Blog 7- Definition Paper Reflection

The definition writing style is useful in any type of paper. I find that in college if I am ever stuck, I will be able to use these strategies to expand of my thoughts and make the reader interested in what I have to say.

This definition paper was somewhat challenging for me to write. At first I was going to write about leg warmers, which at this point, that topic would have been much easier to write about, but instead I choose boat shoes. Although my revision did enhance my paper, it still could use a couple more drafts and more examples. Also I found that in a definition paper, the orientation of the page, and the outline of how the page looks can contribute to the overall quality. The appearance must draw the reader to read the paper. In my revision, I added two pictures to go along with what I was talking about, so the reader can fully understand. (I couldn’t get the pictures to copy onto the blog).

While writing this paper, my focus originally was just on Sperrys, but then I realized that that was too narrow of a topic for this paper. It is easier when writing a definition to have a broader topic because then you can have more depth and words to define.

Originally, I focused on the dictionary definition only. I included this definition many times throughout the paper. When I got peer feedback, one of my classmates told me that it would be more interesting if I included a style definition, or in other words slang or what I defined the shoes as. This defiantly made my paper more relatable to the reader, because they probably agree with my definition.

My biggest problem in this essay was to determine exactly what I was talking about. I spent some time finding definitions but I found that I needed to spend more time with the actual writing itself. Although it is a definition paper, I learned that the paper will be boring if there is no “beef” around it and supporting examples. Peer editing is much easier to find problems and add examples because they see what you don’t see. This relates to my paper because I didn’t think of writing my own definition of boat shoes.

Writing a descriptive essay can come in handy in many other pieces of writing. In a general piece I can explode a moment in one part and if there is a word that not many people know or a powerful word that needs to be expanded, the definition writing techniques will come in hand.