Writing unity refers to how well sentences and paragraphs stay focused on the topic sentences and thesis statement. From the reader’s point of view, writing unity means that there are no irrelevant (off the point) details and that the tone of the writing remains consistent.

All good writing is structured. The structure changes according to the domain of the writing, but when an author consistently follows a plan, the reader can clearly follow what the author intends to share or to prove. Avoid including details that take the reader away from this plan and lead to confusion.

To know how to improve writing unity, is is helpful to examine examples of poor writing unity.

Paragraph without Unity Writing Model

It has been said that history repeats itself. Who first said this quote is not important. Although circumstances may change, and they frequently do, and the cast of characters will differ, human response to crisis situations remains consistent over time. The lessons gained from past events should affect present decisions. People rarely change their behaviors based upon past experience. Sometimes they do, but not often do they change their actions. Indeed, it sometimes seems as if people are willing to challenge the influence of the past when they repeat mistakes or misjudgments. Why people would want to challenge the influence of the past remains unknown.

Now, study the same paragraph content written with good writing unity.

Paragraph with Unity Writing Model

It has been said that history repeats itself. Although circumstances may change, and the cast of characters will differ, human response to crisis situations remains consistent over time. The lessons gained from past events should affect present decisions, but people rarely change their behaviors based upon past experience. Indeed, it sometimes seems as if people are willing to challenge the influence of the past when they repeat mistakes or misjudgments.

So what makes the second paragraph so much better than the first? What lessons can be derived to improve writing unity?

1. Eliminate irrelevant details.

2. Make use of effective writing transition words (“Although,” “but,” “Indeed” in the paragraph above.

3. Follow a predictable paragraph structure: topic sentence-major details-minor details.

Mark Pennington is an educational author, presenter, reading specialist, and middle school teacher. Mark is committed to differentiated instruction for the diverse needs of today’s remedial reading students. Visit Mark’s website at http://www.penningtonpublishing.com to check out his free writing unity teacher resources and books: Teaching Reading Strategies, Teaching Essay Strategies, Teaching Grammar and Mechanics, and Teaching Spelling and Vocabulary.

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No doubt you are looking into conducting some research for your degree, whether this is at undergraduate or postgraduate level – you will find that writing great research papers is a must to get noticed in to academic arena.

You will, of course, require commitment when looking into writing a research paper, as you will need to put it as a priority over many other pieces of work and social activities – essentially it will become a huge part of your life. Students who commit to their research paper and look towards the future, and often find it easier to write and compile their paper by taking time out of each day to complete a small part of their research paper.

The fact that a research paper is required and be a piece of original research, in the academic arena, does make some students a little nervous and fearsome. You should overcome these feelings as soon as possible, that is if you actually have them. The actual research writing process is seen by many who have not completed it, as a farfetched long piece of boring writing in a boring world. However, the opposite is true. This piece of writing will be your own, something that you can hold onto until long after your course has finished; you should think of it as something higher than your average college/university essay.

The secret to writing a great research paper is to have the correct mindset from the start, among other things. You need to have a focus and determination to not only complete the piece of academic research and writing, but also be able to develop your argument and prove (or indeed disprove) your current thinking/belief on the suggested/chosen topic.

A good paper starts at the subject in hand, and in order to undertake good research and writing, you will need to be clear on what it is that you actually want to research and write about – it is this clarity too that will help you realise how great your paper can be. If you have not yet settled on a topic to research, then you should at least have decided on the area that you potentially want to write about. Take note of what this is and discuss with your lecturer what it is that you actually want to do – no doubt they will be full of ideas and will offer you topic advice, identifying what you will be interested in researching.

If you have settled on the topic that you want to write about, and have a plan of what you want to find out, then you are well on your way to establishing your research paper as one to be envied. You should be aware that there are many different research papers in the wider world that are in an enormous range of different subjects. But, no doubt you will have already found this when researching for your essays.

You will want to establish that your work (or even hypothesis) doesn’t lead down the same path as someone before – it can follow on from them, and even follow a similar path, or repeat their research, but to conduct research which is the same as a previous one is not advised – you want your work to be seen as original and individual.

Also as a student, you should be used to reviewing other research papers, gathering opinions, and representing your own thoughts on a given topic. Therefore, you should be confident on what material to include in your paper and what not – identifying what will add to the overall impact of your own research paper.

A good research paper writer will consider the editing and revision process as an important final stage. You will need to keep in mind that your paper should have a continual flow and be able to keep the attention of your reader. Although not commonly stated, there are extra marks given for good language, grammar, clarity and tone of your paper. Therefore, you should ensure that your work is perfectly edited before you have your work printed and bound ready for submission. The most embarrassing point after your submission is when you look over the research paper that you have submitted and notice some simple spelling and grammatical errors.

Nick Sanders is the owner and founder of Supaproofread.com, a research paper editing services company, specialising in reasonable editing and proofreading services. You should visit them if you are looking for dissertation editing proofreading.

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When you are set the task of writing essays at college and university, you should be saying to yourself, ‘but how do I write an effective essay?’ – you need to be clear and able to project all the information and understanding of theories, knowledge and opinions to the reader.

Beginning your essay doesn’t start when you put pen to paper, or fingers to a keyboard, but when you start your lectures and are given the task of writing an essay for submission. It doesn’t matter whether the essay is to go against your final grade or not (but 99% of the time they do), and you should put 100% into the effort of thinking about your essay and writing it effectively.

Once you have received the task of writing an essay for your class, you should look at the stages of planning, researching, and writing your essay; all good and effective essays have these elements and processes in them. If you want to write an essay that is informative and will keep the interest of the reader, then you must first start with a plan and follow that plan until completion. It goes without saying that you will need to adapt this plan as you progress through the research and writing stages of your essay – making your approach to the scope of the essay, and interpretation, effectively written and resulting in impact.

Without a clear grounding in any topic you will struggle to write an effective essay – what I am saying here is that you should attend most of your lectures. You will receive key information and resources that are rich with information, these will be specific to your topic and area of your course/module. You will not want to try and figure out what an essay question will be here, nor will you want to try to figure out what will be asked, but you will want to take note of the sources and information given, so that you can relate to and gain valuable information-rich resources for when you go to conduct secondary research for your essay.

You will also want to think about direction and planning when you do set out and start writing (or indeed typing) your essay. You will want to be clear that you will need to have a beginning, middle, and an end; you will also want to use Kiplings six honest serving men: what, where, why, how, who, and when, as well as keep questioning ‘so what?’ to the information, opinions and notions that you are writing about in your essay. You will want to grasp the attention of your reader and ‘lead them on a journey’ informing them of what your essay is about and why, and hope your research can be added to the ever growing knowledge in the academic arena.

There will be obstacles that you will have to overcome in your writing too, the clarity and tone of your content should be consistent and appealing to the reader of your essay. You should provide enough knowledge, but not too much to overshadow your won views, opinions, and conclusions to what theories and previous authors have established.

An effective essay will, therefore, have a plan, an objective to where you want it to be, establishment of relevant theory and thinking, as well as your ‘footprint’ and understanding/interpretation behind what you are writing about.

Nick Sanders is the owner and founder of Supaproofread.com, a dissertation editing services company, specialising in editing and proofreading services. You should visit them if you are looking for dissertation editing proofreading.

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“Fingers stuck together with a pasty, thick, gooey substance work hard to build a Gumdrop man!” remarked John.

How did this child know to use words such as pasty, thick and gooey to describe a gumdrop? He knew these words because he had made an art project using gumdrops before writing.

Pre-Writing experiences give students concrete ideas, feelings and opinions to incorporate into their writing. The more hands-on activities a teacher can provide, the more students will elaborate and use detail in their writing. Experiences also excite and motivate kids so they are eager to get starting putting their ideas into writing.

Once you have begun the hands-on activity, walk around and encourage students to be creative and to try “to think outside the box”. As you see students working hard, acknowledge their effort and hold up their art work for others to see. It will motivate the child and all the children seeing another’s art project. Remember to work towards achieving a creative process full of thought, effort and activity rather than worrying about everyone having a beautiful finished product. It is the process that develops into creative, descriptive, narrative writing more so than the completed project.

Also, encourage children to think of vivid verbs that describe what they are doing while they are working and write these verbs on the board so they can be used as springboards for writing. Walk around and model sentence ideas while the students are working. For example, you might say:

“Ohhh, Julia has an inverted, crazy-looking Gumdrop Man that looks scary!”

“Wow! Look how Robert pinched the gumdrop and made the goo ooze from the bottom!”

Students need to hear descriptions and exclamations. They need to hear different sentence structures – phrases, questions, etc.

Once everyone is finished, take time to let each child hold up his creation and tell about it. Instruct the other students to be “active listeners” and to listen for at least one word the creator used as he described his finished product. Share aloud the words they heard and remembered.

Try the following hands-on activities in your classroom to make writing more personal and fun:

* Gumdrop Creation

Give each student or group of students a small styrofoam cup, several toothpicks and several gumdrops. Tell the kids to use the items to create something. Don’t offer anymore instruction – leave it up to the kids to get creative and inventive.

* Marshmallow Creation

Give each student or group of students several mini marshmallows and several toothpicks. Tell them to use the items to create something.

* Tissue Paper Creation

Give each student or group of students several small squares of colorful tissue paper, glue and one sheet of construction paper. Tell students to wad up the tissue paper and put a dab of glue on it and stick it to the construction paper. Tell them to make anything they choose.

* Newspaper Heights

Gather lots of old newspapers and masking tape. Tell students to grab a few sheets of newspaper and to wad them up and roll them into long, skinny sections. Tape the section together and to other sections. Challenge students to make something with all the connecting sections.

These hands-on activities make writing fun. Describing finished products with words such as wacky, insane, unstable, delicious is inventive and fun. Dreaming up unusual stories to explain the creations is challenging and entertaining. Teaching kids to experiment with art projects and with writing ideas makes a school day exciting and enjoyable.

These activities can also be integrated into other subject areas and then used for writing. After studying clouds or atoms or cells, ask the students to build a model using any of the materials above. Or after reading books with unusual characters or settings, use the activities above to recreate the character or the setting and then write about it.

These writing activities thrive on peer learning, are easy to integrate with other subjects and are easy to teach and model.

Have fun with writing!

Alma Ammons Hoffmann is a former schoolteacher for grades K, 1,2,4 and 5, she holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of North Carolina, with concentration on Early and Intermediate Education. She also has earned a Masters of Education degree from Meredith College, focusing on Elementary Education and Reading K-12 . Ms. Hoffman is an expert on developing writing lessons and teaching paragraph writing

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