Many people think that writing a good paragraph or paper is a kind of magical skill -- one that some people have and others do not. When such people find that they have to do a great deal of writing themselves, either in college or on their jobs, they become angry and frustrated. Why should they have to write? After all, people are not asked to play the piano or draw a picture if they have no training or talent. Is not it just as unfair to be asked to write?.
Probably the best-kept secret about writing is that it is a skill that can be mastered. That is right -- you can learn to write a decent paper, learn to do well in writing assignments in school or on the job, no matter how much trouble you may have had with writing before. Writing consists of a series of steps that you can follow. When you finish, you should have an organized, effective paper.
The first step in writing an effective paper is to make a point of some kind. A point is an assertion, a statement that goes beyond a mere fact -- a point has your opinion injected into it. We all make points all day long. If we could gather several points from the conversations around us, we might hear things like: "That movie was a waste of money"; "Our sociology professor is the best teacher I have ever had"; "I don't vote, because politicians are crooks"; "Going out for an evening is getting to be really expensive." Starting to write means deciding to focus on a point similar to any of these. Foe example, let's take a subject we all know something about: high school proms. When we were in high school, we all went to proms, or talked about people who went to proms, or stayed home from proms. We could make many points about proms; each of you would have some opinion about them. Let's take one point in particular, though. My point is that proms should be banned. If I said this to you as we were talking, I might go on to give you my reasons, or I might refuse to talk about it any more, or I might change the subject.
