How Advances in Technology and the Internet Have Affected Writing in the Digital Age
Great writing tips for newbies, session 9
This is the ninth part of an ongoing session of writing tips that I post regularly to this blog. For those of you who are keeping up with these postings, thanks. In session eight I went over ways to perform good research habits. As I mentioned then, good research habits are an essential part of any writing project. Now that we have a decent understanding of how to write good content and what good research methods are, it’s time to apply those methods into a real-world application. So, let’s get started!
Session 9
In this session, we are going to do some research on a particular writing topic. We will do this by following the methods listed in sessions 7 and 8. Session 7 taught us how to write better content. It doesn’t matter if this is web content or academic content, good writing is good writing. Session 8 gave us some great ideas for performing good research. Again, it doesn’t matter if this research is for writing web content or academic content, it pays to have good research habits for everything you write. As always, only write original content, never copy someone else's work or style.
The first thing we must do is decide on our headliner. Selecting a great headline that catches your readers attention is very important. It can mean the difference between keeping the reader on your page or them leaving it. The headliner I chose for this project session is great for many reasons.
“How Advances in Technology and the Internet Have Affected Writing in the Digital Age”.
First, it catches and keeps the reader's attention because it is about how something happened. Headlines about how something works, how to do something, or how something caused something else to happen always keep a readers attention. Second, it’s about technology and writing, two subjects that go well together. Third, it’s about how the Internet changed something, everyone finds interest in this.
Our next step is to find some usable content to write about. We do this by performing an Internet search on our subject matter. When we do this research we must find content that is truthful, accurate, thought-provoking, and engaging to the reader. To accomplish this we start an Internet search at some reputable sites that will provide us with some accurate content to write about. Always make sure the website you are pulling your research from is up-to-date with material that has been fact-checked or peer-reviewed. Another good idea is to always use material from sites that are no older than 6-7 seven years. For this project, I went to JSTOR to find material on our subject. I like JSTOR for a few simple reasons. The material you find there is peer-reviewed, fact-checked, and accurate.
Notice the headliner for the JSTOR article- “Student Writing in the Digital Age”. It grabs the readers attention for three reasons, it’s about writing, technology, and students. I used it because it has information similar to what our title is based on. Since the two are alike, to avoid any plagiarism issues, at the end of my article I will give the author credit for their work with a properly formed citation using Citefast.
This article isn’t in PDF form, keeping me from downloading a copy. So I don’t have to keep bringing it up I save it to my bookmarks tab on my desktop for future reference. Now I write short and concise sentences and paragraphs that are truthful, accurate, thought-provoking, and engaging. This will keep my reader's attention. If I can, I will provide the reader with a solution to a writing issue they may have.
As I write, I run my work through an online paper editor like PaperRater, Grammarly, or the Hemingway App to check for writing issues and grammar problems. The goal here is to review the article from JSTOR, then write a short synopsis of what the article says that is accurate and relevant to our topic.
The short write up below is what I prepared from the JSTOR article-
“How Advances in Technology and the Internet Have Affected Writing in the Digital Age”
In her 2016 article on JSTOR, Student Writing in the Digital Age, author Anne Trubek reflects on advances made in technology that have changed the way students write today. She discusses many factors that have changed the way we write such as, social media, text messaging, the introduction of computers in the classroom, and spell check tools.
Trubek contemplates that because of the digital age and all that encompasses writing in this age, students are now writing better, longer, and more error free papers and essays. Research has become easier because of the Internet, making the process of writing papers easier for college students.
The article is a great spin on how advances in technology and the Internet have changed the way we write. The authors outtake on the aspects of social media and the new text-based age that we live are right on point with todays writing styles.
Article reference: Trubek, A. (2016). Student Writing in the Digital Age. JSTOR. Retrieved from https://daily.jstor.org/student-writing-in-the-digital-age/
If you review the article Student Writing in the Digital Age, you will notice that it’s much longer than what I have written above. I took the important parts out that are relevant to our topic and summed them up into a nice little review of the original article. This allowed me to have accurate, usable content to write about that is thought-provoking and engaging to my reader without boring them with unnecessary filler. You see, it’s that easy!
Thanks for taking time out of your day to review the information presented here in session 9.
If you missed session 8 feel free to review it at your own leisure. I hope this article was of some help to those seeking to become better writers. Session 10 will be posted soon.
As always- find what works best for you in everything that you do, including writing. Always write what you feel and never let others sway your opinions or ideas.
Write something GREAT today!
