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Becoming A Master Student, Tenth Edition
Dave Ellis
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| | Discover The Joys Of
Word Processing | | | | | | | |
One of the most popular ways to use computers is for writing. Newsletters, brochures, books, video scripts–just about any document can be written with a computer using a word processing program.
Many professional writers say that the essence of good writing is rewriting. They commonly go through three drafts of a book or article. Some do many more. With each draft, they sharpen their thinking and hone their choice of words. By making it easy to revise, computers can tempt you into the habit of polishing your work.
Computers and word processing programs can help you with other common writing chores. Spell checkers will flag words that may be misspelled. Style checkers will scan your writing for grammatical errors and estimate the reading level of your text. Outlining utilities allow you to brainstorm ideas and organize them later. You can also find dictionaries and thesauruses bundled in word processing programs.
Certain "dangers" spring from the ease of revising when you use word processing. For one, many computer screens let you see less than one printed page of text. That can prevent you from getting the big picture-the overall plan and structure of your paper. When that happens it's easy to polish your paper word by word and line by line instead of first stepping back to see whether the whole thing hangs together. A solution is to print out drafts from time to time and edit your work on paper. Then you can spread out pages and get a broad view of your work. Later you can go back to the computer and type in the changes you noted on the printout.
In addition, it can be tempting to keep fiddling with a paper to the point that you miss your deadline. Some writers who use word processors report a tendency to stop and revise every sentence as they write their first draft. This can inhibit the free flow of ideas and slow you down.
Writer Oscar Wilde once said that he spent the morning putting in a comma and the afternoon taking it out again. If something like this happens to you, experiment with dictating your first drafts or writing them the old-fashioned way-with pen on paper.
Whenever you write with a computer, make a backup copy of your work on a separate disk. Then make a backup of that backup. Also "save" your work every few minutes. (The instructions for your word processing program will explain how.) Few things are as disheartening as losing your written data to a sudden surge of electricity or a power outage. Both can shut down your computer when you're in the middle of a sentence. Taking a few minutes to backup your work and save your writing for the ages.
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