PA R T I
BASICS OF GOOD
WRITING
G
ood writing starts with process. So we’ll begin by telling you how to go about
writing. How to get ideas. How to put them together. How to get them on paper.
How to polish them into a fine piece of writing. Those are the four broad steps in
writing anything: prewriting, writing, revising, and proofreading.
• Prewriting: The prewriting process refers to the kinds of things you do to get
ready to write. Helpful hints to suggest how to think. How to plan. How to
make choices. Prewriting prepares you to write freely.
• Writing: Suggestions for writing follow with details about how to use the
building blocks of good writing:- good sentences
- good paragraphs
- good multi-paragraph papers.
• Revising: Then we help you with probably the toughest part of writing:
polishing your paper. Improving content. Improving structure. Improving
emphasis. Improving continuity.
• Proofreading: Finally, we show you how to eliminate those bothersome
mechanical errors.
Refer to this basics-of-writing section regularly, no matter what you write. In fact,
you can find cross-references to the chapters in this section throughout the book,
suggesting that you use it to supplement the book’s step-by-step processes.