Writing inventory (Areas of strength and weakness) - Essay Example

Anne Hutchinson: Ahead of Her Time In order to improve one’s writing, it is necessary to analyze things that have been written in the past with a fresh eye. It is necessary to allow some time to pass between writing something and analyzing it in order to make sure you are seeing things clearly instead of just remembering what you intended to say. In addition, it is helpful to have comments from instructors and other reviewers to help you see things that might have otherwise escaped your attention.

In analyzing your paper, there are three main areas in which you should concentrate – broad content, organization and presentation, and surface areas. Broad content seems to be relatively self-explanatory as it looks at how well the finished document accomplishes its intent. Organization and presentation seems also self-explanatory as it refers to the way in which the information is presented. Surface areas refers to the basic elements of writing such as grammar, spelling and punctuation.

To make this clearer, I will analyze a piece of my own writing regarding broad content, organization and presentation and surface areas to discover those areas in which I am strong and where I can improve. In terms of broad content, I feel my paper on Anne Hutchinson is very strong. It never truly states its purpose, but the introduction makes it clear that the paper is about to present evidence as to why Anne Hutchinson was a woman ahead of her time as the title claims. The paper gives a brief biography of the woman and points out those areas in which she behaved differently from the way women of her time were expected to behave.

The paper is clearly addressed to students of history and, as such, offers important information about what was expected of women in this time that a student of the modern age wouldn’t necessarily know. Numerous credible sources are used to illustrate what life was like for women in the Puritan colonies as well as to support the various ways in which Hutchinson struggled against these constraints. Overall, the paper seems very strong in its broad content. In terms of organization and presentation, I have to again say that I feel the paper is very strong.

It starts with an introduction that could perhaps be better organized or more focused, but then goes into strong organization and presentation. Each segment is clearly labeled with a sub-heading and the essay follows a roughly chronological structure. From introducing the brief overview of Anne Hutchinson’s life until she moved to America, the essay examines her situation in the colonies, how she impacted this society through her behavior, the trial that banished her from this colony and her determination to continue forward by founding yet another colony before concluding with the travels that led to her death.

Paragraphs are well-formed and remain on topic with plenty of documentation to support the claims being made. The one weakness I found was that perhaps I used a bit too much documentation in some of the paragraphs. The greatest weakness I could find in the surface areas of my writing was that I tended to use run-on sentences in a few places. Punctuation seemed fine with perhaps some misuse of commas, but I remember looking up the rules and no one fully agreed with when one should or should not use a comma.

This made me feel that perhaps my use of commas wasn’t so far off where it should be. I did not find any other spelling or other errors although I did not have the benefit of having others look through the paper for these issues. This may have pointed out other problems to me that I cannot see for myself. Overall, I am very pleased with my writing. It seems to be quite strong in all three areas of analysis although I do see areas for improvement. The introduction could have been made tighter, with more emphasis given to making the purposes clear.

In some paragraphs, the cited material seemed to outweigh the original ideas, but this was due, in part, to the type of information being provided. Finally, I’m not certain I used appropriate punctuation throughout although other surface areas seemed strong. The process of paper analysis had already taken place on this paper, though, because I had written it early and thus had some opportunity to read through the rough drafts and make corrections before the final paper was due. I believe this made it much stronger.