Have Faith in the Writing Process

  • Trust the force.
  • Trust the generative power of language.
  • Trust your ability to find out what you want to say and how to best say it for your intended audience.

Encyclopedia for Writers

Writing Commons publishes peer-reviewed, original articles on matters of interest to students and writing teachers. Learn about Writing Commons, an online encyclopedia for professional writers, writing studies, and teachers who require writing at the undergraduate or graduate level in composition, academic writing, fiction writing, and professional writing. The site map below reflects the current iteration of the site. If you think we've sorted an article incorrectly or you have a suggestion, please use the commenting form below to get in touch with us. We also encourage you to write for us.

While a presenter points to his presentation on a screen, a member of the audience raises a sign that says "Your results aren't generalizable!"

How to Critique Research Methods

This is the third creative challenge in Research Methods in Professional and Technical Communication. This challenge introduces students to methodological flaws associated with the studies conducted by scholars/theorists, designers/creatives, and empiricists (i.e., qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods researchers). The article below summarizes common problems with research methods. For instance, it introduces ethical concerns, including the impact of AI systems on inquiry. It analyzes common problems with scholarly, design, creative, quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods. It contextualizes the need for critique by introducing Samuel Arbesman's work on the "The Half-life of Facts." Working collaboratively in groups of three, students continue working on their research notes they began for the second creative challenge. This time, rather than focusing on the ways researchers ask questions, present literature reviews, and engage in citation, they analyze, critique, and reflect on the methodologies that PTC researchers employ in a disciplinary journal. Evaluation criteria include methodological appropriateness given the audience and research questions, ethical considerations, and alignment with the research conventions and epistemological positions of scholars, creatives, or empiricists. Subsequently, the groups will prepare a presentation for their peers that reports on their findings. The goal here is to identify the epistemological assumptions, ethical practices, and scholarly conversations that inform scholarship and research in PTC -- at least as reflected in the journals analyzed by the student groups. Additionally, working individually, students prepare a reflection that reports on their use of AI to conduct the research notes and group presentation. They also identify, based on the group work and presentations, what study they would find most likely to conduct.

This pic is of the parliamentary archives at Victoria Tower, Palace of Westminster,

Archive – What Do Writers Need to Know About the Archive?

An archive traditionally refers to a physical repository of historical documents and texts. Yet in contemporary usage, archives are perceived to be more than sources of information: they are also lenses through which historical and cultural narratives are formed and understood. In contemporary discourse, the concept of archive has evolved to encompass a Foucauldian concept: Focault views archives as a form of power, as an ideological force that shapes our understanding of history and culture. This article explores the role archives play in interpretation, composing, and knowledge-making.

Literary Criticism

Literary Criticism refers to critical methods for interpreting texts and for substantiating arguments. This article focuses on literary interpretation, which may be called second-level literary criticism. The difference between first- and second-level criticism is similar to the distinction between a like or dislike of a text versus giving an interpretation of it. Imagine that a group of friends gathers outside a movie theater after watching a re-release of Twilight, the first film in the Twilight film series, based on the novel of the same name by Stephanie Meyers:

  • Some of the people in the group say they do not like the film because it portrays Bella as a weak female who becomes obsessed with Edward Cullen whom she cannot marry without leaving her loving father and losing her precious mortality.
  • Other people like those aspects of the film, however, arguing that the film makes them disagree with its representation of some women as meek characters.
In each case, everyone states his or interpretation of the film to contribute to a conversation about it; everyone offers literary criticism. This same sort of give and take occurs among readers of texts. Works of literature invoke multiple readings. In other words, we can all read the same story or poem (or watch the same movie or listen to the same song) and come up with different, even conflicting, interpretations about what the work means. Who we are reflects how we read texts. Our experiences inspire us to relate to and sympathize with characters and difficult situations. Have we read similar stories? Have we actually faced some of the same challenges the characters in the story face?