But the writer will do a better job of it if the writer understands what readers expect to find where. This knowledge provides the tools for mind control.

...they must use all the clues you can give them to discover what thoughts had been coursing through your brain. The reader's interpretive act is complicated and hard for the writer to control...

Not so in the real world. There the writer has to struggle to control what sense readers might make of the prose. So far are those readers from the teacher-like state of knowing the answers in advance...

In school, students' writing is judged on 2 criteria: Did the student produce enough of the right answers to the question posed by the assignment? 1492? Ocean blue? Christopher Columbus? And was the writing free of errors and awkwardness? You get an A. The whole process is a kind of examination...

As a writer, you will lead a reader straight to your thought if you know where they look for the answers to four questions: What is happening? Who's story is it? How does this sentence connect to its neighbors? Which words are most important?
#readerexpectation #stressposition

Remarkably, as readers, we know where within that sentence to look for the answers to those questions.

At the end of every sentence, we have to know what happened, whose story it has been, how the sentence connects backward and forward to its neighbors, and which of its words are the most important — the starts of the show.

#readerexpectationapproach #readersmind

The most important contribution the Reader Expectation Approach is this: Readers take the great majority of their clues for making sense of a sentence not from what the words are nor from what they might mean, but rather from where in the sentence they show up.

Rhetoric and real estate have this in common: the three most important things are location, location, and location.

#readerexpectationapproach #stressposition

Your writing style is a result of how you habitually go about forming sentences and paragraphs. Your style proclaims to readers who you are. Merely being error-free doth not a style make.

#writingstyle #whoareyou

A piece of writing is in the business of delivery. If it successfully transfers to the reader's mind the thoughts that were in the writer's mind, it is good writing. Quality is to be judged by the success of the attempted delivery.

#betterwriting #readerexpectationapproach

In the real world (the world you live in after the last time you graduate), writing is an integral part of the thinking process. You don't know what you mean till you see what you say.

Most of us were taught to assemble materials, perhaps in a detailed outline form, after which the last task — "the writing" — was merely to transform all that stuff into error-free prose.

I once sat behind two students on a cross-campus bus who were discussing the big party that night. One asked the other, "How can you go? You've got that paper due tomorrow for History." He responded, "I've done all the work. Now, I just have to write it."

To think better, write better. To write better, know better how readers read: Learn to understand their Reader Expectations.

#clearwriting #clearthinking #contextcontrolsmeaning

George Gopen's Reader Expectation Approach - Reach the Reader's Mind George Gopen's Reader Expectation Approach - Reach the Reader's Mind

To learn about Reader Expectations — how readers go about making sense out of prose — visit readerexpectation.com

If you cannot express your thought in writing, you probably have not yet finished thinking it.

#thinkingaboutthinking #professionalwriting #betterwriting

To discover whether you've had a thought — and not just an impression that you've had a thought — try to write it down.

#thinkingaboutthinking #professionalwriting #clearwriting

The most rigid expectation: The last sentence of an opening paragraph promises the reader what the whole document will be about.
#professionalwriting #paragraphstructure #readerexpectation

Articles on Science state their conclusions up front; those on Literature do it at the 3/4 mark. The difference matters.
#professionalwriting #scientificwriting #literature

The gross structure of professional documents varies with each profession's needs and is usually learned on the job.
#professionalwriting #onthejobtraining

Like sentences, paragraphs connect backwards most securely by referencing either the beginning or the end of their predecessor.
#paragraphstructure #ProfessionalWriting #ScientificWriting

In a sentence, save the best for last; in most paragraphs (other than opening ones and closing ones), put first things first.
#sentencestructure #ProfessionalWriting #ScientificWriting

For writers, the primary unit of discourse is the sentence; for readers, the primary unit of discourse is the paragraph.

#readersandwriters #thinkingaboutwriting #readerexpectationapproach

No matter what you are writing, most of your energy, at any given moment, is devoted to the construction of a single sentence.
#thinkingaboutwriting #professionalwriting #readerexpectationapproach

A sentence presents a single thought; a paragraph presents and develops a single (perhaps multi-part) thought.
#paragraphstructure #professionalwriting #learnenglish

Two pairs of hands a white man and a white woman holding pans and paper with paragraphs typed on them

A one-sentence paragraph is fine if it states both the issue and the point of the paragraph and requires no discussion.
#paragraphstructure #professionalwriting #learnenglish

In a paragraph, the issue introduces the discussion; the point is the product or the cause of the discussion.
#professionalwriting
#betterwriting
#paragraphstructure

Hands of a white man reading in braille

For 1st and last paragraphs, you can reserve your point for the end because you know most of your readers will still be with you.
#professionalwriting #betterwriting #paragraphstructure

For all closing paragraphs, readers expect the point to be announced at the end.

#professionalwriting #betterwriting #paragraphstructure