Analytical Writing

1. Analytical Writing

2. What is Analytical Writing? • Analytical writing: • Evaluates data • Distinguishes the important from the less important • Relates one idea and its details to another

3. An Analytical Writer Should… • Organize material in a proper manner • Reveal that organization in the document • Help the reader recognize the logical development of the writing and see how the bits and pieces fit together

4. Types of Analyses in Analytical Writing • Rhetorical analysis • Process analysis • Casual analysis

5. Why Analytical Writing? • It teaches students how to devise analysis methods to study a situation or issue. • It requires research because the facts to be documented are never provided up front. • It requires the writer to have a rich understanding of the audience. • It requires the students to work with an indeterminate, evolving rhetorical situation, which is essentially unpredictable.

6. Four Levels of Knowledge • Know what you know • Know what you don’t know • Don’t know what you know • Don’t know what you don’t know

7. Basic Principles of All Writing • Clarity • Conciseness • Correctness • Precision • Mechanical correctness

8. Other Important Considerations in Writing • Appropriateness • Complete • Coherent

9. Keys to Good Writing • Keep the title to four or five words • Keep information organized • Make each word count • Make sure writing is well thought out in advance • Use active voice sentences vs. passive voice sentences • Self-edit your work • Understand the “art forms” of your workplace

10. Important Writing Tips • Emphasize use of simple and complex sentences • Great variety of word order of the sentences • Tie ideas together and discriminate among details • Emphasize use of one and two syllable words • Minimize use of internal punctuation • Thoughtful use of dependent clauses and no prepositional phrases • Sentences should not normally begin with a dependent word, phrase or clause

11. References • Major, James S. “The Basic Tools of Writing with Intelligence” • Coney, Mary B. “Analytical Writing Revisited: An Old Cure for a Worsening Problem” • Johnson, Thomas P. Analytical Writing: A Handbook for Business and Technical Writers. Harper and Row, Publishers, New York. 1966. • Jamieson, C. Sandra. “Writing Analyses.” http://www.users.drew.edu/sjamieso/Analysis.html. 1999. 3 July 2008. • Sheehan, Richard Johnson and Andrew Flood. “Genre, Rhetorical Interpretation, and the Open Case: Teaching the Analytical Report.” IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Vol. 42, No.1. March 1999.