Journal #1

I believe that writing is a tool and means of communication that individuals use in order to share ideas, opinions, facts, stories, emotions and more through their own words in order to create meaning out of the words being used in the text.  This text is then used to reach an audience intended by the writer.  Without writing communication would be a very difficult thing to achieve, it allows connections to be made through words and phrases that have a larger meaning.  Writing is also a medium that will last forever and is more concrete than just the spoken word and therefore has become a major means of communication since its original creation as well as evolving into different languages and characters that allow it to exist and be used for communicating all over the world.   I chose the following key terms to define writing because I feel that each of them is very important to the definition.  Emotion is something important to be evoked from a piece of writing.  Medium is also important because of all of the various kinds and medium can have an impact on audience as well.  Purpose, theme, focus and central idea are important because each focus on the main idea of a text or piece of writing.

Emotion: using writing to convey certain emotions to a specific audience

Medium: Print, online, advertisements.  There are many different mediums used when completing writing

Audience: the people that the writing is trying to reach, and the group that the writing reaches that isn’t always the intended audience.  The audience interprets the writing in their own way, this can be the way the author intended or a different interpretation depending on the audience.

Purpose: the reason a person has for writing, why they are putting their words into physical use on paper or on a screen.

Theme: the central idea in a piece of writing that the writer wants the audience to uncover through reading the text and understanding it.

Focus: Concentration on a specific subject to give it emphasis or importance

Balance: the arranging of words of phrases so that two ideas are given equal emphasis in a sentence or paragraph; a pleasing rhythm created when a pattern is repeated in a sentence.

Central idea: the main point of a piece of writing, often stated in a thesis statement or topic sentence of a text or piece of writing.