essay on why writing is important

Why Is Writing Important? (45 Reasons)

Have you ever felt the rush of thoughts and emotions, yearning for an escape?

Writing is more than just a skill; it’s an art , a therapy , a voice . Throughout history, the essence of human experience has been captured, one word at a time. While every stroke of the pen holds power, there’s an underlying significance to the art of writing that goes beyond the surface.

Dive in with us to unravel the sheer importance of writing, an endeavor that has been shaping minds and stories for centuries.

Table of Contents

Personal Development and Wellbeing

Communication and understanding, education and intellectual growth, creativity and artistic expression, professional and economic impact, social and cultural influence, influence and advocacy, 1. writing provides catharsis.

Writing helps people to get their feelings out. It can be like talking to a friend when no one is around. Writing about what bothers you can make you feel better. This is a way to clean out your mind and make space for happier thoughts. Sometimes, it’s the key to feeling peaceful again .

2. Writing Offers Introspection

Writing helps people to think about who they are. They can write about their thoughts, dreams, and what they like or don’t like. This helps them understand themselves better. Understanding oneself is a big step in growing and becoming a better person.

3. Writing Enhances Memory Retention

When people write things down, they remember them better. This is because writing helps to put the information into the brain in a way that sticks. People who write lists or take notes often find that they can remember things without even looking at what they wrote.

It’s a great way to make sure important things are not forgotten.

4. Writing Boosts Self-Confidence

Writing helps people feel good about themselves. When they write well, they feel proud. They know that they can communicate their thoughts and ideas clearly. This makes them feel strong and sure of themselves. It’s a great way to build confidence and feel successful.

5. Writing Cultivates Mindfulness

Writing can help people pay attention to their lives . When they write about what’s happening, they really think about it. They notice things that might slip by if they were not writing. This makes them more aware and present in their own lives.

Writing can make them feel more alive and connected to the world around them.

6. Writing Fosters Resilience

Writing can help people get through hard times . When they write about their problems, they can see them more clearly. Sometimes, writing helps them find solutions. Even if it doesn’t solve the problem, writing about it can make them feel stronger and more able to deal with it.

It’s a tool that helps build toughness and determination.

7. Writing Encourages Individuality

Everyone’s writing is unique . Writing lets people show who they are. They can use words that mean something to them. They can tell their stories in their way. Writing is a way for people to be themselves and to show that to the world.

1. Writing Facilitates Communication

Writing helps people share their thoughts and feelings. It allows them to put their ideas into words that others can read and understand. With writing, people can take their time to choose the right words. This means they can express themselves clearly. It’s a way to connect with others, even without speaking.

2. Writing Aids in Conflict Resolution

When people have disagreements, writing can help. They can write down their feelings and thoughts about the issue. By doing this, they can see the problem more clearly. Writing also gives a chance to think before reacting. This can lead to better understanding and finding solutions.

3. Writing Supports Remote Communication

Sometimes, people can’t talk face to face. Writing helps in these times. With writing, they can send letters, emails, or messages. This means they can keep in touch, even from far away. It’s a bridge that connects people, no matter where they are.

4. Writing Can Reduce Misunderstandings

Misunderstandings can happen when people talk. Sometimes, they might not hear right, or emotions can get in the way. Writing can help because it gives a clear record of what’s being said. People can read and re-read to understand better. It’s a way to be sure everyone is on the same page.

5. Writing Recognizes and Validates Experiences

When people write about what they go through, it matters. It says, “This happened to me, and it’s real.” By writing, they validate their own experiences. This helps them process events and emotions. It’s a powerful way to say that their feelings and stories have value.

1. Writing Fosters Learning

Writing is a powerful tool in the learning process. When students write, they process information in a deeper way. It helps them to understand and remember better. They can organize their thoughts and see connections between ideas. Writing, in many ways, makes learning stick.

2. Writing Builds Analytical Skills

When individuals write, they often have to think critically. They analyze what they read or experience and then put it into their own words. This process helps them see patterns, make comparisons, and draw conclusions.

Analytical thinking is key for problem-solving, and writing helps sharpen this skill. It makes the brain work in a structured yet creative way.

3. Writing Nurtures Curiosity

Writing pushes people to explore new topics and ideas. When they write, they often ask questions and seek answers. This thirst for knowledge makes them more curious about the world. Writing is like a door that leads to more and more knowledge. It’s a journey of discovery that starts with a pen and paper.

4. Writing Enhances Adaptability

The world is always changing, and writing helps people adapt. When they write, they learn to express ideas in different ways. They also learn to consider different viewpoints. This flexibility in thinking helps them adjust to new situations and challenges. In essence, writing equips them with the ability to change and grow.

5. Writing Encourages Ethical Thinking

Writing often involves exploring morals and values. When individuals write about complex topics, they reflect on what’s right and wrong. They consider the impact of actions and decisions. Writing is a mirror that reflects a person’s ethics and beliefs. Through it, they can shape a strong moral compass.

6. Writing Supports Scientific Exploration

Scientists use writing to share their findings. Through writing, they document experiments, observations, and conclusions. This allows others to learn from and build on their work. Writing is the bridge that connects scientific discoveries with the world. It’s how knowledge grows and spreads.

1. Writing Encourages Creativity

Writing is a blank canvas for the mind. Just like an artist paints with colors, a writer paints with words. They bring to life imaginary worlds, characters, and stories. Each word chosen is a brushstroke that shapes the narrative. Writing is an act of creation, turning ideas into something tangible.

2. Writing Is an Art Form

Words have rhythm, flow, and emotion, just like music or dance. Through writing, individuals convey feelings, evoke emotions, and create visual images in the reader’s mind. It’s a craft that requires skill, passion, and dedication. When done right, writing can be as expressive and moving as any masterpiece painting or musical composition.

3. Writing Offers Safe Fictional Exploration

Challenging topics or situations can be tough to address directly. Writing offers a safe space to explore these. Through fictional characters and narratives, writers can delve into difficult subjects. This exploration provides understanding, catharsis, and even solutions. It’s a way to navigate real-world issues from the safety of a fictional setting.

4. Writing Complements Other Art Forms

Written works often become the foundation for other artistic mediums. Novels are transformed into movies, plays, or TV series. Poems inspire songs or visual art pieces.

In this way, writing acts as a bridge , enriching and broadening the reach of a story or idea. It’s a testament to the universal power and adaptability of written expression.

1. Writing Aids in Goal Setting

In the professional world, clarity of purpose is essential. Writing helps in defining clear, actionable goals. When goals are written down, they become tangible targets to achieve. Writing provides structure, making goals more specific and measurable. It’s a simple act that paves the way for success.

2. Writing Provides Economic Opportunities

Writing is a valuable skill in the job market. Many professions, from marketing to journalism, require strong writing abilities. Even beyond specific roles, effective communication is often tied to career advancement. Writing, as a skill, can open doors to numerous job opportunities and can be a source of income on its own.

3. Writing Assists in Branding

A strong brand has a clear voice and message. Writing plays a significant role in shaping that voice. Whether it’s website content, promotional material, or social media posts, writing conveys a brand’s identity and values. It connects with the audience and sets a brand apart from competitors.

4. Writing Aids in Project Planning

Every successful project starts with a plan. Writing helps in laying out the project’s vision, objectives, and steps. It provides a roadmap, ensuring everyone involved knows their roles and responsibilities. Documenting the plan makes it easier to track progress, adjust as needed, and achieve desired outcomes.

5. Writing Aids in Establishing Authority

Experts in any field often share their knowledge through writing. Articles, books, and white papers showcase expertise and establish credibility. By sharing insights and research in written form, professionals position themselves as authorities in their domain. It’s a way to gain trust and influence in one’s industry.

6. Writing Serves as A Foundation for Multimedia Content

In the digital age, content comes in various forms: videos, podcasts, infographics, and more. Behind many of these multimedia pieces is a foundation of strong writing. Scripts, storyboards, and content outlines guide the creation of multimedia projects, ensuring clarity and coherence.

7. Writing Enforces Systematic Processes

Procedures, guidelines, and manuals are essential in many industries. Writing these documents ensures consistent and efficient processes. It minimizes errors, provides clear instructions, and enhances overall productivity.

Systematic processes, documented in writing, are the backbone of many successful organizations.

1. Writing Gives a Voice to The Marginalized

For many marginalized communities, writing has been a powerful tool for expression. It allows individuals and groups to share their experiences, challenges, and dreams. Writing can expose injustices, spark movements, and drive change.

It’s a platform for those often unheard, giving them a space to be recognized and understood.

2. Writing Bridges Cultural Gaps

Stories, essays, and articles can introduce readers to different cultures and perspectives. Through writing, people learn about traditions, values, and experiences far removed from their own. This exposure fosters understanding and empathy, reducing prejudices and biases.

Writing, in essence, can unite diverse groups by highlighting shared human experiences.

3. Writing Supports Democratic Processes

Democracies thrive on informed citizens. Writing, in the form of journalism, essays, and reports, ensures that the public is aware of issues, government actions, and societal changes. Written constitutions, laws, and policies guide nations.

Moreover, writing enables citizens to express their views, whether through letters to the editor, blogs, or social media.

4. Writing Is a Testament to Human Evolution

From ancient cave paintings to modern digital texts, writing chronicles human history and progress. It’s a testament to our intellectual evolution, capturing our discoveries, philosophies, and achievements. Over millennia, writing has evolved, reflecting changes in society, technology, and thought.

5. Writing Aids in Cultural Preservation

Cultures are preserved and passed down through stories , folklore , rituals , and traditions . Writing plays a crucial role in documenting and safeguarding these treasures for future generations. It captures the nuances of languages, the wisdom of elders, and the essence of traditions.

In a rapidly changing world, written records ensure that cultural richness is not lost.

1. Writing Influences Public Opinion

Writing holds the power to shape public sentiment. By presenting facts, sharing stories, or appealing to emotions, writers can persuade readers to see things from a specific perspective.

Through articles, blogs, and social media, even one individual can influence a vast audience. Over time, these collective writings can drive societal change and mold popular beliefs.

2. Writing Enhances Persuasion Skills

Effective persuasion isn’t about merely stating opinions. It requires presenting arguments logically, supporting them with evidence, and addressing counterpoints. Writing hones these skills. As individuals craft essays or articles, they learn to structure arguments coherently and convincingly.

3. Writing Serves as Feedback

Writing offers a tangible way to process thoughts, ideas, and experiences. When these are shared, readers can provide feedback, leading to refined ideas and better clarity. Feedback loops created by writing foster collaboration, mutual learning, and growth.

4. Writing Promotes Organizational Skills

To write clearly, one must think clearly. Writing demands organization, from structuring paragraphs to ordering arguments. This process enhances a person’s ability to arrange thoughts, data, and events in a coherent and logical manner.

5. Writing Fosters Global Connections

In the digital age, writing can reach a global audience instantly. It bridges geographical distances, connecting writers with readers from diverse backgrounds. This global reach fosters understanding, collaboration, and shared knowledge.

6. Writing Aids in Advocacy

Advocacy relies on clear communication and compelling arguments. Writing provides advocates a platform to voice concerns, share solutions, and rally support. Whether it’s for environmental issues, human rights, or community development, well-crafted writing can propel a cause forward.

7. Writing Offers a Legacy

Words have permanence. Writing allows individuals to leave a lasting mark, sharing wisdom, stories, or insights for future generations. Whether it’s personal journals, published books, or digital content, these words can inspire and educate long after the author’s time.

8. Writing Sharpens Observation Skills

To write descriptively and authentically, keen observation is essential. Writers learn to notice details, nuances, and subtleties in their surroundings. This heightened awareness enriches their narratives and offers readers a vivid experience.

9. Writing Facilitates Negotiation and Diplomacy

Effective negotiation and diplomacy require clarity, understanding, and tact. Writing plays a pivotal role in these processes. Official communications, treaties, and agreements are documented in written form, ensuring clarity and mutual understanding.

10. Writing Is Essential for Record-Keeping

From ancient civilizations to modern businesses, record-keeping has always been fundamental. Writing ensures that events, decisions, and data are documented for reference, accountability, and analysis. It provides a consistent means to track progress, remember agreements, and learn from the past.

11. Writing Is Timeless

While civilizations rise and fall and technologies change, writing remains a constant. It’s a timeless medium to express, communicate, and record. The essence of humanity, its thoughts, emotions, and discoveries, are immortalized through words.

In the tapestry of human history, writing stands as a potent thread binding our stories, emotions, and knowledge. It’s not just about penning down words but giving voice to silent thoughts, painting vivid tales, and connecting the past with the future.

The significance of writing transcends time, bridging gaps between cultures and generations. As we continue to evolve, one thing remains unchanged: our intrinsic need to communicate and understand, facilitated by the timeless art of writing.

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Aerielle Ezra

Aerielle Ezra is an enthusiastic student of architecture who has a wide range of interests, including psychology, lifestyle, and relationships. Apart from her studies, she also likes to engage in athletic activities, particularly volleyball. When she is not playing, she spends her free time watching her preferred sitcoms or reading her favorite books, which include fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

Why Is Writing Important? (22 Reasons)

Have you ever stopped to think about how much writing impacts your life? From jotting down a shopping list to sending a text message, writing is everywhere, shaping how we interact with the world and each other.

It’s fundamental, yet we often take for granted just how powerful a tool it can be. Good writing not only helps us share information but also transforms the way we think, learn, and connect.

In the pages that follow, let’s explore the myriad ways writing touches every corner of our existence. Can writing truly change your life, or is it just another skill to master? Stick around, and you just might discover that writing holds more power than you ever imagined.

Table of Contents

Writing Enhances Clarity in Communication

Effective communication is all about getting your point across with clarity and precision. Writing is the chisel that shapes rough ideas into sharp narratives. 

Think about the times you’ve written an email or a report. Choosing your words carefully, you have to consider how the reader will interpret them. This process alone can transform a muddled thought into a clear message.

• It leads to a better understanding of personal and professional relationships.
• Well-crafted writing avoids misunderstandings that can occur with spoken words.
• Smooth communication builds trust and respect between parties.

By fostering clarity, writing becomes the bridge connecting intention with understanding, ensuring everyone is on the same page, quite literally.

Writing Aids in Learning and Retention of Information

There’s a reason why note-taking is encouraged in classrooms worldwide. Writing while learning actively engages the brain, prompting it to analyze and reframe information. This dual action cements knowledge more firmly than passive listening.

Remember those scribbled margins in your textbooks? Here’s what they’re actually doing:

• They’re boosting your recall by creating unique connections in your brain.
• Summarizing complex ideas in your own words locks in learning.
• Writing by hand has been linked to improved memory retention.

When learners write about what they’re studying, they create a personal connection with the information, which is invaluable for retention. It also encourages them to think critically, ask questions, and explore the material on a deeper level. 

This technique is employed in various settings, from classrooms to professional workshops, demonstrating the significant role writing plays in learning and education.

Writing Can Influence Social Change

Writing isn’t just about putting words on a page; it’s a powerful tool for advocacy and reform. The written word has sparked revolutions and nurtured movements that have reshaped nations. 

Here’s a look at how writing changes the world:

• It disseminates ideas that challenge the status quo, encouraging people to think and act.
• Influential works, from Thomas Paine’s “ Common Sense ” to Rachel Carson’s “ Silent Spring , ” demonstrate the impact of writing on public opinion and policy.

This form of communication can sneak past barriers that might restrict spoken words. Written appeals to reason, emotion, and shared values can cross geographical and cultural boundaries to unite people under a common cause. 

Through blogs, social media, articles, and books, famed and anonymous writers stir hearts, evoke dialogue, and drive action. So, while a pen may seem mightier, it can indeed be more powerful than a sword when it comes to championing rights, justice, and democracy.

Writing Preserves Stories and Cultures

Cultures are the tapestries of human existence, woven with stories, traditions, and languages. Writing is the crucial thread that holds these tapestries together across time. 

It’s almost magical how script locked away in dusty tomes or engraved on ancient ruins breathes life into civilizations long gone.

• Folktales:  Maintaining folklore through written records ensures generations to come know their ancestral stories.
• Language:  Documenting dialects and idiomatic expressions keeps languages alive.
• Traditions:  From recipes to rituals, writing preserves the unique practices of communities.

Through writing, individuals not only chronicle their current way of life but also ensure that future generations have a window into their ancestral past. 

Writing Sharpens Critical Thinking Skills

To craft a solid piece of writing, one must weigh evidence, discern patterns, and anticipate counterarguments—all activities that hone your ability to think deeply and critically. This is the rigorous mental exercise that strengthens your reasoning muscles. 

When you write an essay, for example, you must present a clear argument supported by facts. This process demands a level of analysis that goes beyond surface-level understanding.

Engaging with diverse perspectives is also part of being a thoughtful writer. By reading the works of others and writing critiques or responses, you immerse yourself in a dialogic process, exchanging ideas that refine your own thoughts and positions.

This dialogue with different viewpoints is integral to broadening your own intellectual horizons.

Writing Connects People Across Distances

Imagine you’re writing a letter to a friend on the other side of the world or a text message to a loved one just down the street. In both cases, the words you pen bridge the physical gap between you and them. 

Writing is a unique tool that connects us irrespective of location; it’s a heart-to-heart dialogue that can cross continents and oceans.

There’s something magical about opening an email from a friend abroad or stumbling upon a blog post that changes your perspective. It feels like they’re right there with you, sharing a moment in time. 

Even in our tech-savvy world where video calls are just a click away, the written word holds a special kind of intimacy — it can be saved, reread, and treasured in a way that spoken words cannot. 

Writing Improves Focus and Discipline

Engaging in the act of writing requires a level of concentration that few other activities can match. You’re pulling together thoughts, weaving words into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs—all of which demands a disciplined mind. 

Maintaining that focus over time helps to develop your ability to concentrate on tasks, both big and small.

For anyone who has set out to write a blog post or a book, the process often involves setting up a routine and sticking to it, come inspiration or writer’s block. This habitual commitment translates directly to improved self-regulation and time management skills as you become better at setting and achieving goals. 

Writing Assists in Conflict Resolution

By expressing ourselves through writing, we can clearly convey our thoughts and feelings, which is crucial in conflict resolution. Let’s break this down:

Clarifying Perspectives:

• Expression of emotions : Writing allows individuals to articulate their feelings  without  the heat of verbal confrontation.
• Rational argumentation : Parties involved can lay out their points logically, minimizing the potential for emotional escalation.

Understanding Parties’ Positions:  Written communication gives each party time to consider the other’s viewpoint and respond thoughtfully rather than reactively.

Documenting Agreements:  Written summaries of conflict resolutions serve as tangible records that can prevent future misunderstandings and foster long-term peacekeeping.

Whether it’s in personal relationships or international diplomacy, the pen can guide us toward finding common ground.

Writing Documents History and Important Information

Writing is the cornerstone of preserving human achievements and learning. Every innovation, from the wheel to the smartphone, has its development outlined in written form. 

Legal documents, with their precise language, dictate how societies function, maintaining order and recording the framework of our civilizations. 

But beyond the structural, writing offers intimacy with the past; it’s personal. Reading the musings of a 12th-century philosopher or the letters of a World War II soldier, we bridge the gap between now and then, understanding events and the people behind them.

The act of documenting through writing, as such, serves a dual purpose: 

• It establishes the record that shapes the structure and identity of society.
• It creates a pathway to revisit and learn from the experiences of those who came before us. 

Without writing, history would be like the wind, felt briefly but invisible to the eyes of the future.

Writing Refines Language Skills

Engaging regularly in writing is one of the most effective methods for improving language proficiency. It’s an active process that involves:

• Vocabulary expansion : Delving into writing naturally exposes you to new words and phrases.
• Grammar and syntax mastery : With practice, your sentence structure improves as you find more efficient ways to convey your message.
• Style and tone variation : Writing allows you to experiment with different voices and styles suitable for various audiences and purposes.

The act of writing also provides an opportunity for feedback. Be it through a teacher’s corrections, an editor’s revisions, or comments from peers, each piece of feedback is a stepping stone toward language mastery. 

Whether you’re a native speaker or learning a new language, writing turns the abstract rules of grammar and style into concrete examples you create yourself, promoting a deeper internalization of the language.

Writing Organizes Thoughts and Ideas

Have you ever had a “ light bulb ” moment only to find it slipping away before you could fully grasp it? Writing is the tool we use to catch those ethereal thoughts and pin them down. 

It’s a mental sorting exercise, transforming a jumble of ideas into an ordered sequence. This linear format is tremendously powerful, allowing us to navigate complex concepts and construct detailed plans. 

Moreover, this ordering process is iterative; as we draft and redraft, our organized thoughts become refined arguments, compelling stories, or actionable strategies. Writing doesn’t just capture our initial musings; it shapes them into their most precise form.

Writing Helps Build Persuasive Arguments

When it comes to persuasion, writing is your secret weapon. It’s not just about having an idea but about  effectively  convincing others to get on board with that idea.

Through writing, you can carefully craft your argument step by step. 

• You introduce your idea (the claim)
• Back it up with solid evidence
• Explain why this evidence matters (the explanation)

You’ve got the time to research your points thoroughly and present them in the most compelling way possible.

Consider the persuasive essays of high school, the debated op-eds in newspapers, or the carefully constructed cover letters accompanying job applications. Each is an exercise in persuasion, aiming to convert the reader from a state of indecision to one of agreement. 

Writing Fosters Creativity

Imagine the vast landscape of a blank page. Now, see it transforming as words dance across it, crafting worlds, characters, and plots. This is the realm where writing and creativity intertwine.

• Unleashing the imagination : Writing gives life to the imagination, allowing the invisible to sculpt worlds as vivid as our reality.
• Exploring possibilities : It allows us to ask “ what if ” and “ why not, ” pushing the boundaries of conventional thinking.
• Expressive freedom : There are no limits; genres, forms, and styles become playgrounds for creative experimentation.

Whenever writers pick up a pen or type on a keyboard, they engage in a creative act. Whether it’s composing poetry, developing a story, or finding a creative solution to a problem, writing is a discovery process. 

The more you write, the more you tap into the depths of your imagination, stretching its capabilities. The act of writing itself can be a muse, sparking insights and ideas that might never surface in the regular rhythm of daily life.

Writing Can be Therapeutic

Engaging in the practice of writing has unexpected healing properties. It’s a canvas for the soul, where one can paint feelings, fears, and hopes in word form. As you articulate your inner narrative, you experience a sense of personal discovery and growth.

In therapy sessions,  writing  is often used as a tool to help individuals confront traumatic events or deal with psychological stress. The act of committing thoughts to paper can sometimes reveal patterns or solutions that were not evident before. 

Many people find that regular journaling makes their emotional burdens lighter and their minds clearer. This simple, quiet act of writing can be akin to a personal therapy session, fostering emotional health and well-being.

Writing is a Form of Entertainment

Whether getting lost in a fantasy novel or chuckling over a clever blog post, writing captivates and entertains our minds. It’s an escape hatch from reality, allowing readers to dive into different worlds, times, and experiences.

The Spectrum of Entertainment:

• Novels and Short Stories : Craft vast adventures or snapshot moments.
• Plays and Scripts : Bring characters and conflicts to life on stage and screen.
• Poetry and Lyrics : Play with rhythm, rhyme, and emotions.

Writing is not only an important aspect of the entertainment industry, but it also serves as a personal amusement. From witty social media status updates to engaging articles on your favorite subjects, writing can elicit joy, suspense, laughter, and a range of emotions that enrich our daily lives.

Writing Aids in Personal Reflection and Introspection

When we put pen to paper, we engage in a solitary journey, navigating the corridors of our psyche. In a way, writing serves as the mirror through which we scrutinize our lives, dissecting our actions, thoughts, and feelings. 

Writing is introspective by nature; it requires us to slow down, reflect on our experiences, and examine them in the light of our deepest truths and beliefs. It’s a dialogue with the self that can lead to profound insights and a better understanding of personal motivations and desires. 

Whether chronicling daily events in a journal or composing letters that may never be sent, writing helps distill the essence of our experiences and offers a lens through which we can understand and evolve our sense of self.

Writing Empowers Self-Expression

Embracing the power of self-expression is to embrace the essence of what it means to be human. 

Through writing, individuals can craft their unique voices, assert their opinions, and leave an indelible mark on the tapestry of human experience. It’s an act of courage and an act of personal truth.

• In novels, a character’s journey may mirror our own, echoing the complexities of real-life choices.
• Blogs and articles serve as platforms for sharing insights and sparking discussions on topics that matter deeply to us.
• Poetry breaks the chains of traditional narrative, allowing emotions to flow freely in a rhythmic and expressive dance.

Writing Keeps the Brain Active and Engaged

Just like how a runner sprints to keep muscles in peak condition, a writer pens words to exercise the brain. This mental workout boosts cognitive function and keeps the gears of the mind well-oiled. 

Consider the following:

• Puzzling over the right word choices sharpens decision-making abilities.
• Constructing complex sentences tests and improves memory.
• Articulating abstract thoughts challenges the intellect and sparks neural connections.

Whether drafting a quick note or composing a lengthy manuscript, writing engages multiple areas of the brain, from language centers to memory storage. This continuous engagement is vital to maintaining a healthy and active mind throughout life, warding off the mental rust that can come with age or inactivity. 

Writing Helps in Career Progression

Writing is a ladder to career advancement. Here’s how it serves as a boost to professional growth:

• Resume Crafting:  Your resume is your story, a narrative of your achievements. A well-written one can open the doors to new opportunities.
• Effective Communication:  Clear, concise writing in emails and reports proves your professionalism and attention to detail, garnering respect from colleagues and superiors.
• Thought Leadership:  Share your industry insights through articles or social media. It raises your profile and can position you as an expert in your field.

Proficiency in writing sets you apart in the job market and workplace. It’s a skill that shines a spotlight on your capabilities, helps you build influential networks, and can be a deciding factor in promotions and leadership roles.

Writing Secures Transactions and Agreements with Contracts

A contract is the backbone of a binding agreement, etched with words that spell out the expectations and obligations of all parties involved. 

Here’s how writing plays a crucial role:

• Foundation : A written contract lays the groundwork, detailing the terms clearly to avoid ambiguity.
• Protection : It serves as a legal safeguard, protecting interests and asserting rights.
• Accountability : The contract ensures all parties are accountable, making commitments enforceable.

In the complex network of transactions and agreements that keep our world moving, writing stands guard against misunderstandings and disputes. Be it for buying a house, starting a new job, or entering into business partnerships, contracts captured in writing are the sentinels of our socio-economic landscape.

Writing is Integral for Marketing and Branding

In the realm of marketing and branding, words are currency. They can inform, persuade, and evoke emotions that drive consumer behavior. The language used in marketing materials can significantly impact how a brand is perceived and engaged with.

• A captivating slogan can resonate with audiences, lodging itself in the communal consciousness.
• Well-crafted copy defines a brand’s voice, from professional and authoritative to casual and friendly, shaping the brand’s public image and appeal.
• Storytelling through content marketing forges a connection with customers, much like a novel draws in its readers, binding them to the characters—in this case, the brand and its offerings.

Through the strategic use of writing, a brand communicates its identity, values, and promises to the customer, establishing a narrative that differentiates it from competitors and builds brand loyalty.

Writing Encourages Lifelong Learning and Curiosity

The process of writing, though often seen as an output of learning, is equally powerful as a driver of continued education. When we write, we are not merely recording what we know; we are often learning anew.

Writing propels us to keep questioning, exploring, and absorbing the world. It injects curiosity into every subject touched by the tip of the pen. It opens the door to untapped reservoirs of knowledge, inviting us to step through and discover.

Can everyone benefit from writing, even if they’re not naturally good at it?

Yes, everyone can benefit from writing. Like any skill, writing improves with practice. It’s not just for professional writers or those with a natural talent. Writing is a fundamental skill that serves numerous practical purposes in everyone’s life.

How does writing differ from other forms of communication?

Writing allows for  thoughtful  expression where ideas can be refined and structured before sharing, providing a level of clarity and permanence that other forms of communication (like speaking) may not offer. It also transcends time and space, allowing for asynchronous communication.

How can someone improve their writing skills?

Improving writing skills can involve:

– Regular practice. – Reading widely. – Seeking feedback on your work. – Studying grammar and style. – Engaging in writing courses or workshops.

The key is to write consistently and be open to learning and refining your craft.

Can writing be a collaborative process? How?

Writing can be highly collaborative, with individuals working together to brainstorm, edit, and revise content. This is common in professional environments, academic settings, and even in creative writing, where authors may work with editors, publishers, and peer writers.

Is it important to maintain a personal style in writing?

While it’s crucial to adapt your writing to different contexts, maintaining a personal voice or style can help to differentiate and personalize your writing. It gives readers a sense of who you are and can make your writing more memorable and engaging.

Final Thoughts

It’s clear that it isn’t just about words on a page. It’s a tool for learning, a bridge for communication, and a foundation for building societies.

Whether carving out a career path or penning thoughts in a personal diary, writing is a companion that nurtures growth, kindles imaginations, and captures the full spectrum of human experience.

So the next time you pick up a pen, type out an email, or update your journal, remember the profound impact those seemingly simple acts of writing can have.

After all, each word you write weaves a thread into the vast tapestry of history, culture, and personal identity. And who knows? In sharing your story, you might just inspire someone else to start writing theirs.

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Robby Salveron

30 Reasons Why Writing is Important

18  Comments

October 31, 2019

Inspired Forward is an Amazon Affiliate partner.

Today I want to share with you 30 reasons I believe writing is important and makes an impact. I've been a writer for basically all my life, despite some difficulties along the way.

When I say "writing", I mean any time you take a pen to paper or your fingers fly across the keyboard, filling a page on the screen. "Writing" means journaling, writing nonfiction, original fiction, fanfiction, freewriting—you name it, it probably counts.

1. Writing is an Essential Communication Skill

This is probably the most impactful reason why writing is important. If you can't or don't write, you probably find it more difficult to communicate with all sorts of people.

2. Writing Every Day Builds Discipline

In July 2018 I wrote a post on 10 reasons why you should write every day. Building a daily writing practice into your morning routine teaches you how to stick with doing something important.

3. Creative Writing Engages Both Sides of the Brain

The right side of the brain is the more creative side, while the left side is the more analytical and logical side. You need both sides to write anything, but especially creative writing. The right brain handles all the visions of what you want on the page, and the left side helps you put it down in a way that makes sense.

4. It Helps You Think Through Problems

Whenever I'm feeling stuck or I'm contemplating a problem, it helps to write it down and work through possible solutions on the page. This is especially helpful when writing longhand.

5. Written Word Influences Society

Journalists, bloggers, speech-writers... How we think as a society is largely thanks to what people write. This is why propaganda works.

6. We Wouldn't Have Our History Without Writing

"History is written by the victors," is a popular saying. But if we didn't write it down, we wouldn't have it at all. I just wish more people would study history, because if we don't, we're doomed to repeat it.

Another important thing we have because of this is the Bible. The Gospel of Jesus wouldn't travel as far and as wide as it has today if the Biblical authors hadn't written it.

7. Everyone Has a Book Inside Them

I've had books inside me all my life. I think everyone has a book inside, whether they realize it or not. It's not necessarily a book of fiction. It could be a book of their experiences. Why do you think autobiographies are popular? People want to share their stories. And everyone has a story to tell. Writing is the only way to get that story into the hands of people who care.

Want to write your novel in just two months? Join the 60-Day Novel Writing Challenge!

Author and editor Halie Fewkes (also my book editor!) hosts the 60-Day Novel Writing Challenge .

Past participants can upgrade to Returners Premium for group accountability coaching with me, a chance for 1:1 attention on your mindset about writing, and a critique group to edit your story.

Click here to sign up!

8. Journaling Benefits Mental Health

This is a big one. Writing your thoughts is important for dealing with anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders. It also helps if you don't have a diagnosable MH illness. You can have poor mental health without having an MH disorder, and writing your thoughts helps work through those feelings and moves you toward a better mental state.

9. You're More Likely to Achieve Written Goals

Depending on your personality, telling people your goals could either help or hurt. But writing them down—for everyone—is an important step in actually achieving your goals. According to research from the Dominican University in California, "You are 42 percent more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down." I'll take those odds!

10. Improvements Come from Practice

Everyone starts with sucky writing, including me. This reason is especially important because you will not improve your writing unless you practice it. If you accept that your earliest written words (and a lot of them in-between) will suck, then you're miles ahead of the person who won't pick up a pen because they're afraid of how bad their writing is.

11. Well-Written Works are Respected More

This is an important one, especially in business settings. Poorly written memos, reports, emails, publications, presentations, and documentation sheds a bad light on the person who wrote it. When your writing is clear, concise, targeted, and proofread (by yourself or a grammar nerd), you don't give people a reason to question your abilities.

That being said, I know some people are notoriously poor at writing, and don't care. The problem with that is it creates more work for the people who read or quality check their writing.

12. All Excellent Communication Stems from Excellent Writing

Everything. Speeches, videos, meeting agendas, classes, letters, blogs, podcasts... If it's communicated, it likely started in written form somewhere else. Off-the-cuff speaking is different, except that regular writing helps develop eloquent speech and quick thoughts. The words themselves may not have been written down beforehand, but prior writing helped develop the neural pathways for quick and clear speech.

13. Your Thoughts Are More Organized

It's easier to see thought patterns after you write them down. This lets you figure out which thoughts to keep in your brain, and they're more organized as a result. If you've ever felt like your thoughts are all over the place, try writing them down.

14. It Gets Your To-Dos Out of Your Head

David Allen, author of Getting Things Done , is famous for saying that your head is a terrible office. We actually can't store more than four action items in our heads at any point. This means if your to-do list is 30 items long, you've already forgotten the last 26. Writing your to-dos is a good first step to actually getting things done. You should just never try to use your brain as the primary list.

15. Writing Clarifies Your Ideas for Yourself and Others

Sometimes an idea makes little sense until you can see it in words. It also helps when you're trying to explain your idea to another person—if they can see it written down, it goes a long way for understanding.

16. The Audience Matters

Writing for a specific audience forces you to think about what makes sense from their point of view. This is especially important for content creators on the internet. If you don't know exactly who you're talking to (called an avatar or ideal customer) then your words fall flat and nobody pays attention. When you consider things from that person's perspective, it becomes a lot easier to write to them in a way they'll understand.

17. Writing Forms Bonds with Others

When I was younger, I traded frequent letters with my Grandma. I did the same thing when my best friend lived in a different state for five years. My strengths have always been in writing... So when I feel the need to tell someone something important, it helps to write it down first, or just pour all of it into a letter. Nowadays, sending letters like that is rare, which makes them even more special when someone takes the time to write one.

18. Writing is a Legitimate Career

Authors, bloggers, freelance writers... What do these people have in common? They're making money with their writing! Writing is 100% a legit career for those with the determination and grit to put in the work. Full-time authors work their butts off writing their books. Sometimes they supplement with freelance writing or editing—all in the writing sphere. Freelance copywriters like Danny Margulies are killing it right now.

19. Writing is an Important Work Skill

This goes back to communication. In any job, you'll have to write at least something. Emails, reports, post-it notes on your boss's desk... Writing well means the people reading it don't waste time and effort trying to decipher what you wrote. It also means there's no confusion about a message you (or someone else) meant to send. Nothing's worse than a CEO writing a company-wide email that sparks panic because she used vague wording and didn't consider her audience.

20. Written Reflection Helps Us Define Better Paths Forward

"Visualization" is big right now. I'm great at visualizing how my fiction stories play out in my head, but not so much with visualizing how I want things to unfold in the real world. This is where writing really helps me. Freewriting reflections and thoughts helps me figure out how I want things to unfold. It helps me decide which paths to take and work through my thoughts more efficiently than mulling them over in my brain.

21. Writing Your Fears and Worries Shrinks Their Impact

Tim Ferriss takes this to a deeper level he calls "Fear Setting." Often, the things we're afraid of seem so big because they're big in our minds. Writing them down puts them into the real world, and most of the time once we write them down we wonder why we were ever afraid of those things.

A big, abstract fear in the brain is a lot scarier than forcing that fear into words so you can think about it. Getting those fears onto a piece of paper shrinks their impact. I've also heard that it helps some people to write their fears down and then burn them... Sounds fun!

22. Concise Writing Quickly Transmits Ideas

Have you ever read Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic book The Scarlet Letter ? I have. I read it in high school and instantly learned what not to do with a paragraph. Hawthorne loved long sentences with infinite commas, semicolons, and flowery language. It hurt my brain to muddle through a single sentence which often made up an entire paragraph. Think about that for a moment... One sentence, long enough to look like a paragraph.

Concise writing is important because you don't want to lose your readers halfway through the first line of your work. Avoiding jargon, flowery language, and unnecessary run-on sentences makes everyone happier.

23. Writing Cements Ideas

Ideas can feel vague until they're written down. This is a core principle with business plans, goals, research, and communication. It's easier to identify what's realistic when you write your ideas and see how they take shape and solidify.

24. Regular Writing Improves Vocabulary & Other Communication Skills

If you want to write well, read. If you want to write like a pro, write. The more often you write, the better you become at your speechmaking skills and other communication skills. Regular writing is important for developing your critical thinking skills.

25. For Some, Writing is a Fun Pastime

Everybody finds entertainment in different ways. One of mine is writing, especially fanfiction. Writing for fun stimulates creative juices that bleed over into other areas of your life. Imagine if a quick 10-minute creative writing session helped you solve a problem you were thinking about at work!

One of my top goals is just to write my books for FUN. I don't want it to be a stressful experience (even though publishing can get that way sometimes). It was SO FUN to publish my first novel,  Mark of Stars , in 2021.

26. Writing Lets You Explore Other Options

Like I mentioned earlier, I have a hard time visualizing real-life situations unfolding how I want them to. I use writing as a workaround. When I write a visualization as if it were a scene in a book, it lets me "see" it more clearly than trying to imagine it in my mind. Doing it this way lets me write the same "scene" multiple different ways, or write a series of "scenes" representing steps to take.

27. Understanding How to Write Can Help You Read Between the Lines

When you really understand how to write, you'll find yourself capable of reading in between the lines. Sometimes people write cagily, trying to say something that masks something else underneath. I see this a lot in politics, especially around election time. Because I know a) writing styles and b) underlying values, it's easier to see party lines or true beliefs even if the candidate is "non-partisan."

28. Every Single Company Needs Good Writers

Without writers, we wouldn't have such iconic slogans as we do right now. The first one that comes to mind is Nike's "Just Do It." Three simple words, strung together in such a way that everyone immediately knows it's Nike—and those words encompass what Nike is about. Companies fail without good writers to communicate the company's mission and values.

29. Writing Improves Social Skills

By now, it shouldn't surprise you to learn that writing improves your social skills. Because writing is an important method for developing communication skills, that translates over to social situations. Writing helps you with the ability to form clear, cohesive thoughts. All that's left is actually saying them!

30. No One Else Can Write Like You

Finally, writing is important because no one else can write like you. Everyone has their own style and voice. I can imitate J.K. Rowling's writing style, and it's definitely influenced mine, but no one on earth can claim to have my exact voice when I write. And that's amazing! It means no one else can say what I have to say, in the way I say it with the written word.

And that's a powerful thing.

What are you writing?

Have a story idea but not sure how to turn it into a book?

Join the 60-Day Novel Writing Challenge ! We have open enrollment, meaning you can start whenever you want! But if you want to do it with a group of other writers, join for the October, January, April, or July cohorts. If you've taken the challenge before, you can upgrade to Returners Premium for group coaching and critiques.

About the author 

Life coach, author, podcast host, cat mom, wife, Ravenclaw, and semi-compulsive hiker living in the Montana Rockies.

Such a lengthy and well explained article. I love this

Thanks! You mentioned lots of things clearly and in detail as I was looking for.

Very inspiring! i also want to be a great writer like you but so much to learn about still. i appreciate if you could lend me some reference e-books/e-novels to continue my passion in reading and eventually write my own novel. thanks and God bless!

I honestly learned a lot from this

I understand the importance of writing but sometimes I just can't put what I want to say in words or in the correct wording.

You are very passionate about this subject of writing! Your points are made valid. You've inspired me to write more and expand my knowledge and effort in writing!

Thank you for the great info! Do you recommend any books?

Thank you so much for posting this. I really loved reading the information because now I have more insight as to what it takes to be a great writer and why it is important.

I love what u are saying i just started my book, but its very difficult, to much pain inside, how do i even think if, i cant remember mostly nothing about my early childhood, i want to write about my biography, but its to tearfull

Love this article. I started writing two weeks ago for about an hour a day to gain clarity on my thoughts and improve my speech communication. So far I feel like an upgraded human being with powerful ammunition of words ready to express my thoughts, goals and principles.

I highly recommend to read this blog to new writers specially as well as professional ones, Writing influence your thoughts that's a sure thing.

Thank you so much for this. It helped me with the school essay I was writing.

Very inspired! I totally agree with some statements. Thank you. I'll share these with my students.

What a lovely, inspirational, and brilliant article. I totally agree with some statements. Thank you.

Thank you very much for this article. I,m from Iran.

Super article. Well explained.

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• Our Mission

Why Students Should Write in All Subjects

Writing improves learning by consolidating information in long-term memory, researchers explain. Plus, five engaging writing activities to use in all subjects.

For Kyle Pahigian, a 10th-grade math teacher at University Park Campus School in Massachusetts, a lesson on congruent triangles doesn’t start with calculators and protractors. Instead, she hands her students a treasure map and asks them to write detailed directions—using landmarks as a guide—to the buried treasure.

“I won’t tell the kids right away, ‘Today we’re going to learn about triangle congruence theorems,’” said Pahigian. “I want them to instead view it as them experimenting with something and doing something that they feel like they’re really good at.” Students often feel intimidated by math, and transforming the activity into a writing exercise eases some of the anxiety of introducing difficult concepts, she said.

In Pahigian’s math class, writing is regularly used as a learning strategy, one that gives her a window into her students’ thinking. “I like to do low-stakes writing when we’re coming up with definitions,” said Pahigian. Instead of telling her students what a polygon is, for example, she’ll show them a set of polygons and a set of non-polygons, and ask them, “What do you notice? What differences do you see?” Students spend a few minutes writing down their answers, and then join groups to compare responses.

“It’s really interesting and fun for me to read what they’ve written, because I can see all the questions. I can see the process,” said Pahigian.

A recent study sheds light on why writing is such a beneficial activity—not just in subjects typically associated with writing, like history and English, but across all subjects. Professor Steve Graham and his colleagues at Arizona State University’s Teachers College analyzed 56 studies looking at the benefits of writing in science, social studies, and math and found that writing “reliably enhanced learning” across all grade levels. While teachers commonly ask students to write about a topic in order to assess how well they understand the material, the process of writing also improves a student’s ability to recall information, make connections between different concepts, and synthesize information in new ways. In effect, writing isn’t just a tool to assess learning, it also promotes it.

Strengthening Memories

Why is writing effective? “Writing about content material facilitates learning by consolidating information in long-term memory,” explain Graham and his colleagues, describing a process known as the retrieval effect . As previous research has shown , information is quickly forgotten if it’s not reinforced, and writing helps to strengthen a student’s memories of the material they’re learning.

It’s the same cognitive mechanism that explains why practice tests are effective : In a 2014 study, students who took low-stakes practice tests in science and history classes scored 16 percentage points higher on their final exams than students who simply studied the material. “Practicing retrieval of recently studied information enhances the likelihood of the learner retrieving that information in the future,” the researchers of the 2014 study said.

Writing about a topic also encourages students to process information at a deeper level. Answering multiple-choice or short-answer questions may help with factual recall, but putting thoughts on paper encourages students to evaluate different ideas, weighing the importance of each one and considering the order they should be presented in, Graham and his colleagues write. By doing so, students may make new connections between ideas, ones they may not have made when initially learning the information.

A Metacognitive Tool

Students often believe that they understand a topic, but if they’re asked to write it down—and explain it—gaps in their understanding may be revealed. One of the most effective writing strategies that Graham and his colleagues found was metacognitive prompting, in which students are asked not only to recall information but also to apply what they’ve learned to different contexts by thinking about multiple sides of a position or making predictions based on what they currently know. For example, instead of simply reading about ecosystems in a textbook, students can write about their own impact by examining how much trash their household produces or the environmental impact of producing the food they eat.

5 Writing Strategies to Use in Any Subject

Here are a variety of ideas teachers have shared with Edutopia in recent years on incorporating writing into a variety of subjects.

“I wonder” journals: At Crellin Elementary School in Oakland, Maryland, teachers encouraged students to ask “I wonder” questions to push their learning beyond the classroom. After visiting a local barn and garden, for example, Dave Miller realized his fifth-grade students had more questions about animals and plants than he had time to answer, so he had them write down anything they were confused or curious about, which helped him plan future lessons and experiments.

“If they don’t wonder, ‘How would we ever survive on the moon?’ then that’s never going to be explored,” said Dana McCauley, Crellin’s principal. “But that doesn’t mean they should stop wondering, because wonderings lead to thinking outside the box, which makes them critical thinkers. As they try to figure it out, and reflect on what they’re doing, that’s where it all ties together for them. That’s where all that learning occurs—where all the connections start being made.”

Travel journals: Every student at Normal Park Museum Magnet, a K–8 school in Chattanooga, Tennessee, created a travel journal to chart their learning. These journals included not only charts, drawings, and graphic organizers, but also writing and reflection pieces that capture students’ learning about a topic.

When fifth-grade teacher Denver Huffstutler began a unit on earth science, he asked his students to imagine they were explorers looking for a new world that could sustain life. In their travel journal, they kept track of everything they were learning, from the impact of man-made disasters to their designs and calculations for a manned rocket that could reach distant planets.

Low-stakes writing: Writing can be daunting, so teachers at University Park Campus School used daily low-stakes writing activities to foster student voice, self-confidence, and critical thinking skills—a school-wide strategy used in every subject.

“The most important thing about it for me is that it’s not censored, and it’s not too highly structured,” said seventh-grade science teacher James Kobialka. “It’s about them getting their own ideas down, and then being able to interact with those ideas, change them, and revise them if they’re not correct.”

For example, when Kobialka’s students were learning about the conservation of mass, he didn’t start by defining it—he showed them a picture and asked, “What do you notice about the atoms on both sides? How can you explain that?” Students wrote down their observations, and the entire class came up with a definition. “From there,” he said, “once that consensus is formed, I’ll ask somebody to write it on the board, and we’ll talk about the key concepts.”

Student-created magazines: In Alessandra King’s algebra class, students created a magazine with dozens of articles about real world applications of math. For each article, they selected a primary source—an article from Scientific American , for example—read it closely, and then wrote a summary. Students wrote about a range of topics, from gerrymandering to fractals in Jackson Pollock’s paintings to invisibility cloaks.

“Effective writing clarifies and organizes a student’s thoughts, and the slow pace of writing is conducive to student learning because it allows them to reason carefully to make sure they’re correct before they state their thoughts,” King wrote. “Studies have shown that writing is valuable specifically for the math classroom—for example, it seems that a student’s ability to explain concepts in writing is related to the ability to comprehend and apply them.”

Creative writing: Former teachers Ed Kang and Amy Schwartzbach-Kang incorporated storytelling and creative writing into their after-school program’s science lessons. For example, they asked students to imagine a creature that could survive in a local habitat —the Chicago River, in their case. What color would it be? What features would help it to survive and defend itself? How would it hunt its prey? Students then wrote a story about their creature that combined science concepts with creative storytelling.

“There’s brain science to support using stories to help kids engage with content and create personal meaning,” explained Kang, who has a Ph.D. in neuroscience. “Listening to facts mainly stimulates the two language-processing areas of the brain. However, when we listen to a story, additional parts of the brain are also activated—regions involved with our senses and motor movements help listeners actually ‘feel’ the descriptions.”

Importance of Academic Writing Essay

Need to write an essay on the importance of academic writing? Or just want to understand how academic writing skills will make you a stronger student? This essay describes the benefits and purpose of academic writing. Go on reading to learn more!

Introduction

• Principles of Academic Writing

Academic writing is the specific field of writing which is based on strict rules and conventions developed to regulate different types of academic writing to guarantee the writing of a standard text. Thus, in spite of their purpose, academic papers are standardized in relation to the format, organization, structure, and presentation of the points discussed.

That is why, academic writing is effective to argue different academic issues according to the certain scheme. However, the skills improved to write academic papers are important not only for the development within the narrow field of the academic writing at university but also for business communication. The standards used to write academic papers can be successfully adapted to the written business communication.

Thus, the importance of academic writing for business communication and for working out business plans depends on such principles and purposes of academic writing as the clear and strict structure of the paper, the stress on the paper’s objective, and the strong argument supported with credible evidences and data because the mentioned factors are important to write an effective business plan and to state the definite opinion.

Purpose & Principles of Academic Writing

The usage of the principles of academic writing for the written business communication and development of business plan is possible with references to the strict rules used to organize academic papers of different types.

It is almost impossible to write the paper and discuss it as an academic one when the definite structure is not followed. The development of the business plan is also based on the clear structure according to which the business plan should present its purpose, the main argument or goal, and the points to be addressed and implemented into practice.

The relevance of the proposed actions should depend on the credible evidences and current data to receive the real picture of the situation and develop the most effective strategy or plan. From this point, the skills used to write the academic paper with the clear structure are also necessary to develop the effective business plan which is easy to be implemented because all the necessary points are mentioned and explained.

Academic papers are written to achieve the definite aim. Thus, the papers are developed to persuade, to argue, to describe, and to contrast and compare facts. There are also a lot of other objectives to write an academic paper (Ballenger, 2010). The ability to stress on the definite objective and complete it in writing is important to developing business papers such as business plans.

As a result, the writing can be discussed as academic when the definite academic goals are achieved with the help of developing different types of papers. To provide the effective written work, it is important to think and act as an academician. It is necessary to read the appropriate books, to discuss the important issues, and to explore the significant information in order to achieve the goal of writing this or that text (Elbow, 1995, p. 72).

From this perspective, to write as a businessman means to write as a person who intends to achieve the definite goal with providing the perfectly structured text which is developed to complete the certain objective. For instance, the main objective of developing a business plan is to provide the effective plan of actions which is designed to overcome the definite issue or propose some strategies.

The academic paper is discussed as strong when it is based on the clear and well-developed argument which is supported by credible evidences. In business communication, it is always important to pay attention to the audience. Thus, the audience of academic writing is often the persons who can have the greater knowledge of the field than the author of the text (Elbow, 1995, p. 81).

That is why, the task of the writer is to provide the effective argument which is carefully developed and supported with reliable facts and evidences to persuade the audience in the writer’s competence in relation to the topic discussed (Hoffman & Ford, 2009). Referring to the example of the business plan, it is possible to note that the successfully structured business plan cannot be discussed as effective, if it is not based on convincing evidences and current data.

The opponents of this idea can state that business writing is correlated with the academic writing only formally. However, persons who are involved in the realities of the business world agree that it is the task of the businessman and writer to operate the information efficiently and organize the paper which meets requirements of the business communication (Ann & David, personal communication, 2013). The skills and principles used in academic writing are important to complete these tasks.

Businessmen should know what to say to the public. If the statement is presented in the written form, it should be organized and formatted more properly than the oral speech.

That is why, the principles of academic writing are helpful to develop business plans, reports, and observations in order to present the material in an effective manner to achieve the definite goal. The written communication is one of the key aspects of business professions that is why the basic principles of academic writing can affect the person’s success in business writing.

Ballenger, B. (2010). The curious writer . USA: Longman.

Elbow, P. (1995). Being a writer vs. being an academic: A conflict in goals. College Composition and Communication, 46 (1), 72-83.

Hoffman, M. & Ford, D. (2009). Organization rhetoric: Situation and strategies . California: SAGE Publishers.

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• Chicago (N-B)

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Bibliography

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Why Are Writing Skills Important: A Comprehensive Overview

By: Author Paul Jenkins

Posted on April 19, 2023

Categories Writing

In today’s fast-paced world, effective communication is more important than ever. Writing skills are critical in helping people convey their thoughts, ideas, and information efficiently and accurately. The importance of these skills can be found in various aspects of life, from professional settings to personal relationships.

Strong writing skills enable individuals to communicate their ideas and opinions clearly and concisely, making it easier for readers to understand and absorb the intended message. This is particularly important in the workplace, where employers seek candidates with excellent written communication abilities for various job roles. Furthermore, in the digital age, written communication has become the primary avenue for obtaining information and interacting with others, emphasizing the need for continuous improvement in this area.

By developing and refining one’s writing skills, individuals can enhance their personal and professional growth and contribute positively to their surroundings by facilitating better understanding and collaboration with others. Ultimately, the significance of writing skills cannot be overstated, as they are instrumental in achieving success in various aspects of life.

25 Reasons Why Writing Skills Are Important

• Enhances clarity in business communication, ensuring that ideas and proposals are effectively presented.
• Improves professional image by showcasing well-structured and organized business documents.
• Facilitates collaboration and teamwork by promoting clear and concise communication among colleagues.
• Boosts career prospects, as strong writing skills are highly valued in the workplace.
• Increases credibility and authority in academic research and publications.
• Fosters effective communication in personal and professional settings, reducing misunderstandings.
• Enables individuals to convey complex ideas and information in an accessible manner.
• Supports career growth and development by demonstrating expertise through well-written content.
• Enhances grammar proficiency, leading to fewer errors and increased readability of written work.
• Builds strong relationships through clear and meaningful written communication.
• Improves the ability to persuade and influence others in professional settings.
• Reflects positively on a company’s image when employees exhibit excellent writing skills.
• Facilitates the creation of high-quality technical documents, increasing user satisfaction and comprehension.
• Helps avoid costly mistakes and misunderstandings due to grammatical errors or unclear writing.
• Demonstrates mastery of an essential skill required in various professional settings.
• Improves written communication skills, leading to better collaboration and productivity.
• Enhances overall writing style and effectiveness, making the work more engaging for readers.
• Identifies good writers as valuable assets, distinguishing them from those with poor writing skills.
• Supports students’ academic success by improving their ability to convey information and ideas.
• Increases the impact of the writing process by refining and perfecting written work.
• Promotes efficiency and effectiveness in workplace communication.
• Encourages lifelong learning and personal growth through writing courses and workshops.
• Enhances critical thinking and problem-solving skills in academic and professional settings.
• Develops the ability to adapt writing styles for various audiences and purposes, increasing versatility and marketability.
• Cultivates creative expression through storytelling, poetry, and other forms of creative writing, enriching personal experiences and fostering connections with others.

The Value of Writing Skills

Writing skills are crucial in today’s world for various aspects of life.

Personal Development

Good writing skills can enhance an individual’s personal development in numerous ways. Writing enables individuals to express themselves effectively and properly communicate their ideas and emotions. Through writing, people can engage in creative exercises to enhance mental processing, explore new perspectives, and stimulate critical thinking abilities.

Writing can also help gain self-confidence by becoming a better communicator with family, friends, and strangers. It is a powerful tool for reflection, enabling one to examine events from the past, better understand themselves, and plan their future goals and aspirations.

Professional Growth

Strong writing skills can significantly impact an individual’s career prospects in the professional sphere. Many employers form their first impression of future employees through resumes, cover letters, and email communications, making writing skills essential for career success.

Effective writing is necessary for drafting clear and concise reports, presentations, and proposals. Moreover, it facilitates collaboration and teamwork among colleagues by improving communication efficiency, ensuring accurate understanding, and fewer misunderstandings.

Writing well is emphasized even further in business environments that rely on digital communication. Digital written communication could involve shared documents, emails, or cloud-based platforms. Employees’ writing skills should align with these digital options to establish strong professional relationships with internal and external stakeholders.

Effective Communication

Strong writing skills are crucial in improving effective communication in personal and professional settings. Converting thoughts, ideas, and information is essential for success in various fields.

Clarity and Organization

Writing with clarity and organization helps readers understand the message with ease. A well-structured written piece ensures the intended message is delivered and the content is easily digestible for the target audience. Clear and organized writing helps to:

• Enhance professional image
• Build connections with customers
• Convey points quickly and efficiently

Accurate grammar, punctuation, and word choice enhance clarity by minimizing confusion or misinterpretation. This results in fewer misunderstandings and stronger relationships between the writer and reader, ultimately leading to better operational efficiency and productivity in the workplace.

Persuasion and Influencing Skills

Effective writing is not only limited to transmitting information but also involves persuading and influencing others. Persuasive writing helps in:

• Selling ideas, products, or services
• Convincing readers to adopt a specific viewpoint or take action
• Creating compelling proposals that generate support and consensus

By using persuasive writing techniques such as providing evidence, anticipating objections, and crafting a compelling call-to-action, writers can make a strong case for their arguments, making their content highly persuasive and influential.

Critical Thinking Enhancement

Developing effective writing skills is essential not only for conveying information but also for enhancing critical thinking abilities. This section explores how writing skills contribute to better critical thinking by focusing on two sub-sections: Analyzing Information and Problem-Solving.

Analyzing Information

When an individual engages in writing, they must carefully evaluate and interpret the information they gather from various sources. This process requires the writer to employ critical thinking skills to determine the information’s accuracy, relevance, and credibility. Analyzing information strengthens a piece of writing and enhances a person’s ability to examine different perspectives, determine inconsistencies, and challenge assumptions.

Furthermore, writing requires individuals to organize their thoughts; this step involves prioritizing, categorizing, and synthesizing the data. As a result, critical thinking is developed and refined through writing and evaluating arguments and ideas.

Problem-Solving

When faced with a particular issue, individuals often must identify potential solutions before deciding the best course of action. Writing can be a valuable tool in this process, as it assists individuals in clearly articulating their thoughts and ideas.

Effective writing necessitates the incorporation of critical thinking skills to identify and address problems, design logical solutions, and concisely communicate these options. Such problem-solving abilities are critical not only for academic and professional success but also for personal development.

In summary, enhancing writing skills significantly contributes to the improvement of critical thinking abilities. Developing proficiency in analyzing information and solving problems through writing helps individuals become better communicators and more effective decision-makers.

Creativity and Self-Expression

Developing writing skills is crucial for nurturing creativity and self-expression. Writing enables individuals to communicate their thoughts, emotions, and ideas more effectively and engagingly. This section delves into the importance of creativity and self-expression through writing, focusing on emotional intelligence and storytelling ability.

Emotional Intelligence

Writing can help enhance emotional intelligence by allowing individuals to explore, understand, and express their emotions. Through creative writing, individuals can engage with their emotional experiences and tap into their inner feelings, allowing them to understand their emotions better and manage them more effectively. This heightened emotional intelligence contributes to improved relationships and overall well-being. As mentioned in Positive Psychology, self-expression is vital to living a fulfilled life and reaching our full potential.

Practicing creative writing, such as poetry and personal essays, enables individuals to express their thoughts and emotions more openly and develop emotional intelligence. By giving form to their experiences, people can gain greater insight and understanding of themselves and their world.

Storytelling Ability

One significant aspect of writing skills is storytelling ability. Creating compelling narratives is vital in communication, persuasion, and entertainment. A well-crafted story can influence people’s thoughts and beliefs, inspiring change and fostering empathy. Creative writing allows individuals to think outside the box and explore different perspectives through storytelling.

Storytelling skills can also benefit professional communication, as engaging narratives capture attention and convey messages more effectively. Good storytelling can make a significant impact, whether writing a marketing campaign, a company report, or effectively conveying information in the workplace.

Collaboration and Teamwork

Effective collaboration and teamwork are essential components for success within any professional context. Writing skills are crucial in fostering these collaborative efforts and ensuring productive communication between team members.

Writing for Diverse Audiences

As an essential aspect of collaboration, writing skills enable individuals to convey their ideas and insights to colleagues with varying backgrounds and expertise. A good writer understands that different team members may have different levels of familiarity with the subject or focus areas. They should, therefore, tailor their written communication to be easily understood by various audiences within the team.

For example, when writing an email involving technical details, it is essential to provide necessary background information and concise explanations for a more general audience. This approach ensures all team members can follow the discussion and work together effectively.

Adapting to Feedback

Another crucial aspect of collaboration and teamwork is being receptive to feedback from team members. Writing skills are essential because they allow team members to provide clear and constructive feedback on each other’s work. By articulating their suggestions and concerns effectively, individuals can help create an environment of mutual respect and continuous improvement.

When receiving written feedback, professionals must demonstrate adaptability and a willingness to refine their work. This may involve reorganizing content, revising language, or rethinking their approach altogether. By being receptive to feedback and skillfully incorporating it into their writing, team members can better align their work with the group’s needs and contribute more effectively to the team’s overall objectives.

Digital Presence and Online Reputation

Writing skills are crucial in managing and enhancing one’s digital presence and online reputation. How individuals and organizations present themselves through written communication can significantly impact their credibility and success in the digital world.

Social Media

Effective writing is essential for engaging and meaningful social media interactions. Clear and concise content helps convey messages accurately and makes it easier for others to understand and respond. Companies can use social media platforms to build brands and foster customer relationships. A well-written and thought-out social media presence can help to project a positive image, which in turn aids in building trust and credibility among users. People favor companies with strong written communication, exhibiting professionalism and attention to detail.

Blogging and Content Creation

Blogging and content creation are potent tools for individuals and businesses to establish expertise in their respective fields. Effective writing lets them present complex ideas straightforwardly, engaging readers and enhancing their perceived authority. A well-structured and informative blog post or article can attract readership, generate leads, and build a loyal customer base.

High-quality content also contributes significantly to search engine optimization. Search engines like Google assess the readability and relevance of written content when ranking websites, making it crucial for online success. Maintaining a consistent and well-written blog can drive organic traffic to a website and ultimately increase visibility in search results.

In conclusion, honing one’s writing skills is essential for managing and improving digital presence and online reputation. Effective written communication across social media platforms, blog posts, and other content enables individuals and organizations to connect with their target audience and project a professional image, contributing to overall success in today’s digital landscape.

Writing skills are essential today as the foundation for effective communication in various personal and professional contexts. A firm grasp of writing techniques facilitates the exchange of ideas and information and enhances the clarity and impact of one’s messages across diverse platforms.

Through honing these skills, individuals can convey their thoughts more precisely, contributing to successful collaborations, business transactions, and interpersonal interactions. Moreover, well-developed writing abilities are highly sought after by employers, who increasingly prioritize effective written communication in the rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Ultimately, investing time and effort to improve one’s writing skills is advantageous for academic success, personal growth, and career advancement. By fostering creativity, imagination, and critical thinking, these skills empower individuals to express themselves confidently and persuasively, quickly navigating modern society’s complexities.

What is academic writing and why is it important?

Dec 27, 2020 | Academic Writing , College Applications , Englist blog , TOEFL Prep | 0 comments

Academic writing has become an increasingly important part of education as parents and educators realize the value of critical thinking skills and preparing students for college. 

Still, many students, parents, and even other teachers don’t have a great grasp on this area of learning and why it is so critical.

As such, at Englist we find it is important to not only teach academic writing, but also help everyone understand why it is imperative to the development of thoughtful and capable students.

What is academic writing?

First, what is academic writing? Most students see writing as something they just have to do because a teacher says so, and it becomes a painful and time-consuming assignment. Our mission is to end this kind of thinking.

Simply put, academic writing is teaching students how to write essays. That sounds pretty simple, but there is a lot more to it than that.

Essay writing is the process of sharing complex ideas, thoughts, or opinions. Writers learn to construct a rather complicated argument or explanation by combining sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into an essay.

Academic writing demands writers become clear in their explanations and reasoning, direct in their communication, and most importantly, able to make readers understand their topic and thesis.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

11.1 The Purpose of Research Writing

Learning objectives.

• Identify reasons to research writing projects.
• Outline the steps of the research writing process.

Why was the Great Wall of China built? What have scientists learned about the possibility of life on Mars? What roles did women play in the American Revolution? How does the human brain create, store, and retrieve memories? Who invented the game of football, and how has it changed over the years?

You may know the answers to these questions off the top of your head. If you are like most people, however, you find answers to tough questions like these by searching the Internet, visiting the library, or asking others for information. To put it simply, you perform research.

Whether you are a scientist, an artist, a paralegal, or a parent, you probably perform research in your everyday life. When your boss, your instructor, or a family member asks you a question that you do not know the answer to, you locate relevant information, analyze your findings, and share your results. Locating, analyzing, and sharing information are key steps in the research process, and in this chapter, you will learn more about each step. By developing your research writing skills, you will prepare yourself to answer any question no matter how challenging.

Reasons for Research

When you perform research, you are essentially trying to solve a mystery—you want to know how something works or why something happened. In other words, you want to answer a question that you (and other people) have about the world. This is one of the most basic reasons for performing research.

But the research process does not end when you have solved your mystery. Imagine what would happen if a detective collected enough evidence to solve a criminal case, but she never shared her solution with the authorities. Presenting what you have learned from research can be just as important as performing the research. Research results can be presented in a variety of ways, but one of the most popular—and effective—presentation forms is the research paper . A research paper presents an original thesis, or purpose statement, about a topic and develops that thesis with information gathered from a variety of sources.

If you are curious about the possibility of life on Mars, for example, you might choose to research the topic. What will you do, though, when your research is complete? You will need a way to put your thoughts together in a logical, coherent manner. You may want to use the facts you have learned to create a narrative or to support an argument. And you may want to show the results of your research to your friends, your teachers, or even the editors of magazines and journals. Writing a research paper is an ideal way to organize thoughts, craft narratives or make arguments based on research, and share your newfound knowledge with the world.

Write a paragraph about a time when you used research in your everyday life. Did you look for the cheapest way to travel from Houston to Denver? Did you search for a way to remove gum from the bottom of your shoe? In your paragraph, explain what you wanted to research, how you performed the research, and what you learned as a result.

Research Writing and the Academic Paper

No matter what field of study you are interested in, you will most likely be asked to write a research paper during your academic career. For example, a student in an art history course might write a research paper about an artist’s work. Similarly, a student in a psychology course might write a research paper about current findings in childhood development.

Having to write a research paper may feel intimidating at first. After all, researching and writing a long paper requires a lot of time, effort, and organization. However, writing a research paper can also be a great opportunity to explore a topic that is particularly interesting to you. The research process allows you to gain expertise on a topic of your choice, and the writing process helps you remember what you have learned and understand it on a deeper level.

Research Writing at Work

Knowing how to write a good research paper is a valuable skill that will serve you well throughout your career. Whether you are developing a new product, studying the best way to perform a procedure, or learning about challenges and opportunities in your field of employment, you will use research techniques to guide your exploration. You may even need to create a written report of your findings. And because effective communication is essential to any company, employers seek to hire people who can write clearly and professionally.

Writing at Work

Take a few minutes to think about each of the following careers. How might each of these professionals use researching and research writing skills on the job?

• Medical laboratory technician
• Small business owner
• Information technology professional
• Freelance magazine writer

A medical laboratory technician or information technology professional might do research to learn about the latest technological developments in either of these fields. A small business owner might conduct research to learn about the latest trends in his or her industry. A freelance magazine writer may need to research a given topic to write an informed, up-to-date article.

Think about the job of your dreams. How might you use research writing skills to perform that job? Create a list of ways in which strong researching, organizing, writing, and critical thinking skills could help you succeed at your dream job. How might these skills help you obtain that job?

Steps of the Research Writing Process

How does a research paper grow from a folder of brainstormed notes to a polished final draft? No two projects are identical, but most projects follow a series of six basic steps.

These are the steps in the research writing process:

• Choose a topic.
• Plan and schedule time to research and write.
• Conduct research.
• Organize research and ideas.
• Draft your paper.
• Revise and edit your paper.

Each of these steps will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter. For now, though, we will take a brief look at what each step involves.

Step 1: Choosing a Topic

As you may recall from Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” , to narrow the focus of your topic, you may try freewriting exercises, such as brainstorming. You may also need to ask a specific research question —a broad, open-ended question that will guide your research—as well as propose a possible answer, or a working thesis . You may use your research question and your working thesis to create a research proposal . In a research proposal, you present your main research question, any related subquestions you plan to explore, and your working thesis.

Step 2: Planning and Scheduling

Before you start researching your topic, take time to plan your researching and writing schedule. Research projects can take days, weeks, or even months to complete. Creating a schedule is a good way to ensure that you do not end up being overwhelmed by all the work you have to do as the deadline approaches.

During this step of the process, it is also a good idea to plan the resources and organizational tools you will use to keep yourself on track throughout the project. Flowcharts, calendars, and checklists can all help you stick to your schedule. See Chapter 11 “Writing from Research: What Will I Learn?” , Section 11.2 “Steps in Developing a Research Proposal” for an example of a research schedule.

Step 3: Conducting Research

When going about your research, you will likely use a variety of sources—anything from books and periodicals to video presentations and in-person interviews.

Your sources will include both primary sources and secondary sources . Primary sources provide firsthand information or raw data. For example, surveys, in-person interviews, and historical documents are primary sources. Secondary sources, such as biographies, literary reviews, or magazine articles, include some analysis or interpretation of the information presented. As you conduct research, you will take detailed, careful notes about your discoveries. You will also evaluate the reliability of each source you find.

Step 4: Organizing Research and the Writer’s Ideas

When your research is complete, you will organize your findings and decide which sources to cite in your paper. You will also have an opportunity to evaluate the evidence you have collected and determine whether it supports your thesis, or the focus of your paper. You may decide to adjust your thesis or conduct additional research to ensure that your thesis is well supported.

Remember, your working thesis is not set in stone. You can and should change your working thesis throughout the research writing process if the evidence you find does not support your original thesis. Never try to force evidence to fit your argument. For example, your working thesis is “Mars cannot support life-forms.” Yet, a week into researching your topic, you find an article in the New York Times detailing new findings of bacteria under the Martian surface. Instead of trying to argue that bacteria are not life forms, you might instead alter your thesis to “Mars cannot support complex life-forms.”

Step 5: Drafting Your Paper

Now you are ready to combine your research findings with your critical analysis of the results in a rough draft. You will incorporate source materials into your paper and discuss each source thoughtfully in relation to your thesis or purpose statement.

When you cite your reference sources, it is important to pay close attention to standard conventions for citing sources in order to avoid plagiarism , or the practice of using someone else’s words without acknowledging the source. Later in this chapter, you will learn how to incorporate sources in your paper and avoid some of the most common pitfalls of attributing information.

Step 6: Revising and Editing Your Paper

In the final step of the research writing process, you will revise and polish your paper. You might reorganize your paper’s structure or revise for unity and cohesion, ensuring that each element in your paper flows into the next logically and naturally. You will also make sure that your paper uses an appropriate and consistent tone.

Once you feel confident in the strength of your writing, you will edit your paper for proper spelling, grammar, punctuation, mechanics, and formatting. When you complete this final step, you will have transformed a simple idea or question into a thoroughly researched and well-written paper you can be proud of!

Review the steps of the research writing process. Then answer the questions on your own sheet of paper.

• In which steps of the research writing process are you allowed to change your thesis?
• In step 2, which types of information should you include in your project schedule?
• What might happen if you eliminated step 4 from the research writing process?

Key Takeaways

• People undertake research projects throughout their academic and professional careers in order to answer specific questions, share their findings with others, increase their understanding of challenging topics, and strengthen their researching, writing, and analytical skills.
• The research writing process generally comprises six steps: choosing a topic, scheduling and planning time for research and writing, conducting research, organizing research and ideas, drafting a paper, and revising and editing the paper.

Writing for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Why Essay Writing Skills Are Important

What is the most well-known, legalised torture device utilised in schools in current times? Essay writing! Though today students can easily delegate their assignments and have professional paper writers write an essay for me , dealing with writing assignments is still torture for most students. Nearly every English writing class exhibits some form of instruction on writing these oh-so-dreadful explanatory essays and argumentative papers. It is no secret that many students find essay writing to be dull, tiring, and useless, moving them to question if, or why essay writing is important. Are essay-writing skills useful at all? Unequivocally, the skill of essay writing is essential and one of the most influential and beneficial skills one can learn.

Essay writing teaches individuals to organise their arguments in a proper manner. In essence, every statement is an argument, arguing an idea or belief that the speaker is attempting to prove or support. Essay writing equips individuals with the skill of effectively introducing an idea, and choosing methods of support they should utilise to formulate a convincing argument; improving the ability to explain one’s thoughts in an understandable and convincing manner is the sole purpose of writing essays. By practicing writing essays , people imprint in their minds a general structure for presenting ideas, building a foundation for successful argumentation and coherent, logical presentation of concepts. Some may claim that “copying” the typical essay format results in unoriginal arguments, yet they fail to recognise the true purpose of following such a structure. In the real world, individuals do not present every thought in the form of a five-paragraph essay; this model is only a template to guide a person’s thoughts and aid them in presenting a logical arrangement of ideas. Revision of a draft plays a crucial role in writing an essay. In this case, you can address Studyfy proofreading  professionals for them to evaluate your work and give you tips on how to improve it. Repeatedly writing essays trains the brain to automatically present ideas and supports in the best way possible. Cohesive explanations and rational placement of concepts are a skill essential in all careers, and essays are the perfect tools to sharpen these skills and better prepare individuals for their future careers.

Essay writing also teaches individuals how to effectively support well-thought-out claims. By writing multiple essays, individuals learn to choose the most compelling evidence to support an argument. Research essays are especially useful, as they train the mind to search for the most credible, correct, and useful information and incorporate it in such a way that will leave the audience convinced of the speaker’s claim. Choosing useful evidence to prove a claim is an essential skill in all areas of life, as it helps individuals better argue their ideas and choose supports that will enhance their claim or idea. Knowing how to select key points to argue a claim and understanding the best way to present an idea will help individuals successfully formulate convincing arguments in their future. The main advantage of essays is that there is no single template for writing all of them. However, there are still some criteria that must be met anyway. You can buy paper , list your requirements and preferences, and see what your assignment will look like when completed by experts.

Some may assert that essay-writing skills are most useful to those pursuing careers in writing or language only, however, this is false. Writing essays and essay outlines teaches people to think smarter. Rather than writing simple, one-sentence responses to a prompt, essays push individuals to delve into the subject matter and explore topics more in-depth. Repeating the exercise of writing essays trains the brain to think beyond the superficial meaning of concepts, improving analytical skills, and pushing individuals to learn more. This teaches critical thinking, and forces the mind to consider the issue, claim, or concept from different standpoints, and, most importantly, to understand and refute opposing views. Writing essays also allows individuals to practice condensing a plethora of material into a shorter, concise finished product that is not overwhelming and is easy to understand. Through this practice, people learn to expand a topic and explore all of its meanings, as well as convey a complex and multifaceted subject in a simpler, better manner. Polishing these skills helps prepare individuals for real-world scenarios such as providing an explanation for a concept, or giving a presentation about a topic, or even having a discussion about a certain subject matter. Essay writing is not difficult to learn, but difficult to master. Without a doubt, the skills individuals learn from essay writing are among the most significant skills one can obtain in their youth.

Before you go! Have you read our Magazine?

The Writing Process

Making expository writing less stressful, more efficient, and more enlightening, search form, you are here, why should i use a writing process.

“A blank piece of paper.” —Nobel Prize-winning writer Ernest Hemingway when asked about the scariest thing he’d ever encountered

First of all, it is important to recognize that even though it may be informal or unconscious and may vary slightly depending on the writing task, you probably already do use a writing process , and it probably goes something like this:

• You read the instructions and anxiously choose a topic, doing a cost-benefit analysis between what will be easiest to write, what will be most interesting for you, and what will get you the best grade in the least amount of time.
• You do some brainstorming and make some notes.
• You make a very rough, minimal outline, either on paper or just in your head.
• You begin a painful struggle of writing the paper itself, agonizing over sentences and worrying not only about what ideas to put down but also how to say them not only grammatically correctly but even elegantly.
• As this is often done the night (or morning) before the assignment is due, you take a short break and then reread the paper, fixing any spelling or grammar mistakes you notice and perhaps rewriting or adding a sentence or two.
• You turn in the paper with that sense of fear still in the pit of your stomach and perhaps a vague—or very distinct—feeling that you could have done better, though you're not sure how.

Thus there are a few important reasons to use a formal writing process:

1. Reduce anxiety and stress.

2. Increase quality.

3. Learn more.

How Does Writing Fit Into the ‘Science of Reading’?

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In one sense, the national conversation about what it will take to make sure all children become strong readers has been wildly successful: States are passing legislation supporting evidence-based teaching approaches , and school districts are rushing to supply training. Publishers are under pressure to drop older materials . And for the first time in years, an instructional issue—reading—is headlining education media coverage.

In the middle of all that, though, the focus on the “science of reading” has elided its twin component in literacy instruction: writing.

Writing is intrinsically important for all students to learn—after all, it is the primary way beyond speech that humans communicate. But more than that, research suggests that teaching students to write in an integrated fashion with reading is not only efficient, it’s effective.

Yet writing is often underplayed in the elementary grades. Too often, it is separated from schools’ reading block. Writing is not assessed as frequently as reading, and principals, worried about reading-exam scores, direct teachers to focus on one often at the expense of the other. Finally, beyond the English/language arts block, kids often aren’t asked to do much writing in early grades.

“Sometimes, in an early-literacy classroom, you’ll hear a teacher say, ‘It’s time to pick up your pencils,’” said Wiley Blevins, an author and literacy consultant who provides training in schools. “But your pencils should be in your hand almost the entire morning.”

Strikingly, many of the critiques that reading researchers have made against the “balanced literacy” approach that has held sway in schools for decades could equally apply to writing instruction: Foundational writing skills—like phonics and language structure—have not generally been taught systematically or explicitly.

And like the “find the main idea” strategies commonly taught in reading comprehension, writing instruction has tended to focus on content-neutral tasks, rather than deepening students’ connections to the content they learn.

Education Week wants to bring more attention to these connections in the stories that make up this special collection . But first, we want to delve deeper into the case for including writing in every step of the elementary curriculum.

Why has writing been missing from the reading conversation?

Much like the body of knowledge on how children learn to read words, it is also settled science that reading and writing draw on shared knowledge, even though they have traditionally been segmented in instruction.

“The body of research is substantial in both number of studies and quality of studies. There’s no question that reading and writing share a lot of real estate, they depend on a lot of the same knowledge and skills,” said Timothy Shanahan, an emeritus professor of education at the University of Illinois Chicago. “Pick your spot: text structure, vocabulary, sound-symbol relationships, ‘world knowledge.’”

The reasons for the bifurcation in reading and writing are legion. One is that the two fields have typically been studied separately. (Researchers studying writing usually didn’t examine whether a writing intervention, for instance, also aided students’ reading abilities—and vice versa.)

Some scholars also finger the dominance of the federally commissioned National Reading Panel report, which in 2000 outlined key instructional components of learning to read. The review didn’t examine the connection of writing to reading.

Looking even further back yields insights, too. Penmanship and spelling were historically the only parts of writing that were taught, and when writing reappeared in the latter half of the 20th century, it tended to focus on “process writing,” emphasizing personal experience and story generation over other genres. Only when the Common Core State Standards appeared in 2010 did the emphasis shift to writing about nonfiction texts and across subjects—the idea that students should be writing about what they’ve learned.

And finally, teaching writing is hard. Few studies document what preparation teachers receive to teach writing, but in surveys, many teachers say they received little training in their college education courses. That’s probably why only a little over half of teachers, in one 2016 survey, said that they enjoyed teaching writing.

Writing should begin in the early grades

These factors all work against what is probably the most important conclusion from the research over the last few decades: Students in the early-elementary grades need lots of varied opportunities to write.

“Students need support in their writing,” said Dana Robertson, an associate professor of reading and literacy education at the school of education at Virginia Tech who also studies how instructional change takes root in schools. “They need to be taught explicitly the skills and strategies of writing and they need to see the connections of reading, writing, and knowledge development.”

While research supports some fundamental tenets of writing instruction—that it should be structured, for instance, and involve drafting and revising—it hasn’t yet pointed to a specific teaching recipe that works best.

One of the challenges, the researchers note, is that while reading curricula have improved over the years, they still don’t typically provide many supports for students—or teachers, for that matter—for writing. Teachers often have to supplement with additions that don’t always mesh well with their core, grade-level content instruction.

“We have a lot of activities in writing we know are good,” Shanahan said. “We don’t really have a yearlong elementary-school-level curriculum in writing. That just doesn’t exist the way it does in reading.”

Nevertheless, practitioners like Blevins work writing into every reading lesson, even in the earliest grades. And all the components that make up a solid reading program can be enhanced through writing activities.

4 Key Things to Know About How Reading and Writing Interlock

Want a quick summary of what research tells us about the instructional connections between reading and writing?

1. Reading and writing are intimately connected.

Research on the connections began in the early 1980s and has grown more robust with time.

Among the newest and most important additions are three research syntheses conducted by Steve Graham, a professor at the University of Arizona, and his research partners. One of them examined whether writing instruction also led to improvements in students’ reading ability; a second examined the inverse question. Both found significant positive effects for reading and writing.

A third meta-analysis gets one step closer to classroom instruction. Graham and partners examined 47 studies of instructional programs that balanced both reading and writing—no program could feature more than 60 percent of one or the other. The results showed generally positive effects on both reading and writing measures.

2. Writing matters even at the earliest grades, when students are learning to read.

Studies show that the prewriting students do in early education carries meaningful signals about their decoding, spelling, and reading comprehension later on. Reading experts say that students should be supported in writing almost as soon as they begin reading, and evidence suggests that both spelling and handwriting are connected to the ability to connect speech to print and to oral language development.

3. Like reading, writing must be taught explicitly.

Writing is a complex task that demands much of students’ cognitive resources. Researchers generally agree that writing must be explicitly taught—rather than left up to students to “figure out” the rules on their own.

There isn’t as much research about how precisely to do this. One 2019 review, in fact, found significant overlap among the dozen writing programs studied, and concluded that all showed signs of boosting learning. Debates abound about the amount of structure students need and in what sequence, such as whether they need to master sentence construction before moving onto paragraphs and lengthier texts.

But in general, students should be guided on how to construct sentences and paragraphs, and they should have access to models and exemplars, the research suggests. They also need to understand the iterative nature of writing, including how to draft and revise.

A number of different writing frameworks incorporating various degrees of structure and modeling are available, though most of them have not been studied empirically.

4. Writing can help students learn content—and make sense of it.

Much of reading comprehension depends on helping students absorb “world knowledge”—think arts, ancient cultures, literature, and science—so that they can make sense of increasingly sophisticated texts and ideas as their reading improves. Writing can enhance students’ content learning, too, and should be emphasized rather than taking a back seat to the more commonly taught stories and personal reflections.

Graham and colleagues conducted another meta-analysis of nearly 60 studies looking at this idea of “writing to learn” in mathematics, science, and social studies. The studies included a mix of higher-order assignments, like analyses and argumentative writing, and lower-level ones, like summarizing and explaining. The study found that across all three disciplines, writing about the content improved student learning.

If students are doing work on phonemic awareness—the ability to recognize sounds—they shouldn’t merely manipulate sounds orally; they can put them on the page using letters. If students are learning how to decode, they can also encode—record written letters and words while they say the sounds out loud.

And students can write as they begin learning about language structure. When Blevins’ students are mainly working with decodable texts with controlled vocabularies, writing can support their knowledge about how texts and narratives work: how sentences are put together and how they can be pulled apart and reconstructed. Teachers can prompt them in these tasks, asking them to rephrase a sentence as a question, split up two sentences, or combine them.

“Young kids are writing these mile-long sentences that become second nature. We set a higher bar, and they are fully capable of doing it. We can demystify a bit some of that complex text if we develop early on how to talk about sentences—how they’re created, how they’re joined,” Blevins said. “There are all these things you can do that are helpful to develop an understanding of how sentences work and to get lots of practice.”

As students progress through the elementary grades, this structured work grows more sophisticated. They need to be taught both sentence and paragraph structure , and they need to learn how different writing purposes and genres—narrative, persuasive, analytical—demand different approaches. Most of all, the research indicates, students need opportunities to write at length often.

Using writing to support students’ exploration of content

Reading is far more than foundational skills, of course. It means introducing students to rich content and the specialized vocabulary in each discipline and then ensuring that they read, discuss, analyze, and write about those ideas. The work to systematically build students’ knowledge begins in the early grades and progresses throughout their K-12 experience.

Here again, available evidence suggests that writing can be a useful tool to help students explore, deepen, and draw connections in this content. With the proper supports, writing can be a method for students to retell and analyze what they’ve learned in discussions of content and literature throughout the school day —in addition to their creative writing.

This “writing to learn” approach need not wait for students to master foundational skills. In the K-2 grades especially, much content is learned through teacher read-alouds and conversation that include more complex vocabulary and ideas than the texts students are capable of reading. But that should not preclude students from writing about this content, experts say.

“We do a read-aloud or a media piece and we write about what we learned. It’s just a part of how you’re responding, or sharing, what you’ve learned across texts; it’s not a separate thing from reading,” Blevins said. “If I am doing read-alouds on a concept—on animal habitats, for example—my decodable texts will be on animals. And students are able to include some of these more sophisticated ideas and language in their writing, because we’ve elevated the conversations around these texts.”

In this set of stories , Education Week examines the connections between elementary-level reading and writing in three areas— encoding , language and text structure , and content-area learning . But there are so many more examples.

Please write us to share yours when you’ve finished.

Want to read more about the research that informed this story? Here’s a bibliography to start you off.

Berninger V. W., Abbott, R. D., Abbott, S. P., Graham S., & Richards T. (2002). Writing and reading: Connections between language by hand and language by eye. J ournal of Learning Disabilities. Special Issue: The Language of Written Language, 35(1), 39–56 Berninger, Virginia, Robert D. Abbott, Janine Jones, Beverly J. Wolf, Laura Gould, Marci Anderson-Younstrom, Shirley Shimada, Kenn Apel. (2006) “Early development of language by hand: composing, reading, listening, and speaking connections; three letter-writing modes; and fast mapping in spelling.” Developmental Neuropsychology, 29(1), pp. 61-92 Cabell, Sonia Q, Laura S. Tortorelli, and Hope K. Gerde (2013). “How Do I Write…? Scaffolding Preschoolers’ Early Writing Skills.” The Reading Teacher, 66(8), pp. 650-659. Gerde, H.K., Bingham, G.E. & Wasik, B.A. (2012). “Writing in Early Childhood Classrooms: Guidance for Best Practices.” Early Childhood Education Journal 40, 351–359 (2012) Gilbert, Jennifer, and Steve Graham. (2010). “Teaching Writing to Elementary Students in Grades 4–6: A National Survey.” The Elementary School Journal 110(44) Graham, Steve, et al. (2017). “Effectiveness of Literacy Programs Balancing Reading and Writing Instruction: A Meta-Analysis.” Reading Research Quarterly, 53(3) pp. 279–304 Graham, Steve, and Michael Hebert. (2011). “Writing to Read: A Meta-Analysis of the Impact of Writing and Writing Instruction on Reading.” Harvard Educational Review (2011) 81(4): 710–744. Graham, Steve. (2020). “The Sciences of Reading and Writing Must Become More Fully Integrated.” Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1) pp. S35–S44 Graham, Steve, Sharlene A. Kiuhara, and Meade MacKay. (2020).”The Effects of Writing on Learning in Science, Social Studies, and Mathematics: A Meta-Analysis.” Review of Educational Research April 2020, Vol 90, No. 2, pp. 179–226 Shanahan, Timothy. “History of Writing and Reading Connections.” in Shanahan, Timothy. (2016). “Relationships between reading and writing development.” In C. MacArthur, S. Graham, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Handbook of writing research (2nd ed., pp. 194–207). New York, NY: Guilford. Slavin, Robert, Lake, C., Inns, A., Baye, A., Dachet, D., & Haslam, J. (2019). “A quantitative synthesis of research on writing approaches in grades 2 to 12.” London: Education Endowment Foundation. Troia, Gary. (2014). Evidence-based practices for writing instruction (Document No. IC-5). Retrieved from University of Florida, Collaboration for Effective Educator, Development, Accountability, and Reform Center website: http://ceedar.education.ufl.edu/tools/innovation-configuration/ Troia, Gary, and Steve Graham. (2016).“Common Core Writing and Language Standards and Aligned State Assessments: A National Survey of Teacher Beliefs and Attitudes.” Reading and Writing 29(9).

A version of this article appeared in the January 25, 2023 edition of Education Week as How Does Writing Fit Into the ‘Science of Reading’?

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Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning

Jonathan Lambert

If you're like many digitally savvy Americans, it has likely been a while since you've spent much time writing by hand.

The laborious process of tracing out our thoughts, letter by letter, on the page is becoming a relic of the past in our screen-dominated world, where text messages and thumb-typed grocery lists have replaced handwritten letters and sticky notes. Electronic keyboards offer obvious efficiency benefits that have undoubtedly boosted our productivity — imagine having to write all your emails longhand.

To keep up, many schools are introducing computers as early as preschool, meaning some kids may learn the basics of typing before writing by hand.

But giving up this slower, more tactile way of expressing ourselves may come at a significant cost, according to a growing body of research that's uncovering the surprising cognitive benefits of taking pen to paper, or even stylus to iPad — for both children and adults.

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In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material.

"There's actually some very important things going on during the embodied experience of writing by hand," says Ramesh Balasubramaniam , a neuroscientist at the University of California, Merced. "It has important cognitive benefits."

While those benefits have long been recognized by some (for instance, many authors, including Jennifer Egan and Neil Gaiman , draft their stories by hand to stoke creativity), scientists have only recently started investigating why writing by hand has these effects.

A slew of recent brain imaging research suggests handwriting's power stems from the relative complexity of the process and how it forces different brain systems to work together to reproduce the shapes of letters in our heads onto the page.

Your brain on handwriting

Both handwriting and typing involve moving our hands and fingers to create words on a page. But handwriting, it turns out, requires a lot more fine-tuned coordination between the motor and visual systems. This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.

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"Handwriting is probably among the most complex motor skills that the brain is capable of," says Marieke Longcamp , a cognitive neuroscientist at Aix-Marseille Université.

Gripping a pen nimbly enough to write is a complicated task, as it requires your brain to continuously monitor the pressure that each finger exerts on the pen. Then, your motor system has to delicately modify that pressure to re-create each letter of the words in your head on the page.

"Your fingers have to each do something different to produce a recognizable letter," says Sophia Vinci-Booher , an educational neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. Adding to the complexity, your visual system must continuously process that letter as it's formed. With each stroke, your brain compares the unfolding script with mental models of the letters and words, making adjustments to fingers in real time to create the letters' shapes, says Vinci-Booher.

That's not true for typing.

To type "tap" your fingers don't have to trace out the form of the letters — they just make three relatively simple and uniform movements. In comparison, it takes a lot more brainpower, as well as cross-talk between brain areas, to write than type.

Recent brain imaging studies bolster this idea. A study published in January found that when students write by hand, brain areas involved in motor and visual information processing " sync up " with areas crucial to memory formation, firing at frequencies associated with learning.

"We don't see that [synchronized activity] in typewriting at all," says Audrey van der Meer , a psychologist and study co-author at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She suggests that writing by hand is a neurobiologically richer process and that this richness may confer some cognitive benefits.

Other experts agree. "There seems to be something fundamental about engaging your body to produce these shapes," says Robert Wiley , a cognitive psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "It lets you make associations between your body and what you're seeing and hearing," he says, which might give the mind more footholds for accessing a given concept or idea.

Those extra footholds are especially important for learning in kids, but they may give adults a leg up too. Wiley and others worry that ditching handwriting for typing could have serious consequences for how we all learn and think.

What might be lost as handwriting wanes

The clearest consequence of screens and keyboards replacing pen and paper might be on kids' ability to learn the building blocks of literacy — letters.

"Letter recognition in early childhood is actually one of the best predictors of later reading and math attainment," says Vinci-Booher. Her work suggests the process of learning to write letters by hand is crucial for learning to read them.

"When kids write letters, they're just messy," she says. As kids practice writing "A," each iteration is different, and that variability helps solidify their conceptual understanding of the letter.

Research suggests kids learn to recognize letters better when seeing variable handwritten examples, compared with uniform typed examples.

This helps develop areas of the brain used during reading in older children and adults, Vinci-Booher found.

"This could be one of the ways that early experiences actually translate to long-term life outcomes," she says. "These visually demanding, fine motor actions bake in neural communication patterns that are really important for learning later on."

Ditching handwriting instruction could mean that those skills don't get developed as well, which could impair kids' ability to learn down the road.

"If young children are not receiving any handwriting training, which is very good brain stimulation, then their brains simply won't reach their full potential," says van der Meer. "It's scary to think of the potential consequences."

Many states are trying to avoid these risks by mandating cursive instruction. This year, California started requiring elementary school students to learn cursive , and similar bills are moving through state legislatures in several states, including Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and Wisconsin. (So far, evidence suggests that it's the writing by hand that matters, not whether it's print or cursive.)

Slowing down and processing information

For adults, one of the main benefits of writing by hand is that it simply forces us to slow down.

During a meeting or lecture, it's possible to type what you're hearing verbatim. But often, "you're not actually processing that information — you're just typing in the blind," says van der Meer. "If you take notes by hand, you can't write everything down," she says.

The relative slowness of the medium forces you to process the information, writing key words or phrases and using drawing or arrows to work through ideas, she says. "You make the information your own," she says, which helps it stick in the brain.

Such connections and integration are still possible when typing, but they need to be made more intentionally. And sometimes, efficiency wins out. "When you're writing a long essay, it's obviously much more practical to use a keyboard," says van der Meer.

Still, given our long history of using our hands to mark meaning in the world, some scientists worry about the more diffuse consequences of offloading our thinking to computers.

"We're foisting a lot of our knowledge, extending our cognition, to other devices, so it's only natural that we've started using these other agents to do our writing for us," says Balasubramaniam.

It's possible that this might free up our minds to do other kinds of hard thinking, he says. Or we might be sacrificing a fundamental process that's crucial for the kinds of immersive cognitive experiences that enable us to learn and think at our full potential.

Balasubramaniam stresses, however, that we don't have to ditch digital tools to harness the power of handwriting. So far, research suggests that scribbling with a stylus on a screen activates the same brain pathways as etching ink on paper. It's the movement that counts, he says, not its final form.

Jonathan Lambert is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist who covers science, health and policy.

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