A Writing Glossary

A
Audience: The reader for whom a piece of writing is intended. Audience can
range from the writer who produces the text, such as a journal entry to
oneself (“Dear Diary”), to peers, teachers, parents, or other trusted adults.
Analytic essay: A piece of writing in which the writer reacts and/or
responds to a body of work through a critical lens. The writer explains the
significance of the text by persuading the reader of a certain point regarding
the text. The writer must support his/her argument by exploring the text in
great depth; to do this effectively, one must use evidence from the text to
explore all sides of his/her argument regarding the text and ultimately,
support his/her claim.
Authentic writing: Student-generated pieces of original text, which may
include sentences, paragraphs, or longer pieces. For example, students in 1 st
grade may write an original sentence, while students in 2 nd grade might
develop a paragraph in response to a writing prompt.
Author’s notes: A document created by a writer to guide a reader’s
response to his/her work. When using the author’s notes, the student
typically explain where the piece is in the writing process, what the writer
thinks is working well, where the writer feels stuck or needs feedback, and
what kind of response the writer hopes to receive from the reader. This is a
wonderful tool to use with all students, but can be very powerful with
struggling writers.
B
Basic writing skills: Basic but critical skills, such as handwriting (or typing),
spelling, and sentence construction, used to translate thoughts and ideas
into writing (from the head (thoughts) to the hands (active writing).
Brainstorming: A pre-writing strategy in which writers list all as many ideas
as possible on a given topic or list the main idea and the supporting details
of the writing.
C
Coherence: The arrangement of ideas so that the reader can easily follow
from one point to the next
Collaborative writing: A process in which students jointly develop a single
text. Examples include younger students sharing a pen to draft a message
on chart paper, or older students publishing a class newsletter or composing
stories to share with their friends or classmates.

1|Page
Context: Conditions around which a writer is writing; such conditions may
include time, place, and other circumstances such as the political, social,
economic climates, etc.
D
Dictation: The process of writing down the oral words from a child. With
young children, or children with difficulties in written expression, dictation
offers a way for teachers to record a child's thoughts or ideas, while also
providing opportunity to model many writing behaviors including
handwriting, matching sounds-to-letters to spell words, and sentence
formation. While this is not considered authentic writing because the
students are not writing themselves, it is a step in helping them to get
thoughts out and watch as the teacher models appropriate writing skills.
Dictation within writing: In this format, children write and the teacher
corrects grammatical errors (such as spelling and punctuation). The child
reads what he/she has written aloud, and the teacher corrects.
E
Exemplary text: A written piece used as an example of quality writing. This
text could be a published piece of writing, but it also can be writing created
by a student or teacher. The exemplary text demonstrates specific ideas
and/or structure. The writer can emulate exemplary text in his or her own
writing. Exemplary text is sometimes referred to as “model text” or
“touchstone text.”
F
Fluency: The ability to communicate ideas in writing accurately and quickly
with relatively little effort. Fluency is an important factor in a writer’s ability
to manipulate sentence structures to produce comprehensible text. Writing
fluency also requires automatic or relatively effortless handwriting, typing,
and spelling skills.
G
Genre: A form of writing with specific features that provides context and
structure for a particular purpose and audience. For example, the narrative
genre includes personal or made-up stories and typically includes elements
such as characters and plot, whereas the persuasive genre can include
letters and essays that incorporate features such as an introduction, thesis
statement, supporting evidence, and conclusions.

2|Page
Genre elements: Specific features typical of a particular genre. For
example, the elements of a story include place, a starting event, action, and
ending. Genre elements are sometimes referred to as “text elements.”
Gradual release of responsibility: An instructional model whereby a
teacher teaches a strategy explicitly and then gradually decreases the level
of support to the student, ultimately releasing the student to use the
strategy independently. This is a critical model in writing, as students need
constant support in writing skills during the elementary years, but should be
taught independence in writing.
H
High-stakes writing: Assignments that are typically graded or used for
high-stakes assessments; with high-stakes writing, students are expected to
submit pieces that are well-crafted.
I
Ideation: The development and quality of ideas students include in their
writing. Qualitative measures of ideation include the overall richness and
number of ideas in a composition. Quantitative measures include the number
of different ideas.
Invented spelling: Spelling attempts by a student to produce a plausible
spelling for an unknown word. This can range from using one letter to
represent an entire word (e.g., b for bed), using the first and last sounds of a
word (e.g., bd or bed), or spelling a word phonetically (e.g., wuz for was).
K
Key words: Terms that specifically pertain to the concepts, topics, and
ideas properties of a piece of writing.
L
Logic: The science of correct reasoning; correctly using facts, examples and
reasons to support claims in writing.
Low-stakes writing: Writing that is typically not graded; writing of this
nature is for practice and exploration.
M
Meaningful writing: Writing that is significant to the author.
Mechanics: Assessments of handwriting, spelling, capitalization, and
punctuation. The term usage also may be applied and typically refers to the
combination of capitalization and punctuation.

3|Page
N
Narration: Writing that relates an event or a series of events; a story.
O
Objective: The goal, purpose or target for a piece of writing; may be
established by the author or created by an outside force such as an
instructor, editor or publisher
Organization: The structure of a composition. This can include the
connection between ideas in the text, as well as how well individual ideas are
organized or connected to meet a writer’s purpose (often referred to as
“cohesiveness”).
Overall writing quality: The overall effectiveness of a piece of writing. As
teachers look at students’ writing quality, measures may take into account
assessments of intermediary outcome categories—including ideation, genre
(or text) elements, mechanics, organization, output, sentence structure,
vocabulary, and voice—in a single assessment of the quality of a piece of
writing. Overall writing quality may be assessed either analytically or
holistically.
P
Personal narrative: A piece of writing that is based upon a personal
experience, observation, or idea.
Process approach: An approach to teaching writing in which students are
encouraged to move through a series of actions directed toward a specific
aim or purpose. This process allows students to correct errors and allows
time for review and revision.
Purpose: The objective a writer is trying to achieve with a particular piece of
writing. There are four general purposes for writing (describe, narrate,
inform, and persuade/analyze), and each purpose has a variety of genres
that can help provide context and structure for a particular purpose and
audience.
R
Rubric: An assessment tool which typically includes a set of criteria for
assessing performance on written assignments, allowing for standardized
evaluation according to the specified criteria. Rubrics can be used by
teachers to evaluate student work, or by students for self-evaluation and/or
peer review.
S

4|Page
Sentence structure: Sentence correctness, sentence completion, or
sentence complexity. A sentence-structure measurement might count the
number of sentences in a composition that are syntactically correct.
Slang: Informal words and expressions formed by people as replacements
for standard usage.
Strategy: A series of actions (mental, physical, or both) that writers
undertake to achieve their goals. Strategies are tools that can help students
generate content and carry out components of the writing process. For
example, students can use peer-sharing strategies to give and receive
feedback with a writing partner.
Style: The strategies a writer uses in order to create a particular effect.
Choices of style might include form, arrangement of words or images on a
page, word choice, grammar, tone, etc.
Subjective: Information included within a piece of writing that expresses
the author’s attitude, opinions or feelings of the subject.
T
Techniques: Specific tool that students can use to generate content and
frame their writing for a specific genre. Whereas a strategy can be applied to
all genres, techniques are specific to a particular genre and the features that
provide context and structure for the genre.
Text structure: The specific way a text is organized to convey meaning to
the reader. It encompasses how the main point is conveyed (e.g., sequence
of events, comparison, or cause and effect) and the vocabulary the author
selects to convey meaning to the reader.
Text-structure instruction: Instructional practices in which students are
taught to identify common text structures and use them to organize the
information they are reading or writing.
Theme: The central idea in a piece of writing.
Thesis statement: An explicit statement of the purpose, intent, or main
idea of a piece of writing.
Tone: The writer’s attitude toward the subject; this could be serious, funny,
sorrowful, sarcastic, etc.
Topic: The specific subject covered in a piece of writing.
Transitions: Words or phrases that link ideas together and show
relationships between sentences and ideas.

5|Page
V
Vivid language: Words selected to appeal to the senses and to help the
reader see, feel, smell, taste and hear the subject. Vivid language can also
be considered “energized words” in a piece of writing.
Visual texts: Images (pictures) that convey messages, meaning and ideas.
Such images take the place of printed words. Visual texts are very helpful
for young writers and struggling writers.
Vocabulary: The types of words used by the student in his or her writing.
Vocabulary may be assessed by counting specific types of words (e.g., the
number of different words or the inclusion of content-specific words), or by
examining the complexity of words (e.g., number of syllables).
Voice: The “tone,” “mood,” or “style,” of a person’s writing. The voice of a
writing piece tells the reader about the writer’s personality in the
composition. Voice typically is assessed by rating how well the student
establishes mood, tone, style, or his or her individual personality in writing.
W
Writing: The process through which people communicate thoughts and
ideas. Writing can include beginning scribbles, drawings, random letter
strings, single-letter spellings, invented spelling, or complete sentences and
paragraphs. Writing also can include students dictating ideas to an adult or
peer for transcription. Writing can be done through paper and pencil, typing,
audio recording, or speech synthesis.
Writing process: The approach a writer uses to compose text. Components
of the writing process might include planning, drafting, sharing (for support),
revising, editing, and sharing (the final piece) through publishing.

Information taken from the Institute of Educational Sciences (IES), National

6|Page