Writing with a Computer

This is the computer age, and most writers, once they get over the initial shock of learning word-processing programs, welcome the new technology. Computers and word processors assist in the writing process by eliminating the time-consuming task of typing out a new draft each time you want to produce a clean, professional-looking copy. In addition, computers can help you collect, discover, or remember ideas and then help you shape, draft, revise, and edit a piece of writing. At your command, a word-processing program will add, move, or delete a letter, word, sentence, or whole para­graph. In its fluidity, the word processor is remarkably adaptive to the way our minds go about the process of writing-collecting and adding it to a paragraph here, taking out a wrong word there, trying out a new sentence and deleting it if it doesn’t flow, experimenting with phrasing and language, or chucking something into a “wastebasket” file (for retrieval, in case you change your mind tomorrow).

Some computer programs do more than simply respond to your commands: They interact with you by asking questions and making suggestions. As writing teachers and computer programmers anticipate problems you may have with writing on a computer, they add instructional elements to word processors. These computer-assisted instruction (CAI) programs provide specialized assistance with particular problems that writers regularly face at each stage of the writing process. At this time, no single CAI program has all of the features diagrammed in the following figure, but all of these features are available in different systems. Some of the most interesting programs prompt you with questions or advice; give you a model, form, or “template” to work from; and react to what you have already written with further questions—or with an elaborate analysis of your writing style and your possible errors in usage, grammar, or punctuation. The old “garbage in, garbage out” adage about computers has a new twist with these CAI programs. You may begin by putting garbage in, but the machine can help you process and transform the garbage into something palatable—perhaps even something delicious.