English & Language Usage · Writing & vocabulary
Writing Process, Audience & Attribution
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Start here: your learning goal
Revise for purpose and audience, and attribute quotations and paraphrases accurately.
Read the explanations, try the quick checks, then take the lesson quiz to see what to review next.
This lesson joins two related skills: choosing an effective writing-process action and adapting writing to its audience. The goal is purposeful communication, not memorizing one rigid sequence.
Plan, draft and return to the plan
Prewriting explores the task, reader, purpose and available evidence. Brainstorming generates possibilities; an outline arranges them. Drafting turns that plan into connected sentences and paragraphs. A discovery during drafting may send you back to research or planning. The process is recursive: you can revisit a stage without having failed.
Get feedback from a reader or peer (sometimes called conferencing). Ask focused questions: “Where did you lose the thread?” or “What evidence is missing?” Feedback is information to evaluate, not a command to accept every suggestion.
Worked example: choose the highest-level problem first
A draft proposes longer library hours, but its only evidence concerns parking. The writer should first add relevant evidence about access and revise the argument. Correcting commas alone will not connect parking data to the proposal. Later, sentence editing and proofreading improve the revised draft.
| Action | Primary focus | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Prewrite | Generate and plan | List readers' questions before drafting. |
| Draft | Develop a first version | Turn notes into a paragraph. |
| Revise | Purpose, content and organization | Replace irrelevant evidence or reorder sections. |
| Edit | Sentence-level clarity and correctness | Repair agreement or ambiguous wording. |
| Proofread | Final surface check | Find a typo after the layout is complete. |
These categories overlap in ordinary work. On a question, select the action that addresses the stated problem rather than assuming only one stage can ever contain a spelling correction.
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