This Static Spot is open for sponsor

Click Here to Sponsor MCT Eric Post in Full Page

Afrikaans Afrikaans Albanian Albanian Amharic Amharic Arabic Arabic Armenian Armenian Azerbaijani Azerbaijani Basque Basque Belarusian Belarusian Bengali Bengali Bosnian Bosnian Bulgarian Bulgarian Catalan Catalan Cebuano Cebuano Chichewa Chichewa Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Chinese (Traditional) Corsican Corsican Croatian Croatian Czech Czech Danish Danish Dutch Dutch English English Esperanto Esperanto Estonian Estonian Filipino Filipino Finnish Finnish French French Frisian Frisian Galician Galician Georgian Georgian German German Greek Greek Gujarati Gujarati Haitian Creole Haitian Creole Hausa Hausa Hawaiian Hawaiian Hebrew Hebrew Hindi Hindi Hmong Hmong Hungarian Hungarian Icelandic Icelandic Igbo Igbo Indonesian Indonesian Irish Irish Italian Italian Japanese Japanese Javanese Javanese Kannada Kannada Kazakh Kazakh Khmer Khmer Korean Korean Kurdish (Kurmanji) Kurdish (Kurmanji) Kyrgyz Kyrgyz Lao Lao Latin Latin Latvian Latvian Lithuanian Lithuanian Luxembourgish Luxembourgish Macedonian Macedonian Malagasy Malagasy Malay Malay Malayalam Malayalam Maltese Maltese Maori Maori Marathi Marathi Mongolian Mongolian Myanmar (Burmese) Myanmar (Burmese) Nepali Nepali Norwegian Norwegian Pashto Pashto Persian Persian Polish Polish Portuguese Portuguese Punjabi Punjabi Romanian Romanian Russian Russian Samoan Samoan Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic Serbian Serbian Sesotho Sesotho Shona Shona Sindhi Sindhi Sinhala Sinhala Slovak Slovak Slovenian Slovenian Somali Somali Spanish Spanish Sundanese Sundanese Swahili Swahili Swedish Swedish Tajik Tajik Tamil Tamil Telugu Telugu Thai Thai Turkish Turkish Ukrainian Ukrainian Urdu Urdu Uzbek Uzbek Vietnamese Vietnamese Welsh Welsh Xhosa Xhosa Yiddish Yiddish Yoruba Yoruba Zulu Zulu

 

 

Article Navigation

Back To Main Page

 

Click Here for more articles
Google
Tackling a Writing Assignment: How To Get Started
by: Jan Kovarik

Writing assignments are often considered the worst possible class or course assignment. There's nothing worse than sitting down in front of a computer, with a blank screen in front of you. Where do you start? How do you get that first sentence written? Once you start, how do you avoid common mistakes? And when you are ready to finish the paper, how do you make sure you catch all the mistakes?

Using Word

Unless you regularly use Word (the word-processing software in Microsoft-based operating systems), you might not know too much about how to use it to create even a simple document, much less a term paper or other research-type paper.

If you are pretty much clueless about how to format a document so that it is New Times Roman, 12pt, with 1-inch margins (or whatever other format is required for the assignment), then you can get some really easy help in my article, Working With Word...it's easier than you think! You can get this article at: http://freecontent.janktheproofer.com/WorkWord.htm.

Getting Started

Once your assignment has been researched, and you are ready to start writing, you might not have too much of an idea of how to even begin. It's really not a mystical process, all you need is a little bit of direction and some overall organization.

In order to get some good tips for writing, and writing effectively, review my two-part series, Writing Effectively. You can get this series at: http://www.janktheproofer.com/articles/WritingEffectivelyPart1.htm Part 1, and http://www.janktheproofer.com/articles/WritingEffectivelyPart2.htm Part 2.

These two articles will help you organize your notes, create a rough outline for your paper, and then actually begin the process of writing the paper by filling in the outline.

Need Some Help with Grammar, etc.?

It is affect or effect? That's a question that floors most people. You've got a foreign name that has a funny wiggly mark of the letter n---how do you do that? What are the most common punctuation and spelling mistakes, and how do you avoid them? Is just running spellcheck enough to insure that you are going to turn in an error free assignment? And what happens if you've already run spellcheck, but you think you changed something you shouldn't have because you got brain-numbed and just kept hitting "Change" in the spellchecker window?

I've written several articles that provide hints, tips, and suggestions for how to end up with a paper that is as error-free as a human being (and a computer) can create:

Some Sticky Grammar Situations, at http://www.janktheproofer.com/articles/GrammarSituations.htm

Diacritics: Those Squiggly Marks Above and Below a Letter, at http://freecontent.janktheproofer.com/Diacritics.htm

Checking for Mismatched Quotation Marks, at http://freecontent.janktheproofer.com/MatchingQuoteMarks.htm

How To Check Name Spellings in a Term-Research Paper, at http://freecontent.janktheproofer.com/CheckNameSpelling.htm

Your Spellchecker Can Catch Punctuation Mistakes, at http://freecontent.janktheproofer.com/PunctuationMistakes.htm

Good Reasons Why You Can’t Rely on Your Spellchecker, at http://businessside.janktheproofer.com/Spellchecker.htm

How To Re-Set Your Spellchecker, at http://freecontent.janktheproofer.com/ResetSpellcheck.htm

Each of these articles will open in a new window, for your reviewing convenience.

Writing assignments don't have to be the Big Bad Ugly Monster that you might think they are. Just approach it logically, and understand what your computer can, and cannot, do for you!

About The Author

Jan Kovarik, The Proofer is a freelance proofreader and copyeditor. Visit http://www.jansportal.com for more information about Jan’s business services and Jan's other free information and resource sites. Please visit Mom's Break (http://www.momsbreak.com/) for free printable crafts and projects.

© Copyright 2005. All rights reserved.

jkproof@bellsouth.net

This article was posted on August 23, 2005

 


©2005 - All Rights Reserved

This Static Spot is open for sponsor

Writing Tips

Read Articles:


 Ten Tips For Budding Authors

 Writing for Local Veterinary Hospitals

 5 Benefits of Keeping a Personal Journal

 Writing Tips For Novice Authors

 Freelance Writing Markets, Poetry Markets - Hi...

 How Anyone Who Knows How to Type Can Write an A...

 Interviewing Your Characters

 Travel Writer Jobs, What Are They And How To Fi...

 Career Advice On Freelance Writing Jobs

 Write Science Right

 How You Can Take Advantage of the Increasing De...

 Have You Tested Your Theme Against Your Plot?

 Avoid Crafty Traps in Essay Writing

 The Myths Of Writing: Have You Bought Into These?

 Quick Strategies For Writing Your Essay Under P...

 How to Write Words Worth a Thousand Pictures

 How To Find A Job Writing Grant Applications

 7 Ways In Which You Can Overcome Excuses for No...

 Top 10 Tips to Complete a Creative Writing Proj...

 Blogs Like All Forms Of Writing Are An Art Form...

 How To Get A Job Writing Speeches

 What Employers Look For In A Freelance Writer

 Six Weeks to Sustained Self-Promotion

 Inspiring the Poet in You!

 It's Time To Start That "Swipe" File

 ***Writing Is Fun!***

 Break In With Fillers: The Best Market For New ...

 How to Have an Effective Writing Group

 Writing in the Shower (or Wherever You May Be)

 12 Low Cost or No-Cost Techniques to Snag Lucra...

 Dreading the Writing Assignment? Outlines to th...

 Beat the Block with a Journal

 Finding Freelance Writing Jobs - Join Us On The...

 Marketing for Writers When Writing Just Isn't E...

 Tackling a Writing Assignment: How To Get Started

 Ten Tips to Help You Finish Writing Your Novel

 Getting Started in Column Writing

 Does Your Theme Contain Character, Conflict, Re...

 6 Tips For Your Writing Journey

 5 Easy Steps To Writing Your Appealing Letter

More Article Pages 1 - 2 - 3

 

 Writing Help for College Students
 by: Tamara Owen

Your literature professor has asked you to write a 7-page essay comparing Medieval and Renaissance poetry; your economics professor wants 15 pages on how globalization is affecting the economy in three different countries; and your mathematics professor has forgotten this is a mathematics class, and wants 5 pages on the quadratic formula. And you have been staring at the computer screen for over an hour wondering how on earth you are going to do all of this in the next four days.

This is an all-too-familiar scene to many students. Many students learn of these large assignments at the beginning of the semester when they receive their class syllabi, and immediately forget about them because November seems like years away. Other students are busy with extracurricular sports, trying to adjust to being away from home for the first time, and other events and issues. Still other students are quite frankly terrified of the writing process, believing the blank page to be worse than their worst nightmare, and so these assignments get shoved aside to remain untouched until the last minute.

It is an interesting fact of college life that all students, regardless of major or discipline, are asked to write about their subject matter -- often quite extensively. While it is certainly important that all individuals be literate, and know how to read and write in a variety of capacities, styles, and genres, it is also the case that not everyone has to be a professional academic writer (www.korepetycje.com/join_us.html). Engineers need to know how to design bridges or better towel racks; pilots need to be able to take off and land safely and smoothly; and physicians need to be able to diagnose illnesses and injuries and to prescribe the correct medical interventions. None of these people needs to know how to write a term paper.

What, then, are the options for the poor student struggling in the first paragraph? What will happen to the student who is a prodigy on the piano but is facing failure because she cannot write 10 pages on Beethoven? What will happen to the next Frank Lloyd Wright who is stuck in his psychology seminar, unable to write a series of vignettes portraying various mental illnesses?

There are a few options. Most college campuses have writing labs, where many students are helped with researching and writing their papers. Many students form study groups, where they help each other through the tough assignments. Some students write their custom essays and term papers (see: http://www.korepetycje.com/indexam.html) and then pay an editor to polish them. Still others turn to professional writing services for assistance with their assignments. This is where services such as CustomPapers.com come in. We have a large staff of professional writers who specialize in writing papers about a wide variety of disciplines ranging from economics to ecology, marketing to Mozart, Hemingway to heart murmurs. We can also assist students with related projects, such as PowerPoint Presentations. In the many years of our existence, we have found tremendous success helping students with assignments of all sizes, all levels of difficulty, and all subjects.

Regardless of what type of help you choose, the important thing is that you get through college as quickly and effectively as possible. College is a step leading up to the rest of your life -- don't let a term paper be the skateboard in your path.


©2005 - All Rights Reserved

JV Blogs Visit free hit counter