This essay explores "content," a word and concept now often associated with writing in fields including marketing, journalism, publishing, and technical communication. I present a definition of content appropriate to writing studies and explore a range of issues and practices that the content metaphor can bring to our professional,…

Using Mariolina Salvatori's "difficulty paper" assignment to explore student experiences when reading, this paper examines basic writing students' difficulties with reading in the composition classroom. The authors argue that examining difficulty can provide an entry point for understanding how students experience the (dis)connections…

Describes how a "strip story" activity (reassembling a text from strips of paper containing the text's sentences) develops reciprocity, the interaction between reading and writing as the reader negotiates a text and the writer assists the process. (MM)

Explores the physical characteristics of text and how they help the reader, suggesting that if teachers encouraged students to experiment with visible features of written texts, it would increase their ability to understand and use hierarchical and classificatory arrangements in their own writing. (HTH)

Suggests enlarging the sphere of feminist composition by including in it an approach to argument, ways to proceed if one is in conflict with one's audience. Explores the beginning of the feminist theory of composition. (MG)

Argues for the importance of distinct discourse communities, and the importance of a theory and pedagogy that recognizes common practices, common goals, and common values among discourse communities. Analyzes professional samples of scholarship and sample student papers. Suggests that the transaction between writer and reader lies at the heart of…

Explores the concept of ambiity in semantic relationships, and discusses several causes of relational ambiguity, including differing world views, subtext construction, and selective focusing. Asserts that while most instances of relational ambiguity do not impair text comprehension, readers should be aware of possible ambiguities. (MM)

Written words are laid out in space and exist on the page all at once, but a reader can only read a few words at a time. For readers, written words are trapped in the medium of time. So how can we best organize writing for readers? Traditional techniques of organization tend to stress the arrangement of parts in space and certain metadiscoursal…

Describes the author's experience of taking two creative writing courses. Stresses the values that are taught: self-investment; avoidance of premature closure; seeing revision as discovery; experimentation; and trusting your own creative power--all necessary for good writing, whether academic or creative. (RAE)