It seems that there is a lot that goes into writing a paper, besides what I was taught in grammar school. Apparently, writing can be expressed in many ways. And it is not just by writing a paper. Another big surprise is that the format that I had been taught to use my whole writing career has some importance. Who knew that writing in Times New Roman wasn’t just an annoying thing my teachers had me do?
I never viewed visuals such as slide shows, infographics or pamphlets as another form of writing. Yet, Melanie Gagich in “An Introduction to and Strategies for Multimodal Composing” points out that these are indeed forms of writing. They are called multimodal texts and she talks about the different modes of communication and why they are important. I believe that multimodal texts are a great form of communicating, especially depending on the audience and the message. Many things are easier to convey and comprehend if they are in a different form besides the usual five paragraph writing.
On the other hand, I was today years when I found out that the writing that I was taught to do is called the Modern Language Association (MLA) style. Okay, I had heard of MLA before, but I never realized that it was one of the many writing styles. Michael J. Klein and Kristi L. Shackelford in “Beyond Black on White: Document Design and Formatting in the Writing Classroom” helped me realize this fact. I had not heard about APA until I got to college and I was confused because no one taught me this. They also list some themes in a paper that make it eligible and easier to map out. Like how bolding select words grabs the reader’s attention or naming each section in a paper makes it easier to find information.
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