Writing style is an umbrella term that includes writing rules and conventions, the voice or personality of the writer, how the writer interacts with his or her audience, what the author says, his or her purpose for writing, and how the author says what is said (including form, word choice, grammar, and sentence structure). Writing style also includes the personal agenda and collective experience of the writer. Writing style is all about the writer and his or her choices.
English-language arts teachers tend to argue about whether writing style is caught or taught. In my mind it’s both. Exposure to and recognition of unique writing styles through wide reading of a variety of prose and poetry provides a context for developing writers to experiment with their own voices. Teaching accepted writing rules, practicing sentence combining, requiring different grammatical sentence structures, etc. all impact what and how students write.
Following are articles, free resources, and teaching tips regarding how to teach essay strategies from the Pennington Publishing Blog. Bookmark and visit us often. Oh, and don’t forget to copy down the 10% discount code found only on this blog to purchase the quality curricula and resources offered by Pennington Publishing.
Writing Style
How to Improve Writing Style
http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/writing/how-to-improve-writing-style/
Writing style is personal, but also follows a traditional, widely agreed-to form. Indeed, good writing style does have objective rules to follow. Here are the key rules of writing style, written with tongue-firmly-planted-in-cheek examples. This article lists 24 writing style rules in a truly memorable way.
How to Improve Writing Unity
http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/writing/how-to-improve-writing-unity/
Writing unity refers to how well sentences and paragraphs stay focused on the topic sentences and thesis statement. From the reader’s point of view, writing unity means that there are no irrelevant (off the point) details and that the tone of the writing remains consistent. This article gives good and bad examples of writing unity and provides strategies to improve your writing.
How to Improve Writing Parallelism
http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/writing/how-to-improve-writing-parallelism/
Writing parallelism refers to the repeated pattern of words and grammatical structures. Parallel structures assist the comprehension of the reader and provide a memorable rhythm to the writing. Improve your writing style and readability by incorporating parallelism in your writing.
How to Improve Your Writing Style with Grammatical Sentence Openers
To improve writing style and increase readability, learn how to vary sentence structures. Starting sentences with different grammatical sentence openers is the easiest way to add sentence variety. This article lists, explains, and provides clear examples for grammatical sentence openers.
Using Music to Develop Authentic Voice
http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/writing/using-music-to-develop-authentic-voice/
Music creates the passion, commitment, and authentic voice that we want to see in our students’ writing. Connecting to student experience with their own music can transform the way they write essays, reports, narratives, poetry, and letters.
How to Develop Voice in Student Writing
http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/writing/how-to-develop-voice-in-student-writing/
For students to develop voice, they need to practice voice in specific teacher-directed writing assignments. Here are 13 teaching tips to help students find their own voices.
Teaching Essay Style: 15 Tricks of the Trade
http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/writing/teaching-essay-style-15-tricks-of-the-trade/
“Never start a sentence with But.” Countless middle school and high school English-language arts teachers cringe when their students faithfully repeat this elementary school dictum. “Never use I in your five-paragraph essay.” Now university professors similarly cringe and shake their heads at the straight-jacketed rules placed upon their students. However, maybe there is a method to our madness. Perhaps these writing absolutes serve a useful purpose for developing writers. Perhaps the little white lies that we teach our students are actually our tricks of the trade.
How to Teach Rhetorical Stance
http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/writing/how-to-teach-rhetorical-stance/
Students need to practice the elements of rhetorical stance to improve their writing. This article provides clear definitions and a great sample lesson with useful links to learn how to teach voice, audience, purpose, and form to your students.
Ten Tips to Improving Writing Coherency
http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/grammar_mechanics/ten-tips-to-improving-writing-coherency/
Writing coherency refers to how well sentences and paragraphs are organized into an understandable whole. Good writing coherency is reader-centered. From the reader’s point of view, the train of thought must be connected, easy to follow, and make sense.
How to Eliminate “To-Be” Verbs in Writing
http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/grammar_mechanics/how-to-eliminate-to-be-verbs-in-writing/
Every English teacher has a sure-fire revision tip that makes developing writers dig down deep and revise initial drafts. One of my favorites involves eliminating the “to-be-verbs”: is, am, are, was, were, be, being, and been. Learn the four strategies to revise these “writing crutches.”
How to Teach Helping Verbs
http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/grammar_mechanics/how-to-teach-helping-verbs/
English teachers learn early in their careers that strong nouns and “show-me” verbs are the keys to good writing. Of these two keys, verbs give developing writers the most “bang for their buck” in terms of writing revision. As a plus, revising weak and imprecise verbs, such as helping verbs (also known as auxiliary verbs), with active “show-me verbs” is quite teachable and less vocabulary-dependent than working with nouns. Learn when to use and when not to use helping verbs and how to eliminate them to improve writing.
The Seven Essay Writing Rules
http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/writing/the-seven-essay-writing-rules/
Essays have certain traditional rules that help maintain a fair and balanced writing style. This article details the seven key essay writing rules with clear examples.
More Articles, Free Resources, and Teaching Tips from the Pennington Publishing Blog
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Teaching Essay Strategies is the comprehensive writing curriculum, designed to teach your students how to write coherent multi-paragraph essays. Students progress at their own pace through 42 sequential essay strategy worksheets and skill lessons (including writing style, parallelism, coherency, unity, and writing evidence) to compose 8 complete essays in the different essay genres. Also get 64 sentence revision (sentence combining and grammatical sentence patterns) and 64 rhetorical stance “opener” lessons, 8 on-demand writing fluencies, remedial writing worksheets, writing posters, holistic and analytical rubrics, graphic organizers, and editing resources. No other writing program matches the comprehensive resources of this curriculum. Truly individualize instruction with the resources found in this large three-ring binder. 359 pages