brighton campbell, laura serano, antonella ferrucho

Everyday writing is used as a means of communication, introspection of oneself through writing, it can be personal or public. Throughout this course, students were asked to analyze, identify, and discuss the various elements that make a written text a part of everyday writing. By dissecting and exploring these numerous texts, we were able to compare the different approaches that writers use to communicate their ideas.

There are many components that we as students must consider before approaching the topic of everyday writing. First, we must be able to fully understand what everyday writing is by learning a myriad of synonyms. By using synonyms we get a wider view of what something means to be an everyday piece of writing. Secondly, this course will give us the ability to identify and interpret an article of everyday writing—to look at a piece, it’s surroundings and find the reason why that piece came into being, as discussed in Edbauer’s paper. The means of communication itself may be communicated interpersonally or via mass production to a mass audience. As Edbauer states, everyday writing is not confined. Everyday writing can be found in unique and various settings. Nevertheless, Edbauer chooses to support his case through the example of graffiti. Graffiti can be found in one location, or all over town- mass produced. But both are considered everyday writing because each piece of  graffiti is unique. However,the graffiti itself may be code, so only a few may truly understand its meaning.  Thus, graffiti is an excellent example of how everyday writing can be public, while also being private.

Thirdly, by being able to look at another person’s artifact of everyday writing, we should be able to create and interpret our own pieces of everyday writing and better understand the reason we, ourselves, are writing. Finally, we should be able to use the readings from class to broaden our idea of what everyday writing could be, with authors like Lillis and Lyons disagreeing over what should be considered everyday writing we form an opinion and solidify our idea of what everyday writing actually is to us personally. By combining the five concepts outlined above, by the end of this course we should be able to draw comparisons to different authors while analyzing a piece of everyday writing to back up our point of view to an artifact, with the help of a reputable author like that of any of the pieces we have read in class. For example, in our first projects, writing could be used as introspection by being a note that was never sent. This case would be like what Katriel and Farrell were on to- everyday writing can be used to organize one’s thoughts and their pasts.

This course and all the subsections listed above of it are useful to us as students because Everyday writing is not a popular topic studied by scholars yet. Gaining the skills needed to analyse a piece of everyday writing gives us insight into the writer’s life, and other contexts surrounding that give us a better understanding of the state of our society as a whole.