather have in your paragraph? With some simple things to keep in mind, you too can write better. The book entitled, The Process of Writing: Composing through Critical Thinking, by Roberta Allen and Marcia Mascolini, taught you everything from thinking before you write to putting things together, all the way to how to prepare specific forms of essays. It's definitely something you should read before even thinking about another paper.

First of all, before you can write and actual paper, you must first go through certain steps in order to prepare the essay, and then when the time comes you can write your essay with ease and add detail. When you have a clear head you can write so much easier, although it is hard to obtain that mind set. Getting your thought down on paper without worrying about the perfection and detail helps the whole writing process and analysis. The first thing to do before even starting to brainstorm is to figure out whom your audience is, who are you aiming the paper to? You need to make your message meaningful to your audience, and make sure you think about what the audience needs, expectations, knowledge, and attitudes towards your subject are. Anticipate their questions and how they will respond to your answers. Some key ideas to think about when assessing your audience are to think of the primary and secondary readers are. Then what do they already know about your subject, and what characteristics about your audience will affect how the paper will look? Then think about what i...

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... memos, shows you how to write proposals and progress reports, and how to document secondary sources.

In conclusion, this book was amazingly informative and very helpful. It is definitely something that every student should read before writing another paper. It lays out the dos and don'ts of the writing process; it is great way to improve your technique. This book went all the way from showing you exactly how to write certain types of papers, such as long messages and memos all the way to compare and contrast papers, to showing you how to write in detail with all papers. This book is definitely something that I would recommend to future students. Especially in business classes, or any writing classes for that matter. Writing is a huge part of communication, and this book helped with the fundamentals that many people lack but are essential in the long run.