Key Takeaways

We are now at the end of our time together in this exploration of writing, and we would like to leave you with some key insights about writing and academic writing. These are the insights that we hope you will take away from this textbook and your writing course, as they represent the most important ideas that you can take into other classes and other writing contexts.

Effective Writing Makes Things Happen in the World

We never write without a purpose or context for our writing. We are always trying to do something with our writing, whether it be to showcase our learning in a school assignment, to record our thoughts and feelings in a personal diary, or to persuade an audience to change their behaviour or thinking. There is always a reason to write.

The best writing is the writing that fulfills its purpose as effectively and efficiently as possible. If you write an editorial to persuade local politicians about the value of a policy change, and the politicians then make that change, your writing has fulfilled its purpose. That is good writing.

Of course, becoming an effective writer who can make things happen in the world requires considerable practice. You must learn about your audience, master the writing conventions that matter to them, and understand where you can add your flair to capture the audience’s attention and convey your message effectively.

You will continue to grow as a writer for your entire life. But you should never forget that, as a writer, you are always trying to make things happen around you. This is why you write.

Writing is About Relationships and Community

We never write without a purpose, and we also rarely write without an audience. Because writing is about making things happen in the world, we have to write to or for someone. The fact that writing enables us to communicate across time and space sometimes obscures the fact that writing works by building a relationship between two people: the reader and the writer. Sometimes, these two parties conceive of that relationship in different ways, but it is always there in every piece of writing. Even a personal journal or diary is about communication between your present and future selves.

The relationship between the reader and writer is always embedded in larger networks of relationships or communities. These communities shape writing norms and conventions to achieve shared goals effectively. As writers, we are beholden to these relationships, and we rarely write without the influence and impact of our community. Academic writing, for instance, always reflects the values and the needs of the various communities at the university. In other words, academic writing is not one thing. It may share some standard features recognizable across various genres and disciplines, but there are also significant differences between what scholars consider to be good academic writing. Understanding the values of the communities that you are writing for will make you a better writer.

Because we are writing to communicate, we must master writing conventions to be credible writers; however, these are not the only important elements in effective writing. Good writing requires critical thinking and insight. It requires a human voice–evidence that a human writer is sharing their unique personality and thoughts with us. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the writer reveals personal details or talks about themselves in the writing–doing so would violate the norms in some genres. Instead, it means writing that conveys something compelling will be more effective than writing that merely follows conventions mindlessly. As writers, we need to learn where we can add our uniqueness to the writing while still meeting the audience’s expectations.

Of course, this is easier said than done. To find your voice as a writer, you will need to cultivate critical thinking habits. You’ll need to pay close attention to the writing that strikes this balance between meeting writing standards and engaging the reader with unique insight. The journey to becoming a more effective writer is, in many ways, a process of discovering how you, as the author, fit into writing that meets the needs of your audience.Cultivating a Growth Mindset Helps Overcome Common Challenges with Writing

As writers, it is easy to think that we are alone in finding writing to be a challenging task. However, writing, particularly academic writing, is a demanding mental task that requires the complex analysis and synthesis of ideas. When we write, we have to transpose the chaotic world around us into the straight line of language. Sometimes, this process can be overwhelming, and it is not unusual for writers to become stuck at some point in the writing process.

One of the best remedies for overcoming the challenges of writing is to develop a growth mindset about writing. As you learned earlier in the textbook, a person with a growth mindset sees writing as a craft that they can learn. They understand that there are many component skills and knowledges when it comes to writing, and they set out to learn more and practice these skills. A person with a growth mindset will actively seek out feedback and learn to revise their writing based on the feedback they receive. They will also understand that an ineffective piece of writing does not mean that they are a bad writer.

In this textbook, you have read about some of the standard rhetorical moves in academic writing. The key takeaway here is that you can always break down writing and its elements into smaller, manageable skills that you can master one at a time. When you read texts that you find particularly compelling, analyze the moves that the authors make. How are other authors making things happen in the world? Can you use similar strategies in your writing?

Having a growth mindset also means setting achievable goals for yourself as a writer and reflecting critically on your progress. Now is a good time to ask yourself: What did you set out to achieve in your current course on writing? Did you achieve it? What might have interfered with or aided in your success? Where do you want to go next when it comes to writing?

Remember to be specific when you are setting your goals. “I want to become a better writer” is a good overall goal, but it is much more helpful to set smaller, specific goals, such as “I want to become better at integrating direct quotations into my writing.” Your progress as a writer will likely not be a linear process. You will experience both failures and successes, but adopting a growth mindset means recognizing that this is normal when learning a skill, especially one as complex as writing.

Learn to use Generative AI Responsibly and Effectively

Generative AI and large language models, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, will profoundly change the writing process. As writers, you will perpetually have to decide when and where you can and should use these tools to write what you need to write. While these tools have the potential to help us reduce the time we spend on onerous writing tasks that don’t seem worth our time, such as filling out bureaucratic paperwork, they also have the potential to entice us to use them when we shouldn’t, particularly in times when the loss or risk is too significant. For instance, current news reports are full of cases where writers have chosen to use Generative AI to write a text and have been discovered. These cases expose the unstated rules of engagement between the reader and writer. When it is uncovered that a writer used Generative AI to write a text, the trust between the reader and the writer is compromised. The writer loses credibility and can no longer be trusted. This is a real danger if you rely too much on Generative AI to write: You will no longer be able to persuade your audience effectively.

When you are considering using Generative AI for a writing task, ask yourself if you are comfortable acknowledging this use to your audience. If not, ask yourself why you feel uncomfortable. Is your relationship to the reader meaningful? What will happen if you lose the trust of your audience? Use your answers to these questions to guide when to use Generative AI tools. The time saved may not be worth the damage to your relationship with the reader.

Academic Writing is Constantly Changing

We might be tempted to think of academic writing and its genres, such as lab reports, critical essays, or research papers, as enduring types of text that have existed since the first universities and scientific experiments. However, this is far from the case. These genres, along with the other common genres of the academic community, were developed to address specific communicative problems. If the problem disappears, so too does the genre. For instance, before the advent of the Internet, scholars would have to write letters to other scholars requesting copies of research papers that were not available in their libraries. Now that we can easily access most published research papers, the article request letter has become obsolete.

Other academic genres will be born and will die during your lifetime, and the conventions and rules that you know now about writing academic genres will adapt to the changing world around them. For this reason, it is important not to lose sight of the goals of the communities for whom you are writing. There may be times when you have to adapt what you know about writing to meet new needs in your communities. You may need to innovate and develop new genres, or you may need to adapt existing ones to new circumstances. Paying attention to subtle changes and being flexible are essential for being a successful writer.

Academic Writing is Only one Type of Writing

We’d like to leave you with this final thought. Academic writing is not the only type of writing you will learn in your lifetime. You may also learn professional writing–writing in the workplace, public writing–writing for broad audiences, or creative writing–writing to express the joys and despair of the human condition. The strategies and techniques you learn as an academic writer may transfer easily to these other contexts. For instance, you may find that writing a business report is very similar to writing a research paper. You have to make a claim and support it with credible evidence. However, you may also find that the conventions of academic writing are not helpful in other contexts. A poster full of citations from academic research papers that show that smoking is harmful to health will not likely convince members of the public to quit smoking.

As you move from university into the workplace and your roles as productive and contributing citizens, you will have to learn new rhetorical moves to help you persuade new types of audiences. Academic writing provides an excellent foundation for this learning, but it is not the final chapter. Learning to make things happen with your words is a lifelong journey. It is a journey that will pose unexpected challenges and complex problems to solve, but if we pay close attention, it is also a journey that reveals how humans can shape their world through the written word. Writing is a powerful tool that helps us navigate the complexities of our world.