writing

While there may not be something rotten in the state of Denmark anymore, there is something rotten in the state of the Swedish literary community. Sexual assault controversies have exposed elitist attitudes in the Swedish awarding body of the Nobel Prize in Literature; leading to concerned writing enthusiasts, including myself, calling for reform and change.

Many students come to the Writing and Communication Centre to see if their writing flows well. Most of the time these students don’t know why, but they feel as though their writing is hard to follow. Here are the top three reasons your work may seem confusing to the reader. 

Within the first seven seconds of meeting someone, the average person will already have formed a first impression. Now, this could be due to a variety of reasons such as body language, tone or appearance. On the other hand, when it comes to writing, first impressions are formed differently. The first couple of pages give the reader a fairly good idea of whether they would like to continue or not. Here are a couple of tricks to keep the writer engaged.

I’ve always had an interest in art, whether I am creating it or viewing someone else’s. Art galleries are my favourite place to explore visual art as I get to experience how another artist creates their work of art and how it relates to their own concept of art. Through high school and my undergraduate studies, Formal Visual Art Analysis has been an important part of my studies in Fine Arts. 

In our last two writing genre series blog posts, I offered some tips on Graduate School Applications and Catharina discussed the conventions of Lab Report writing. Her upcoming genre topic will be Visual Arts Analysis and you can check it out on April 16th! In this writing genre instalment, on Poetry Analysis, I will provide pointers for poking and prying at poems to peruse and pick up on the poem’s pronouncements and purport.

Monday, March 19, 2018

5 Great reasons to write

Since September 2017, the Writing and Communication Centre has been providing the space and materials for a quilt composed of student voices. Quilting is a metaphor for the community that we have here, as well as the writing process itself since both involve parts coming together to form a whole.

Some of the thought-provoking prompts suggested by staff include “What are your opinions/frustrations/joys about writing?” “How do you feel about writing today?” and “I like writing because…”

International Women’s Day is coming up on March 8th and the University of Waterloo’s Women Centre will be celebrating International Women’s Week starting March 5th. On Monday the 5th, read Kate’s blog post about books that feature compelling female protagonists!

In our last blog post, we talked about different strategies for writing grad school applications. That was our first instalment of a new series on our blog where we will be exploring different writing genres throughout the term. Today’s topic is lab report writing!