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CHAPTER 6: Writing Skills > THE BASICS OF WRITING
THE BASICS OF WRITING
“All language demonstrates three kinds of excellence: correctness, precision, and elegance. Language also has the same number of faults, and these are the opposites of the qualities just mentioned”
—Quintilian
We can add a few more factors to those mentioned by Quintilian. All these factors contribute to clear, fluent, and effective writing:
- Purpose: The reason for writing;
- Audience: The readers;
- Writer's Process: Getting ideas, getting started, writing drafts, revising;
- Mechanics: Handwriting, spelling, punctuation;
- Grammar: Rules of verb, agreement, articles;
- Syntax: Sentence structure, stylistic choice;
- Content: Relevance, clarity, originality, logic;
- Word choice: Vocabulary, idioms, tone;
- Organization: Paragraphs, topic and support sentences, cohesion and unity;