Blog 9: Improvement

If you had to name one way in which your writing has improved this semester, what would it be? Discuss.

My writing has most improved by gaining experience working with more flexible styles. Previously most of my writing has been dictated by the standard intro--three body paragraphs--conclusion style. Sometimes there were more than three body paragraphs but they all followed a very strict and boring format. Nearly everything in the paper was dictated by a scientific formula. 

For example, the title had to exhibit one of thirteen attention getting methods. The first sentence of the introduction also had to exhibit an attention getter. There had to be a phrase that transitioned from the attention getter to the thesis. After the thesis came a foreshadowing sentence which listed the topics of the body paragraphs. Every body paragraph had to start with a transition which mentioned the topic of the previous paragraph and then the topic of the current paragraph with relationship to the thesis. The end of every body paragraph had to have a summative sentence which mentioned the thesis and the topic of the paragraph. The conclusion had to restate the thesis and re-mention the topics of the body paragraphs. The final sentence of the conclusion had to make reference to the title or first sentence of the introduction to make the paper come full circle.

These rules and guidelines made decent papers, but at times they forced the writing into a stringent and repetitive form. This semester I was actually able to break away from the ultra-strict scientific paper and write more or less how I wanted. It's helped me change the decent scientific style to a much more smooth flowing style.