Six Traits of Writing
Annie Leopold
Ideas
- Always choose a topic that interests you or you enjoy.
- Include many details such as facts, examples, statistics, and thoughts/feelings.
Organization
- Remember to use your write tools.
- Always have a beginning, middle, and end.
Word Choice
- Use specific nouns and verbs.
- Use exciting abverbs and adjectives.
- Use a thesaurus.
Sentence Fluency
- Combine your short, choppy sentences into longer, smoother ones.
- Use a variety of sentence lengths and beginnings.
- Use simple, compound, and complex sentences.
Conventions
- Use evaluation sheet for revision.
- Edit writing COPS (Capitalization, Overall Appearance, Punctuation, and Spelling.
The Writing Process
Brainstorming
Brainstorming is one of the easiest parts. All you have to do is think of what you want to write about.
Prewriting
Prewriting is just getting your ideas down on paper. Don't worry much about your mistakes. You can always go to it later and fix them.
Revising and Evaluation
Revising is simple. Just go back and look at your work for mistakes or things you could improve. But before you start editing, you need to make an evaluation sheet. This is where you write down how many words are in your sentences, all the transitions you have, etc. This will help you know if your draft is good enough.
Editing
Editing is also very easy. Just go back to your revising paper and look at the mistakes you made or the things you wanted to improve. Then, you need to actually fix them.
Write Tools
Write tools are always important because they help you organize your notes and take care of a lot of work.
- A lot of people would recommend using one of the Core Four Topic Sentences. That can be either a Simple statement, Number statement, Question, or Situation/Stance.
- People would also recommend using a T-table. A T-table is something you use to organize your thoughts and all the sentences you are going to put in your draft or paper.
- Don't ever forget to use transitions. An example of a transition is furthermore.
Color Scheme
When making a color scheme, highlight the sentences to organize your notes. Here is the order in which you make a color scheme.
One of the Core 4 topic sentences (Highlight these sentences green)
Main Idea Sentences (Highlight these sentences yellow)
Details/Tell me more (Highlight these sentences red or pink)
Conclusion Sentences (Highlight these ones green also)