The basics of writing come in the early years for a writer. For most people they learned the basics of how to write an essay in grade school. A few of the basics include knowing how to create a works cited page, creating titles or headlines, adding and creating graphics, and a simple five paragraph essay consisting of: introduction paragraph, three body information paragraph, and conclusion paragraph.
As time went on the basics helped but with every piece of writing there are different requirements that can change the style. The literature writing assignment might require the use of MLA style while the science report should be in APA. Apart from school work the style of writing will change based upon the audience. If you write an article for a newspaper it’s going to look far different than if you are to write a poem.
This semester I have been working on my digital literacy in my Introduction to Writing class. Over the course of the semester I had to read articles and then write about them. Rather than the traditional way of writing a lengthy reflection paper, we write blog posts. Now keeping the basics of writing in mind, I still create titles and headings along with adding graphics to my blog posts. I may not have to create a works cited page but if I were to mention an article or two then I’d only have to cite the article by adding a hyperlink.
Before this semester however, I had knowledge of digital literacy in the use of all the social media platforms that I use. My Instagram post may have a short sentence or even just a word like smile and then I use a picture to get the message across. Whereas a tweet on Twitter may be lengthy word count and link taking you to view something elsewhere. Although, my class has taught me digital literacy skills I wasn’t really aware of like the purpose of an excerpt and using images that are safe to use without any possible copyright issues.
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