I remember very well a vocabulary unit I had planned. I had gathered all kinds of interesting information about words, including how words are added to the language, how their usage changes over time, and so on. I enjoyed every minute of my research and couldn’t wait to share my findings with the students. Unfortunately, they didn’t share in my enthusiasm, no matter what I tried. I might just as well have given them a list of ten words and told them to define each one and use it in a sentence. I was…just another textbook.… Why didn’t they share in my enthusiasm?

At first, humans just had speech. If you wanted to say "Ugh" to someone, you had to say it out loud. Sure, you could whisper or shout, add facial expressions and gestures, but your main communication option was speaking. In person. A few thousand years later, the clever folks of Ur developed cuneiform writing. Then people had two options: either say “Ugh” or write “Ugh.” You said it if the person was standing there, and you wrote it if the person wasn’t. The choice was clear. Now, after another few thousand years, the choices are anything but clear.

“Writing is learned by imitation. If anyone asked me how I learned to write, I’d say I learned by reading the men and women who were doing the kind of writing I wanted to do and trying to figure out how they did it.” —William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well Many of America’s best writers—from Mark Twain on—write in a relaxed, somewhat informal style.

At the beginning of Seeking Diversity, author Linda Rief recalls sharing an editorial with her students. One of her students wanted to know where he could send his response to the opinion piece. Rief had to tell the young man that he couldn’t send it because the editorial was several years old. As she states, “It was just an exercise to get you to write a persuasive piece.” The student replied that he had never heard of anything so stupid; he wanted the editor to read his response. From then on Rief “concentrated on making the writing [in her class] real—for genuine purposes.

“The universe of discourse is broad indeed and ranges from utilitarian and scientific uses of language to the most artful and playful literature. Likewise, it extends from public communication to private self-communication. Students need to learn how to compose and comprehend the spectrum.” —James Moffett, co-author of Student-Centered Language Arts, K-12 In earlier posts, I’ve discussed features of effective writing instruction. Three features stand out above all of the others: Students write about topics that truly interest them.

Recently one of my novelist friends and I were out to dinner, discussing writing. He happened to mention being stuck at a spot in his most recent story and having called another novelist to talk it through. My first reaction was surprise, to think that one professional novel writer needed to confer with another. It jarred with my image of both these people as masters of their craft, each sitting in a solitary tower, quietly capturing words on paper. I suspect you might have reacted the same, just now.

My oldest daughter called the other day to say that she is reading Of Human Bondage. She picked up a copy at a sale because her best friend in high school had said it was her favorite book, and my daughter figured any novel that could so impress a 17-year-old girl must be worth reading.

“I love the taste of words. They have a taste and a weight and a colour as well as a sound and a shape.” —Philip Pullman A 2008 article from The Washington Post showed how “Students Dig Deep for Words’ Origins.” The article noted that Phil Rosenthal was one of the few high-school instructors in the United States teaching an etymology course. According to Rosenthal, students take the class because they want to brush up on their vocabulary skills before taking the ACT or SAT, and/or because they have a genuine interest in the history of words.

“For many decades high schools and colleges have fostered the ‘research paper,’ which has become an exercise in badly done bibliography, often an introduction to the art of plagiarism, and a triumph of meaninglessness—for both writer and reader.” —Ken Macrorie, author of Searching Writing Some of our most common queries come from high school teachers and students who have concerns about research papers. And most of these queries deal with formatting and documentation style: Do I need a title page? How do I cite a Web article that doesn’t have an author or title?

As the person who usually answers questions (both in-house and out) regarding documenting research reports, let me second Dave Kemper’s most recent post about breathing life into the research process. Dave summarized Ken Macrorie’s I-Search approach to research writing. I’d like to parallel that with a digital-era view of what research is really all about. The first step is to back away from a fixation on whether our references are punctuated correctly. The second is to unlearn the word plagiarism. I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that collective gasp of outrage and will forge ahead.