Correct Writing Demands Respect

I’ve been meaning to post this for ages. It’s a list of quotations from the materials that I used this past summer to teach basic writing skills. My students were elementary-school kids who had recently immigrated from South Korea, so it’s super-simple stuff. Shockingly relevant. It’s funny how these basic facts of words-on-pages, things I should scoff to be reminded of, are not actually how I think of my writing, at least not very often.

--What is a paragraph? A paragraph is a collection of sentences connected to a single idea.
--No matter how well you write, you are not likely to create a perfect paper the first time you sit down to write.
--Ask yourself whether all of your sentences and paragraphs make sense.
--Adjectives that tell what kind, how many, or which one can be used to add information to sentences.
--Adverbs that tell how, when, or where can be used to add information to sentences.
--Vivid verbs help your readers form a clear picture of the action.
--Some stories seem so real that we believe they could actually happen.
--Writing is about making decisions. As the writer, you decide what to include and what not include.

I could stand to approach English as a new and difficult language more often, I think.

C’mon/belly up /to this brand new language
RR