Hello Readers!
Welcome to my blog. I have written about the Writing Draft. This task given by Vaidehi ma'am.
Writing a Draft
Writing is often challenging for many students because they are trying to do two things at once: putting ideas down on paper and writing in a more formal manner that they may not be familiar with.
If you already created an outline for your essay, it would be easier for you to further develop your ideas and include supporting information found from your research.
In your first draft:
- Print out a copy of your outline or have it opened on another screen, if it's helpful.
- Focus on expressing the ideas roughly into the paper.
- Don't worry too much about wording, grammar and spelling. You can revise and edit your essay once you have a rough draft.
- Move on to another section or paragraph or take a break if you get stuck. Return to it later.
- Review the thesis statement or purpose of your essay from time to time to help you stay focused in your writing.
- Leave the re-organization of ideas after you complete the draft. It would be easier for you to see their logical sequence and relationships when you can review them from start to finish.
- Add or remove an idea from your outline if needed. Remember that an outline is intended to provide guidance, not to restrict your thought processes and writing.
- Include summaries, paraphrases and/or quotations from your research to support your arguments. Include an in-text citation for each information piece to help you keep track of the sources and create your reference list at the end.
The First Draft
Do not expect your first draft to be the finished product. The successful research paper is usually the culmination of a series of drafts. Habits, capacities, and practices of writers differ widely. Some indi- viduals write more slowly and come close to a final draft the first time through. Others prefer to work in stages and expect to undertake several drafts. In any case, review and rewriting are always necessary. Plan ahead and leave plenty of time for revision.
You might start off by trying to set down all your ideas in the order in which you want them to appear. Do not be concerned if the writing in the first draft is basty and fai rough. Attempt to stay focused by following your outline closely. Revise the outline, of course, whenever new ideas occur to you and it no longer works. After you complete a rough draft, read it over and try to refine it.
Subsequent Drafts
In revising, you may add, eliminate, and rearrange material. If a section in the first draft seems unclear or sketchy, you may have to expand it by writing another sentence or two or even a new paragraph. Similarly, to improve the fluency and coherence of the paper, you may need to add transitions between sentences and paragraphs or to add fine connections or contrasts. Delete any material that is irrelevant, unimportant, repetitive, or dull and dispensable. If the presentation of ideas seems illogical or confusing, you may find that you can clarify by rearranging phrases, clauses, sentences, or paragraphs.
In later drafts you should concern yourself with the more mechanical kinds of revision. For example, strive for more precise and economical wording. Try, in addition, to vary your sentence patterns as well as your choice of words. Finally, correct all technical errors, using a standard writing guide to check punctuation, grammar, and use a standard dictionary for the spelling and meaning of words. Your last draft, carefully proofread and corrected, is the text of your research paper.
Writing with a Word Processor
a. Techniques
If you do not own a computer, see whether your school or public library has personal computers available for student use With a word necessor, you can store a first draft-or just a portion of cne-and later retrieve and revise it. If you create a different file for each draft, you can return to a preceding draft whenever you wish.
Word processing allows for efficient transitions between the various activities related to the research paper. After developing an outline, for instance, you can copy it into a new file, where the outline can serve as the basis for your writing of the text. Or if you created a file of notes for each major topic in your outline (see 1.8.3), you can copy into the text file each topic file in sequence as you write. If your paper will be short and you have taken a few notes, you may choose to copy the entire note fille into the text file. Using this approach, you can scroll up and down the file and transfer what you want into the text of the paper. If your paper will be longer and you have created a separate file for each of numerous sources, you can readily transfer material (e.g., an effective quotation) from a note file to the text file. You might find it easier to print out all your notes before writing the paper and to decide in advance which ones you want to use in the text. In this way, when you retrieve note files, you will know exactly what parts you are seeking.
Another way to proceed is to use split windows or multiple windows to read note iles as you write the paper. When you have completed your final draft, you can simply add the file containing the works cited list to the end of the paper. With practice and planning, then, as you write your paper you can use a word processor strategically to draw on outline, note, and bibliography files that you created earlier in the project.
Most word processors have the following features, which you can use profitably in your writing:
Global revision. This feature of word processing permits you to search for and automatically change text Thus, if you realize you misspelled the same word several times in your draft, you can correct all the misspellings with a single command.
Special pasting. If in a word-processing document you paste text that you copied from another document, the pasted inxt may keep its original formatting. Most word processors provide the option of special pesting, in which the pasted text takes on the formatting of the new document.
Stared phrases. If you will need to type a complicated phrase 10 repeatedly, store the phrase and assign a shortcut to it. Whenever you type the shortcut, the phrase will be entered.
Comparing documents. Compare two versions of the document and see how they differ.
In each entry in the works-cited ast, the first i line is flush left, and subsequent lines are indented. The easiest way to achieve this formatting is to highlight the paragraphs that are for will be) entries and then choose hanging indention in the options for formatting paragraphs.
B. Limitations
Word processing has certain limitations. Since no more than a fixed number of lines of text are visible on a computer screen, you may find it difficult to get a sense of your whole project. Some writers like to print out text regularly to see better how the writing is developing from paragraph to paragraph and from page to page. Use spelling and usage checkers cautiously, for they are only as effective as the dictionaries they contain. On the one hand, a spelling checker will call your attention to wards that are correctly spelled if they are not in its dictionary. On the other, it will not point out misspellings that match words in the dictionary-for example, their used for there or its for it's
Finally, in working on a computer file, you run the risk of losing it, through a technical mistake, equipment failure, or a power outage. Be sure to save your work frequently (after writing a page or so), not just when you finish it or leave the computer. It is also a good ideal to keep a paper copy of your writing and to create a backup file in case something happens to the file you are using to prepare the paper. Most important of all, love yourself ample time to cope with any technical problems that may arise.
The Final Draft and the Research Project Portfolio
All instructors require szimission of the final draft of the research paper. Some instructors ask students to prepare and submit a research project portfolio, which documents the evolution of the paper. The portfolio might contain such items as the approved thesis statement. the final outline, an early draft, an early draft the final draft.
SUMMING UP
Research papers are normally composed through a series of drafts. The first draft is usually rough, and subsequent drafts are increasingly refined revisions of the original version. A word processor is useful for writing research papers, although it has some limitations as well. The assignment concludes with the submission of the final draft or of a research project portfolio.
