If I gave you a pen and paper could you write a paper or write an essay? No, you couldn’t because you can’t write in general. You need a purpose to write. In Elizabeth Wardle’s essay of Bad Ideas About Writing she discusses how writing isn’t something that can be done on a whim, it needs purpose. Whenever you write essays, research papers or in a journal there is always intentions behind why you are writing. The main Idea that Elizabeth wants her readers to understand is that there is no “magic formula” to writing. You can use the tools already taught to you, but you would need an intention to write. She wants teachers to eliminate the idea of ‘writing in general’ because you simply aren’t able to and eliminating writing in general will give people  the opportunity to learn and grow as you write.

Wardle uses the strategies of clarity of purpose and audience awareness to support her argument in  ‘Bad Ideas About Writing.’ In her essay you can learn to write in general. The purpose was to make readers understand that there is no “magic formula” to writing. You can use the tools you have already been taught to you. Only thing you would need is an intention to write. She wants everyone to eliminate the idea of ‘writing in general’ because you simply aren’t able to and eliminating writing in general will give people  the opportunity to learn and grow as you write. Elizabeth wants her readers to know that without intentions you won’t be able to write a proper essay. In writing you use “context, audience, purpose, medium, history, and values of the community (Wardle)” to help write essays in different areas other than school related papers. Elizabeth is using purpose and audience to help get her point across. Elizabeth was persuading her audience to understand that writing is made for intention and it is okay to fail at writing because it allows you room to grow as a writer. Lastly, never think writing is general.

Another ‘Bad Idea About Writing’ is Strong Writing and Writers Don’t Need Revision. Whenever you’re writing something  you need to revise your work to check for mistakes. “no amount of grammatical, spelling, and style corrections transforms a piece of writing like focused attention to fundamental questions about purpose, evidence, and organization. That, to me, is revision: the heavy lifting of working through why I’m writing, who I’m writing for, and how I structure writing logically and effectively. (Giovanelli)” Revision is needed when writing a paper.

People tend to feel as though revision is a sign of weakness and means that you’re poor writing when in fact it means the opposite. “writing and revision are impossible to untangle, revision is just as situational and interpretive as writing. In other words, writers interact with readers—writing and revision are social, responsive, and communal. (Giovanelli)” The purpose of Giovanelli’s writing was to inform readers that when you write you need to push out all of the unnecessary stuff to get to the good of the paper. I think that is what all teacher’s try to make their students do when revising papers. They don’t care so much about mechanical mistakes they want sentence structure and answer questions within the prompt. The audience would be professors, writers, and student’s. Both of those purposes were clearly shown. Giovanelli established the purpose and audience well. 

Works cited 

https://textbooks.lib.wvu.edu/badideas/badideasaboutwriting-book.pdf

https://educationforproblemsolving.net/design-thinking/tr.htm#ps

https://educationforproblemsolving.net/design-thinking/tr.htm#ps